Exhibition at Gallery On Blueskin

Judith and Bev at the opening.
A lovely painting on the wall by Laura.

Taking pots out of the kiln the day before an exhibition is not really to be recommended for a life of balance and calm, but it certainly beats taking hot pots to an opening.... something I did last year if I remember correctly!

This pot has a really nice graduation of colour from top to bottom in the area around the crystals.
The glaze has some manganese and cobalt in it for colour.

On Friday I spent several hours preparing pots for the exhibition. This was time spent under mask, eye protection and gloves, looking rather like a worker at a Nuclear power plant, and cussing the fact that I wear glasses.

Here is an enlargement of those flower shaped crystals.

The thing about masks, eye protection, and glasses, especially on a cold day, which it was..., is that you are reduced to a choice between being able to breathe, or being able to see, but not both at once! It seems almost impossible to stop something fogging up (I think that if I used glue to attach the mask with a perfect seal to my face, I may not suffer the fogging so badly!). If you haven't already guessed, I was separating crystal glazed pots from their glaze catching saucers and sitters and grinding glaze runs from the foot of the pots.

This pot has iron and cobalt in it for colour. The iron adds those warm oranges and reds and also seems to modify the shape of the crystals, making them a little smaller and more blurry around the margins.

I use a bench grinder for the rough grinding of the ring of sharp glaze that circles the base of each pot. This is a very effective tool, and actually does a rather nice job if you are careful about it, but it is potentially quite hazardous if you go about things the wrong way, after all..., we are dealing with small shards of glass, and airborne glass dust... silica.

Here is a closer look at the glaze with cobalt and iron in it.

I have read that some crystal glaze potters use angle grinders to remove glaze runs from pot bottoms, which is even more lethal! Anyway, I follow up the bench grinder with a hand held tool that takes small abrasive bits. This is slow work, but it does bring up a nice smooth finish.

At first glance this pot looks similar in colour to the one that has manganese and cobalt in the glaze, but this has copper and cobalt. The copper gives that greenish background colour, and the blue crystals have a cool gray blue look. I am excited by the pale margins of the crystals in the lower part of the pot.

I am really interested at how the new crystal glazes are looking on larger pots, and I am thinking of new forms to help bring out the character of the glazes that I am trying. Some of the glazes have a noticeable gradation of tone and colour in the "background" area that surrounds the crystals. The background colour is also full of flecks and speckles of lighter and darker hues; I suspect this is due to the titanium content of the glaze base, and it is a lovely feature.

A close up of the cobalt and copper variation of this crystalline glaze.

I delivered the pots and some of Laura's paintings to the gallery on Friday evening. I was overjoyed to see the two largest of Laura's paintings already on the wall looking really beautiful. I had taken them to Chris at Gray's Studio in Dunedin earlier in the week, and Gallery on Blueskin had kindly picked them up and taken them straight there after the paintings were framed. This saved me a trip to Dunedin, but meant that I had not seen the paintings in all their glory before seeing them hung. Laura's first glimpse of them was at the opening, and she was very pleased (which was a relief as Chris and I had chosen the frames!!)

I made this little pot as a tester, but am rather fond of it. This has the iron and cobalt in the glaze.

On Saturday we were rewarded with a glorious day. The sun was out after a frosty night, and there was scarcely a cloud in the sky. This part of the country can be beautiful in winter on still days with the sun giving a just a perceptible warmth. Anyway, the opening went quite well. We were part of a group showing. A young painter was having his first solo show of abstract paintings in a separate gallery room (a former telephone exchange), and a sculptor, and a couple more painters and a sculptor had work on display, in addition to Laura and my own contributions. There were also teapots on display too.

I like the colour that I often get inside the crystal glazed pots. Over-spray from the crystalline glaze that I apply outside creates warm and varied colours inside where it lands on the calcium matt liner glaze. I decided to put a calcium matt glaze on the outside of this vase, and very lightly spray a crystalline glaze over it.

We really had a steady circulation of people through the gallery for most of the afternoon. It was never full to bursting point, but there was always someone there.

There were only a few small crystals in this glaze, but the pot looked OK like that so I included it in the exhibition. I probably fired slightly too high to develop a good crop of crystals. Only 5 degrees over can make a big difference.

We were delighted that one of the potters from the potter's co-op that I belong to dropped into the opening, it was lovely to see her, and she treated us to a bunch of daffodils, which are a beautiful sight to behold in the middle of winter!

Nigella Stopit was my beautiful studio assistant throughout the photo shoot of the pots before they went to the gallery. She rather wanted her photo taken I think!

Tomorrow I am hoping to take some photos of Laura's work at the gallery, and I will put some on this site. I have given a little teaser with the first photo on this post, with a couple of our friends talking in front of one of Laura's paintings.

Have you seen a vase like this before??

We had a visit from someone recently who brought along some photos of a vase that she owns. She would like more information about the vase. She bought it second hand in 1964, and it is quite large, I think she said it was about 40 inches, and it has really lovely decoration on it of insects and frogs. Have any of you seen anything like it before??? If so, I would be delighted to hear from you, so that I can pass any information on to the owner of the vase.