Kathleen at cake & pie wrote a beautiful post about a ceramics course with guest teacher Toshiko Takaezu. Not to be missed!

Stig Lindberg, photographed by Hilding Ohlson.

Stig Lindberg (1916-1982) is one of Sweden’s most popular designers and he would have turned 90 this year so there are two major exhibitions about him in Stockholm - at Nationalmuseum and at Gustavsbergs porcelain museum.

Berså tea cup, 1960. Photographer: Hans Thorwid.

He worked as artistic director at Gustavsberg ceramics factory and his creative mind and hands gave birth to a television set for Luma, a range of high-quality plastic items for Gustavsberg, textile prints and ceramics - and much much more! I love his figures in stoneware clay and the details on some of them - things pressed into the clay and little bits of glazing that add so much to the whole.

Tallyhoo textile print, 1961. Photographer Bodil Karlsson.

Turtur coffee cup, 1970. Photographer Bodil Karlsson.

I know Lindberg most for his illustrations of Lennart Hellsing’s children’s books and I also love his illustrations on children’s dinner sets.

Jimmy Potter buys a lollipop, 1952. Photographer Erik Cornelius.

You can see and buy Lindberg’s designs on retrohome and more swedish retro on Oliko, that Kerstin mentioned the other day.

Reptil, porcelain series 1955. Photographer Bodil Karlsson.

All images copyright Nationalmuseum.

Bowls from Shannon Garson’s “Paddock” collection.

Shannon Garson makes porcelain pots onto which she draws images from her garden and life. Shannon writes the blog Strange Fragments and she has a lovely way of talking about her pottery “The purpose of these pots is to create a small dorway into a different world as people go about thier everyday lives, having cups of tea, washing up dishes, eating cakes.”

“Clown teapot”, a one off by Andy Titcomb.

Teapots, teapots, teapots is Andy Titcombe’s blog about…teapots! “There is something momentous about a teapot. In the harried business of 21st-century living, it is, in a way, a monument to time, or rather taking time — say, tea time.” Read Andy’s complete ode to the teapot here.

Tiles by Raheleh, Jill and Lee.

Raheleh writes Diary of a Potter, a blog she started a little over a year ago. She graduated from the University of Teheran in Handicraft with major on pottery and ceramic and now she lives in the US. Don’t miss her post about the tiles she’s made in collaboration with her friends Jill and Lee.

Good Luck birds by Sproutstudio.

Jenifer makes endevours into all kinds of arts and crafts, ceramics is just one of them and she writes about it all on Sproutgirl.

Dovetail shows how she makes her porcelain cups with transfers. From the slab roller to the packing up of the cups. See the pictures here. Via Rare Device.

Moss green porcelain birds by Coe and Waito.

I promised two canadian bloggers and here they are in good company of an american potter, a japanese potter and a british potter touring China.

Many of you might have come across Alissa Coe and Carly Waito as their blog popped up here, there and everywhere last week. And rightly so! It is - in their own words - “a record of special objects, ideas, and happenings”.

The Just Friends teapot by Little flower designs.

Linda Johnson is the woman behind Littleflowerdesign and in the Littleflowerdesign blog she keeps track of her trials and tribulations in the studio.

Small porcelain bottles by Kasumi.

Kasumi blogs mainly about ceramics related events in and around Toronto. She says about her work: “I try to create all pieces with the user in mind. Hopefully, a regular day is a little more special while using my pottery.” On Kasumi’s site I found a link to Bodegagallery with a series of lovely photos of Japanese pottery.

Zogan Jomon inlay by Lee.

Lee of Mashiko blog has his pottery in Mashiko, Japan. He publishes pictures of his work, glazed in various Japanese glazes - one is more fantastic than the other.

Helen Felcey’s bone china on laquered wood.

Helen Felcey makes the most exquisitely delicate bone china pieces, wonderful to hold and behold. She is blogging about her trip to China with accompanying photos on flickr. Don’t miss the three throwers making gigantic pots!

I’ll continue my potter bloggers parade next week, please feel free to send me tips - we want to know about you ;)

If the knitting world caught up on blogs and podcasts early on, the ceramics world lags a wee bit behind. I find this funny, because blogging is an excellent way of showing your work, exchanging experiences and meeting each other over the cultural boundaries.

Juicecups by Mary Anne Davies

However, times are changing and to my delight I’m finding more and more pottery related blogs popping up. Over the next few weeks I thouhgt I’d introduce you to some of these.

Davistudio is one of the first ceramic blogs I came into contact with. It’s written by Mary Anne Davies and she reports on things like kiln openings, sustainability and craft fairs.

In her post from August 26th, Mary Anne writes about micro enterprises and making a living as an artist. I’m really looking forward to following the development of this topic.

