Oh how we long for spring...

...and yes, that is real frost on the window.

Etsy

*drumroll*: I have decided to open up a little shop on Etsy!

After years of being a fan and a buyer, I decided I might try and join the ranks as a seller too. I thought it might be nice to have some of my stuff out there for others to see also.

And of course, should this turn out to be the start-off point for an international empire, I would just have to try and cope I guess...

The making of a porcelain ring

During the last year I have been making quite a few porcelain rings with imprinted text, and I thougth someone might find it interresting to see some of the process behind them. And I do appologize for the poor quality of the pictures - the light in our studio is not great. In fact it is pretty awful. But here goes.... 

"m" for manicure.....which is what you need after working with clay all day :) Handstamping the text with lead type.

A tray of freshly formed and imprinted rings, clay still wet. I'm not too bothered about neatness at this stage, as there is still a lot of work to be done on them. They are also pretty fragile at this point. The important thing is that the printing looks ok. They will now be wrapped in plastic and left to dry for up to a week. I like to let them dry slowly; I seem to get less dry cracking that way. (In the middle right back there you can see one that is whiter in colour than the others; it dried too quickly and later broke)

The rings are now completely dry, and I have filled in the imprinted letters with underglaze, using a thin brush to push the colour into every nook and cranny. They are now ready to be bisque fired to 950 degrees C.

After bisque firing the rings are a lot sturdier (think terracotta pots) and can cope with a lot more handling. This is where the most labor-intensive part starts, with lots of sanding and elbow grease. But it is also the most rewarding, as it is the first time I really get to see what the finished result might look like. I sand down the outside to remove the excess color - this is where a bad print job will reveal itself. I also remove all sharp edges and sand down the inside to get the ring to the thickness I want. (This would have been a lot easier to do before bisque firing, but I ended up breaking so many rings that way that I now go for the slower but more successful option)

....eight hours later.....

....after a good wash and another day of drying, they are ready for a dip in a bowl of clear glaze, before going into the oven a second time - this time to 1255 degrees C.

....and Voila! A batch of freshly baked porcelain rings!

Guerrilla knitting

Occasionally I see examples of guerrilla knitting popping up around town. Always makes me smile! Here is the last one I happened upon - a city tree got a fancy sweater on before Christmas. (Appologies for the poor picture quality, as it was taken with my mobile camera)

It is getting closer to Christmas, and some of my ducks have mysteriously started sprouting antlers!

Shaping up

When I first started making these porcelain bowls they would consistently come out warped and deformed. Great fun sometimes, but mostly very frustrating, and most of them ended their life in the bin. But lately they have been holding their shape a lot better, so now I can start consentrating on how to decorate them. This should be great fun!!



Small things

I have been making mostly smaller items lately, mainly buttons and pieces for jewellery. Perfect fits for a kiln already overloaded with large Christmassy stuff. 5 of my studio mates are attending the Christmas market at DOGA this year, which is pretty exiting. Others have other markets and exhibitions coming up, so the whole studio is in the middle of the usual pre-Christmas frenzy.

My buttons are hand shaped and are pretty wonky and rustic looking. I used a clay with iron speckles, and glazed them with a matt cream glaze, giving them an oatmeal kind of colour.

I have also been experimenting with my plaster cast, to see what other uses I might find for them. Still don't have any finished products to show you, but above are parts of my 'deconstructed duck', which might end up as jewelry.

Cool new ideas

While I have been laying rather low lately, other people have been really busy. A couple of crafty designers have caught my eye this past year, and last month they were both amongst the designers presented in the '100% Norway' section of the 100% Design Exhibition in London.

Kristine Bjaadal has designed a table cloth with a hidden pattern in the mesh, which only appears when wet. So what could have been an ugly spill, will now bring out a pretty pattern. Clever, eh?

Siren Wilhelmsen has created a clock that knits the passing of time. In her own words: "It is knitting the hours and the days and shows the time as something that is constantly moving, changing and developing. Every passing of a half hour is marked by the knitting of a mesh, a full day is registered as one round around the clock and a year results in a 2-m-long scarf. After one year the yarn has to be replaced  with a new one and a new year can be knitted. The year that has past is this year's scarf. And the coming year is the thread still unknitted."

