Porcelain bling

A new batch of porcelain rings with letters fresh out of the kiln. If I now could fiure out their sizes I might try and put some of them in my Epla shop.

Spoon frustrations

Sometimes the distance from initial idea to finished product is longer than anticipated.

I had visions of making a white porcelain spoon, wafer thin and elegant. A few weeks ago I went to work making a plaster cast from a spoon found at my grandparents. It is pretty thin and delicate, so I added clay to the back of it to make it a bit thicker. In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to cast the spoon, but it has proved to be a tough nut to crack - they keep breaking at the ‘neck’! I think the profile of the spoon I picked is just too curvy, so that the weight of it creates a weak spot right there. I have tried pouring and pressing, drying on its belly and on its back, drying in the mould and building small scaffoldings underneath it, but after eight broken ones I am about to throw the whole thing at the wall. So in an attempt to try and get at least one spoon through both firings, I press molded a very crude one in sturdy stoneware. And ta-da! Here it is: one finished spoon! Not at all what I set out to make, but still - a spoon in one piece! Will keep trying on the porcelain one, and eventually I’m sure I’ll get there. But in the mean time I’ll enjoy this small victory.

Viruses, Holidays and Shrinkage

I’m back! You might not have known I was gone, but last week I got a nasty virus on my laptop, so for the last five days I have been without a computer. It has really brought home to me how many parts of my daily life involves being online. How do you find a computer-repair-man in a hurry without doing a quick search online? And when I found one, how I wished I could have searched for the address on a map to find their offices out in an unfamiliar suburb. And that was just within the first five minutes ... But of course there are upsides to it as well. Without a computer I had to postpone some of the work I was planning on doing, and could go here for a few days ..

Today I also picked up the first ducks made using my new plaster casts. I have tried out two different types of porcelain clay, and if you look closely you might see that they are slightly different in color. They have also shrunk a lot in firing, so now they look like little ducklings next to the original duck.

Printers blocks: Snakeoil

Today I thought I'd show you two more of my old printers blocks, this time with a medical theme. The first one is a bottle of milk of magnesia by the Philadelphia Magnesia Co.

" For relief of acid condition. An effective but gentle laxative".

Yep, every home should have one. I think this block was a genuine advertisement for the product, and it is really detailed and in pretty good condition.

The second one I was more unsure of. It says:

"German Liquor Cure. Sure cure for drunkenness. Stop drinking. Sold only by Sears Roebuck and Co".

The rest is kind of hard to decipher. Because of that, and the whole 'cure'-thing, I thought this might have been an advert for a novelty product, for instance some kind of sweets? But then I found this online, and what do you know, in 1902 there really was a cure for drunkenness!

Summer morning walk

Below are a few snaps taken this morning, on my way from from my apartment to my studio. On a lovely summers morning like today it does not feel like you are in the middle of a city at all. It is all greenery and the smell of linden trees and old roses.

New Font

Still no sign of the roller runners I ordered a month ago. The little Adana is sitting idle on my kitchen bench, and it is becoming very frustrating not to be able to do anything with it, just because of one tiny missing part. But, something else came in the mail today: a new set of wooden fonts!

It is from the Stephenson Blake foundry in the UK, but I do not know what font or how old it is. But it looks lovely!

Paper

I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to use these for, but they followed me home, so I guess now I have to keep them...

Concrete Poetry

A definition of concrete poetry from Encyclopædia Britannica:
'Poetry in which the poet’s intent is conveyed by graphic patterns of letters, words, or symbols rather than by the meaning of words in conventional arrangement. The writer of concrete poetry uses typeface and other typographical elements in such a way that chosen units - letter fragments, punctuation marks, graphemes (letters), morphemes (any meaningful linguistic unit), syllables, or words (usually used in a graphic rather than denotative sense) - and graphic spaces form an evocative picture.'

'Silence' by Eugen Gomringer

'Stability' by Clemente Padín

'Subtraction (Startling)' by Tauba Auerbach

'Archives' by Edwin Morgan

'Obstacles and Impediments' by Mary Ann Sampson