Large oval bowl by Diana Fayt

Diana Fayt is the potter behind One Black Bird and in her blog you get to peak behind the scenes and follow the life of a studio potter.

Oval green vase by Emily Murphy

Emily Murphy calls her blog potteryblog and even though it’s not updated very regularly the posts that are there can be enjoyed over and over again! She soda fires her work and if you want to know more about that firing process her blog and site are excellent resources.

Next up: two Toronto based potter bloggers.

Target by Lubna Chowdhary.

The tile is an excellent product to get started in ceramics (or to continue for that matter). It allows you to explore clay - it’s textures, profiles and glazes. It can be painted and printed onto and when the tiles are all made it’s all the fun of arranging them together or enjoying just the one as a piece of art.

Lubna Chowdhary makes tiles in a cascade of colour, abstract pattern and graphic lines. Her tiles are made by pressing clay into a plaster mould or through rolling out slabs into which objects or tools are impressed. Above is a selection of tiles that Lubna Chowdhary has made for Agnes Emery.

Mariana Argüelles is a tile maker and also writer of the blog Tileworld, with lots of tile links and reviews of for instance Frank Giorgini’s book Handmade Tiles.

I think it has a gorgeous cover and although I haven’t read it, I’ve read lots of good things about it! Giorgini himself is also a tile maker and on his website he shows how he press moulds his tiles.

and so elegant and light and lovely. [via decor8 and seen on cally creates]

Ruth Cross has been developing the art of hand-knitting to create organic yet contemporary pieces. … her work develops through the invention of stitches inspired by a combination of the landscape around her and contemporary events. From Loop. The ceramics pieces are from ceramic artist Linda Bloomfield.

Chris Keenan makes amongst the most beautiful ceramics I know. It’s a combination of shapes and glazes that attracts me. All the work is thrown porcelain from Limoges, glazed using combinations of tenmoku (the dark, almost black glaze) and a deep celadon (the pale green-gray glaze), and then reduction-fired in a gas kiln to 1280° C.

Keenan started his professional life as an actor before traingin to be a potter as apprentice to Edmund de Waal.

Keenan says about his work: “A particular love of the bowl continues to offer formal and technical challenges - I feel I could make them until the cows come home and still experience near equal degrees of satisfaction and frustration.” I really like this idea of exploring and researching a certain shape or function over and over again.

Chris Keenan will be exhibiting at the new London craft fair Origin in October.

I first became a fan of Anne Black, a Danish ceramics designer, when Design Sponge posted about her work. The shapes are beautiful, often with a very simple silkscreened pattern like a dotted line or a starburst. What really kills me is her jewelry line, though. Like these bracelets:

and necklaces:

There are also brooches and earrings. More of her work at Tivoli Home (where I got the pictures) and Greener Grass Design, among other places.

Wire loop tools, cutting/scraping tool, wooden sculpture tool, cutting wire.

Handtools that potters and ceramicists use are real simple and can often be made by hand. I also have a whole batch of old plastic cards that gets a second life in the workshop. But what I most often use are buckets of all sizes and colours.

Bamboo knife, wooden paddle, callipers, dipping tool.

I did my ceramic training at Central St Martin’s in London and although I’d had ceramics as my main hobby for a long time there were many tools that I’d never heard of, let alone knew what they were for. I was all exhilirated at all the possibilities they held in store for me.

Next year, it’ll be 10 years since that first exitement and the tools feels more like extensions of me… Sometimes it strikes me how beautiful they are and how many I still have the opportunity of getting to know.

Metal and wooden ribs, natural sponge, sponge on a stick, metal carving tool, wooden sculpture tool.

I received two potter’s fair tips’ from Canada (thank’s Mary!):

The Potter’s Market - this weekend!

1001 Pots, July 14th - August 13th.

Amazing detail and skill, Camille Allen’s miniature and life size freehand clay sculptures are so mesmerising. Link to further info about Camille, who’s just a bebe herself at 25 years of age.

Via One Good Bumblebee.

Jeremy James will be exhibiting at Art in Clay.

Summer is approaching and so are the potters markets!

The potter’s markets I’ve been to have been held outdoors in often beautiful surroundings. Hundereds of professional potter’s from all over the world show and sell their work and it’s not unusual that you can see how a pot is made. Here are a few of the major European potter’s markets. Enjoy!

Anima Roos will be at Swalmen potter’s market.

26-28th May is Potfest in Scotland. Potfest was founded by Christine and Geoff Cox and has since then grown to include five events in the UK, spread over spring and summer - see their website for information about the dates.

4-5th June Swalmen in Holland.

Virginia Graham will be exhibiting at Potfest in the Park.