Tumbleweeds

It has been pretty quiet on this blog lately, I know.....It has just been one of those months. Super busy at the job that pays all my bills. None of the ceramics I have made have come out right. A very dear friend was killed in an accident....and blogging was suddenly not high on my agenda any more.

But the times they are a'changin, as someone older and wiser than me once said, and I can feel the urge to make and write stuff brewing. So keep watching this space.. :-)

Card swap II

Postcard swap update. Here is the lovely card I received from JezzePrints, together with one similar to the one I sent off.

Cast ceramic bowl

The first bowls made from my own plaster cast are finally through the final firing. They were not a complete success - three out of the four of them had glaze issues, one had a crack and all four had a surprisingly warped shape....they looked like they were trying to do the figure eight! They were perfectly round and smooth inside when I finished them, so I think it must be a case of the infamous clay memory at work here. Will have to do a bit of a science experiment on the next ones I make, to see if I can figure out what makes the most difference. Could it be the way I pour the liquid porcelain into or out of the mould? How long I let it drip off or how long I let it dry in the mould before taking it out? The clean-up afterwards? The porcelain type?... I think the list might get very long before I truly figure it out...

And here I thought casting would let me churn out perfect replicas, conveyer belt-style. Not quite the case, or at least not yet. And to be honest I’m quite pleased to find that there is still so much that goes into it before you get it right, so that it still feels like a 'proper' handmade object.

The duclings keep turning out ok though...

Paper birds

At work out in the North Sea at the moment, so not much making of things going on.

Today the rig was suddenly full of small birds - I counted at least five different species. Not sure why they were all here, maybe migration has started already? And maybe the wind changed and they decided to stop for a breather and a bit of sightseeing..? I was not able to take any pictures of them, but I have found some great paper bird species online that I thought I might share in their place.

This little fellow is by the British illustrator  Kate Wilson, from her series 'The little birds'. Her stuff is delightfully quirky, and crack me up on a regular basis.

This folded bird is by British illustrator/designer Rae Welch, who uses a mix of recycled and found materials.

Claire Brewster makes these intricate yet simple cut-outs of birds from old maps. I love the way they are mounted, and the shadows they cast.

And lastly this 'Southern white Face' is made by Anna-Wili Highfield, who just makes the most amazing specimens from torn paper.

Postcard swap

I have jumped in on a postcard swap, arranged by Jesse of  JezzePrints, which means that at some point I should be receiving one of these beauties!

Prints by JezzePrints

I have not been printing much lately myself, but managed to put something together to send off in return. Will not show what it was yet, so as not to spoil the surprise :-)

I love snail-mail!

Inger Waage

Continuing on the theme from the previous post, I would like to present another great Norwegian female artist from the previous century: Inger Waage. She was a designer at Stavangerflint and Figgjo Fajanse from 1953-1979. Her work was incredibly popular at the time (and still is), and I think absolutely every Norwegian home has at least one item by her. But although her work is well known, very few know the name of the designer behind it. This web page has collected a lot of information about her and some of her fellow designers at the time, and there is a fair amount of information also in English. There are also an impressive collection of pictures of her work scattered around. If you follow the top entry under 'Linker' you will find examples of almost everything she made. There is also a video showing some of her work on YouTube.

Agathe Hjelvik

I found this great hand drawn poster at a second-hand shop today, and it was love at first sight. It is signed ‘Agathe Hjelvik’, but is not dated.

The shop had no information about where it originally came from, or who the artist was. But it was one of a total of four posters by the same artist, and one of them had the year 1928 on it, so we assumed that they were all from about the same period. I have made a few inquires to try and find out more about her, but so far I have come up with nothing. It seems there are very few records of artist from this period, especially if you did commercial work, not to mention being a woman. So I'm imagining she must have been one cool chick - a creative working woman at a time where this was less common. Drawing inspiration from Art Deco, the Far East and Bauhaus...?