Beebombs at the Gallery!

We’re delighted to announce that Earth Pig is now an authorised stockist of Beebombs – native wildflower seed balls which encourage bees to visit your garden. These are hand-made clumps of 18 different wild flowers including yarrow, ox-eye daisy, red campion, cornflower, poppy and others which you can throw in your garden to encourage the bees back. Bees and other pollinating insects play a vital role in ecosystems. A third of all our food depends on pollination. A world without pollinators would be devastating for food production. The economic value of bee pollination has been estimated at around £200 billion annually worldwide and since the 1990s beekeepers around the world have been observing a mysterious and sudden disappearance of bees and a decline in honeybee colonies. The increased application of pesticides and the diminishing number of hedgerows and trees is linked to the disappearance of pollinators. Ordinary people like you and me can help do our bit to bring back bees to our fields and gardens.

Buying a pack of beebombs is a great way to help conservation. There’s no sowing or gardening required! All you need to do is throw the beebombs onto clear ground and wait for them to grow. They can be planted in pots too. All they’ll need in that case is some watering. Wildflowers are pretty hardy but take a little while to grow, longer than imported flowers but some of the annuals should bloom in their first year. Each pack of beebombs will cover 21 square feet and are best scattered in Spring or Autumn. Since World War II, 97% of natural bee and butterfly habitat in the UK has been lost. By using beebombs in your garden you can begin to restore some of this lost habitat and make an important contribution to the biodiversity in Britain. A pack of beebombs costs £7.99 – a small investment to bring back our bees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Not-So-Great Pottery Throw Down

Apparently one of the reasons for the upsurge in popularity of pottery-making was the recent TV series The Great Pottery Throw Down. I never watched the series at the time and have only recently caught episodes of it on You Tube. Of course, I appreciate that these kinds of programmes are made to entertain the watching public, but some of the tasks the contestants were made to perform were pretty ridiculous.

One episode saw the participants having to make as many egg cups as possible in a certain length of time, five minutes I think. The results were, quite frankly, pretty poor, but that was purely because of the time constraints. I am sometimes pressed for time in the studio and need to repeat throw a number of vessels, mugs or bowls perhaps, but I’ve never been so pushed that I’d accept anything that comes off the wheel no matter how bad. Nor have I ever thrown anything blindfold, not even as a bit of a wheeze, (another exercise contestants were made to do). I accept that these tasks are pure entertainment and meant as a fun diversion to the main assignment, but I wonder whether they are giving a fallacious and unnecessary impression of difficulty to the whole process of making pottery.

I also wondered about the production company’s choice of contestant. The first series featured ‘twelve of the country’s best amateur potters’. Were they the best amateurs in the county to start with, or just twelve of the ones willing to go on TV and be criticised in public? There must be dozens of potters the UK who are better than those contestants. And by saying that I am in no way denigrating those individuals who did appear on the programme. I certainly couldn’t and wouldn’t do it. In fact I hold my hands up and admit that I am weaker in some of the areas of pottery making that were featured in the series, coil-building for example. Perhaps a Great Pottery Throw Down series with twelve accomplished and experienced potters who make fewer mistakes and are masterly at every facet of ceramic production would make pretty boring TV. Having said that, even the most skilled potters make mistakes. (For evidence of my own incompetence check out the previous blog post of December 17th).

Let That be a Lesson

The last week has been a frantic one consisting of making and decorating pots ready for the gallery. On one hand I’ve had to ignore the Christmas rush and concentrate on the task of producing ware, but on the other keep in mind the fact that people will want to stop and talk to find out what we’re doing. Something of a necessary distraction.

The rush to produce has involved a few mistakes. The first is that I haven’t always tested glazes properly, relying on a the manufacturer’s guidelines rather than my own empirical methods. I know this is a cardinal error, especially given that the kiln is new and thus its heat is particularly fierce. Some mugs I had glazed rather too thickly, with a dark glossy, and rather attractive, grey-green colour ran onto the kiln shelf. Although they weren’t stuck, the bases of the vessels were a mess and only a couple could be salvaged by grinding the excess off. The same mugs were also decorated with a band of a white stone-like glaze which turned out to be much rougher in texture than I had thought, really quite unsuitable for a drinking vessel.

There have been other errors, mostly to do with the consistency of glazes, which I corrected easily, but not before several pots were discarded, relegated to the role of studio tool containers, or marked as seconds. Let that be a lesson to me! I’ve slowed down now and I’m testing everything, no matter how long it takes. More haste, less speed!

Studio Opening

The day has finally arrived! The gallery is about to open, although at the moment there’s hardly anything in there! This coming week will see the place transformed from an empty space into a working gallery and pottery. Everything is ordered and there’ll be a constant stream of delivery vans dropping off equipment and supplies, at least that’s the theory!

Apart from frenzied work on the computer I’ve been trying to get paintings and drawings ready for hanging in the gallery; the photos above show a couple of paintings recently framed and ready to go. It’s all been hard work but very exciting. Amanda and I can’t wait to get it all up and running.

 

The Way of Tea

A yunomi by Jim Malone. A painted motif over a traditional hakeme slip decoration.

A cup of tea isn’t a simple matter, at least not to serious tea drinkers! Tea is as rich and intricate a subject as wine is for those who choose to investigate it and delve a little deeper below the surface. Drinking tea is inextricably linked with the whole eastern culture – mixture of the two principles of wabi and sabi. ‘Wabi’ is a word which denotes the spiritual aspect of life, characterised by simplicity, restraint and unadorned beauty. ‘Sabi’ represents the imperfections of life and the natural way of things in the outside world. For me, the tea bowl plays an important part in the appreciation of tea, a way of engaging with the cultural activity of the tea ceremony. By drinking from a tea bowl, or chawan, I feel spiritually connected, more relaxed and in-tune with myself.

A karatsu chawan from the momoyama period 

In fact, to be precise, chawan is the name given to tea bowls used in formal tea ceremonies; for everyday drinking the Japanese use yunomi. But whatever they’re called there is something inherently satisfying about using them. I’m not suggesting that everyone have a tea ceremony each time they have a cuppa, but by taking time out to relax, prepare the tea carefully and drink out of something beautiful they are participating in something transcendent and numinous.

Of course, I don’t use a tea bowl every time I have a cup of tea, but there is something infinitely pleasurable about drinking from an attractive well-made vessel. I do try to have a relaxing cup of tea at least once a day; using my favourite oolong tea, preparing it carefully using a tea pot, infusing it for the correct length of time and finally drinking from a tea bowl.

In the studio tea bowls figure quite highly on my list of vessels to make, although most customers still prefer mugs with handles to drink from. Personally, I think the fact that there isn’t a handle on a tea bowl seems to give the act of drinking from it a more sacred quality; it’s easier to cup the hands around it in an almost supplicatory way. The heat of the tea is easier to feel, and one is aware of a ‘closeness’ to the flavour and aroma of the liquid. In making tea bowls I rarely use a gauge (though I do weigh out the lumps of clay) and, keeping the wheelhead turning a little slower than usual I allow each bowl to take its own form. In that way I feel I am putting something of myself in the vessel – it becomes more of an individual item. I’m not bothered about making it ‘perfect’. I’m happy with whatever comes off the wheel, as long as it has character and feeling. A few uneven blemishes I can live with.

Grey teabowl by Ken Matsuzaki.

I urge all tea drinkers to try having their own personal ‘tea ceremony’ once a day, drinking their favourite tea from a chawan or yunomi, taking time to relax and chill out for at least a few minutes. Try it for a week at see what happens!