10-11th June Enfanga’t in Spain.

13-16th July Art in Action in the UK.

Peter Beard will be exhibiting at Enfanga’t.

4-6th August Art in Clay is held in the grounds of Hatfield House in the UK.

16-17th September Keramisto in Holland.

Rita de Nigris and Martin Kröger will be at Keramisto.

Do you know of any other noteworthy markets that I should mention in future posts? Please email me!

Do you paint them on?
…or other variations of these questions are the most common ones I get.

The answer is they’re ceramic decals that are either screen printed or digitally printed, not on any old printer but with special colours in special printers. For the very decorated beakers above, I’ve used open stock transfers, cut up in hundereds of little pieces and then applied onto the ceramics - piece by piece and then they’re fired.

Ceramic decals have been used by the ceramics industry for several decades and in the last ten years or so, they’ve become more widely used by studio potters. One of the first potters I came across who used ceramic decals in her work was Agneta Spångberg (below). You can find her work through Swedish ceramics and glass cooperative Blås & Knåda.

Open stock ceramic decals can be bought through for instance Terra-Nova decals in the US. But if you want to use your own originals there are also small companies that does this, I know of for instance Pamela Moreton in the UK and I have a very good printer in Sweden that does mine. A good site for finding and sharing ceramic related information like this is clayart - check it out for decal suppliers for instance.

Without going into too much detail, here’s the process of screen printing:
To make a screen print, one needs an original image. The quality of your original will reflect on your print. The image is transferred over to light sensitive film and applied on to the mesh of a screen.

Engobe colours mixed with a (preferably) water based medium are pressed through the screen and onto a print paper. When the print is dry, a cover coat is printed on top of it.

After the cover coat has dried, the print is dipped in water and soon the cover coat will lift the print off the paper and it can be applied to the ceramic surface. The goods are fired up to around 800 degrees C.

I mentioned above that decals can also be digitally printed. The advantages of digital printing compared to screen print are the possibility to produce short production runs cost effectively as well as the print quality and resolution of for instance a photograph. I’ve had some digitally printed decals made by Digital Ceramics in the UK.

Whether you use screen printed or digitally printed decals, you need to do some tests to see how the prints work with the goods you are applying them to – ask for samples and try them out before ordering.

One can have lots of fun with ceramic decals, they can be cut up and applied where your hands or tools can reach. Why not spruce up your old china with some modern print? Improved crockery by Esther Derkx:

Screen printing is really only skimming the surface of what can be done with ceramics and print and I’m sure I’ll come back to the subject in future posts. If you want to read more at once, here’s the book for you: Ceramics and Print by British ceramicist Paul Scott.

I’ll be back in two weeks with some tips on Potter’s fairs to visit in the summer!

Jimbo is a semi-retired patent agent in Spokane Washington who whittles. His blog chronicles his effort to fulfill his dream of rebuilding the family home:

My dream in life since 1953 when my dad died was to own our property again on Deadman Creek (we say “crick”) and in October of 2000 we were able to buy 30 acres of the place back. Now I’m doing what I can to build a cabin to replace our house which is no longer there. One thing I’m doing to support the building project is hand carving wood crochet hooks from branch wood I collect from the ranch.

Crochet hooks

Hand carved buttons

Wall hanging

Find out more about Jimbo and his whittling adventures by visiting his blog:

Jimbo’s Front Porch

Hi, I’m Karin and I’ll be writing every other week about ceramics. If I can’t contain myself, it might be more frequent postings.

To start things off, I’d like to introduce you to the wide variety of applications for clay - interior, tableware, fashion, medical…to mention a few.

Helena Hedegaard is a danish ceramic designer/maker of porcelain lighting.

Teapots have iconic status in the ceramics universe and deserve their very own posting (if not their very own blog). This celadon glazed teapot is made by one of my favourite british potters, Chris Keenan.

The other day MoCo LoCo posted about handbags with ceramic handles or pockets, by Lisa Smith.

I can almost picture Captain James Hook with this delft eye patch by Damian O’Sullivan.

Next time, I’ll start from the top and talk about one of the techniques used to decorate ceramic surfaces.

Laura and her husband design beautiful and delicate ceramic ware: Zindel ceramics

Currently our work is inspired by the Victorian Cabinets of Curiosity. The art of collecting and displaying ones’ passions

extract about the technique from Laura’s site
Hand built and slip cast with low fire white earthenware and glazed with non-toxic low fire glazes. The images are original pencil drawings drawn by the artist. The images are then printed with enamel and become a ceramic transfer. The images are then individually collaged to each piece and fired permanently to the surface.

This technique is a modern version of what was once called transferware, first introduced in the 1700s.

{link via supernaturale}