It’s Open Studio Weekend again – 25-27th August (this coming weekend), and I’m open from 10 AM to 3 PM every day.

It’s been a great opportunity to clear out the workshop, give the everything a good clean, re-imagine the place a bit. All very useful!

It’s also a great chance for me to show some of the work I have been doing over the past six months; some of my process and some of the new forms that I have been exploring. I hope it’ll be as busy as last year.

All welcome – but please note – there are quite a few steps…….

Whisky tumbler – Islay clay with tenmoku and cobalt splash

Islay quartzite from the Oa peninsula – ready for glaze experimentation

Test tiles

Test cup; 1005 Islay clay with 100% Islay glaze

Whiskey barrels out in the yard, Kilchoman Distillery

Tea bowls of hand dug Pembrokeshire clay

Test tumbler, 100% Islay clay with Clee Hill glaze and copper splash on rim

I’m making some steady progress with my Islay glaze materials – after a couple of months of frustrating results. The balance of materials is crucial; limestone, limonite / bog iron, quartzite, ash, but at last I’m getting a lovely clear – green glaze, which is streaky when thin, but deep and glossy when applied thickly. I have tried a copper splash to add a break to the background glaze, copper having been mined on Islay in the middle-ages / early modern period. I’m delighted with the results, but I want to expand the colour palette a little.

I am drawn to a splash of blue, to conjure up the sky and sea – such a hugely important set of factors when experiencing the island. There’s also that occasional fragment of blue sea-glass washed up on the shore. I think that next steps may well include a blue splash or two on the tumblers. The cobalt necessary for this, however would most definitely be from far flung quarries, half a world away. but it is possible that artistic license may just have to give me the permission here.

Test tumbler, 100% Islay clay with Clee Hill glaze and copper splash on rim

Test cup with 100% Islay glaze and copper splash

Test cup; 1005 Islay clay with 100% Islay glaze