End of the first week.

Peaceful working today after a busy book signing yesterday. In the morning I popped out for a coffee and found a strange visitor on my return.

Washing up, lovely to have a sink in my studio.

 

Adam Buick's moonjars complete the window. 




 

Meanwhile, in my studio, old work, and new.

 

At last, snow.

The moon had ridden a clear sky all morning but when I woke at seven there was a bank of cloud. I walked out into the farmyard incase I could see even a glow, but no. And then I found out why. At last, it began to snow. Real, fine powder snow, like snow from when I was a child and before long there was two inches of snow. ( Everyone knows that snow is meansured in inches).
For a while it stopped, and then began again. 
Luckily the wood man had come from Welsh Logs. He had chains on the wheels of his pick up truck. I had been worried that we would have no logs before Christmas. We had burnt through so much as our only heating is the wood fired stove.

 On the wall by the door, a broken plate by Martha Allen.

 Hanging in the garden, a lantern.

 Max looking after the logs.

 Moonjar in snow.

Rosie
 

Now there is a kind of hush broken only by the whisper of bird wings and the swirling fall of flakes.

Birds, beasts and beach.

Yesterday, Christmas shopping in St Davids in the tiny bookshop on The Pebbles. I came out of the shop with more books than I would ever leave a huge Waterstones with including the beautiful George Orwell which would make the most excellent Christmas present for Nick Clegg, and The White Ravens by Owen Sheers published by an independent publisher called Seren.  Painted into the dark hours while the wind called around the house carrying the cries of the lapwings.

On the beach this morning:

A small scrap of a seal pup, born too late, now just a feast for crows.

Strange light reflected from heavy clouds that promise snow.

In the garden, chaffinch, sparrow, bluetit and great tit, starling and robin, jackdaw, thrush, blackbird, magpie, rook and dunnock. There have been goldcrests too and wren and goldfinch and bullfinch. But still no greenfinch.

Throwing Moon Jars

Tomorrow eveing I will be going to the exhibition of Adam's new firing at The Court House in St Davids.

Before that I will submit myself to the rule of the Time Chicken, finish the bats, and decide which page to do next. Time is running short and needs to be caught in both hands and held close.

I love watching other people work and this is a great clip of pot throwing with fantastic music.

Enthusiasm

I have been working as an illustrator now for 27 years. I have done a few books, more than 20 I suppose, hundreds of cards, many magazine illustrations and quite a few paintings. And the past week I have had the most glorious fun stretching my mind and working on clay instead of paper, with shapes instead of flat, with fire instead of water and it is like breathing fresh clear air again.

Adam came over yesterday and we talked about where to go with working together. He came up with the most wonderful and perfect of ideas that combines all aspects of both of our work and now I can't wait to begin. If it works it will be something very different. To make it work we have to take time, to think, to make, to dry, to paint to fire.
He has images of the mugs I left with him over on his blog and he is much better at photographing ceramics that me! 
Also on Adam's website a film of him making a moonjar. Great music too.

Meanwhile I have a book to finish, a deadline approaching at a sickeningly fast speed and somewhere in the middle of it all a thing called Christmas.

Opening

At 2pm Adam began to take away the bricks, one by one to reveal shining pots. The kiln was still warm as an oven. Inside the pots sang, tinkling like a music box.

 

It was the small pots, porcelain, that sang so beautifully as they cooled. Magic.

 

A river of fire washed through them.

At 7 am Adam started firing the kiln. He said the best time to watch would be about 4 so I got on with painting until then.
By 4 it was just turning towards twilight. In the studio Adam and his friend were feeding wood into the kiln. As darkness fell outside they watched the temperature gauge and pushed it up, just a little higher each time, feeding log after log into the ovens. Each firing would take a tonne of wood.
It seemed after a while that the thing inside the kiln really was alive, really was being fed, an elemental dragon of pure fire.
From the furnace at the bottom the flames went up and curled back around, pulled through and across the pots packed inside by the chimney, a river of fire washing over the clay. Inside earth, fire, air feeding it.
In Japan, he said, they had kiln gods on top of each kiln during firing.
In Japan sometimes they would fire for a week, kilns climbing up the side of a mountain, flames passing from chamber to chamber.
There is a balance between the two, feeding the wood, watching the heat, colour of the flames. There is a heat from the kiln that is wonderful in the cold of winter. And the light when the spy hole reveals the beast inside the kiln. Sometimes it reaches out. You can see the cones that test the temperature and behind the curve of a moonjar and perhaps the shine of the glaze?
Ailsa had made pizza dough and they had fasghioned an oven on the chimney of the kiln. In the morning they had cooked bacon, now pizzas. Slightly sooty at first, then the technique was perfected. Delicious.


 

Finally the temperature reached a height they were happy with. Tiime to go, to leave the fire to die, to leave the kiln and the jars to cool, but before then Adam removed some of the bricks from teh back of the chimney and showed me how the fire inside flowed. If it was hot enough flames would even come out of the chimney top.

When I left the studio and drove off past the pond with the swans it was dark. All the way home I had visions of fire and Japanese kiln gods and chambers of fire climbing high mountain sides passing through my mind's eye.


Tomorrow, at 2, the kiln will be cool enough to open. Tomorrow, at 2.

Inevitable cheetahs

At Adam's studio the pots stood waiting. I sat and painted on them and scratched into them and all the while he mixed chemicals to make a glaze and started packing the kiln and bringing in great long pieces of wood for the firing.
Having no idea what I was doing or what the finished thing would look like I did a few pieces, some hares, some birds and inevitable cheetahs.
Outside there were chickens and ducks and distant foxes over sunbleached winter fields. 
Ailsa made us soup and we sat by the big window looking out on the beautiful land and then worked on a few more pots, watched by the donkey. When I left Adam was dipping mugs into a white glaze and scraping and sponging moonjars and packing them with wading.
The kiln will be opened by lunch time on Saturday. I love the sound the pots make as they cool, like a strange music box. 

Ceramics is a much more physical thing than I am used to. The kiln itself is a large space. The pots when packed in look so vulnerable. The wood for firing is heavy and needs feeding in to the oven to make the heat. And then there are all the things that can go wrong.
I was nervous, not wanting to ruin Adam's shapes with scribbles. Adam is nervous as he doesn't want to blur and smudge my scribbles with too heavy a glaze. I have absolutely no idea what they will look like when they come out. They shrink. Colours change. With luck they will shine. 

 

Mud, ice, birds, rain, time.

On the second day I realised that I still had my phone on silent. It rang. It was Adam and he said he had things I could go and draw on, so I called in and there were rows of small jars and mugs. He gave me some to play with, more tomorrow. Time to experiment. He is firing in the next few days.
Outside the studio I found some ice to photograph.

 

Back home I have work to do and outside the rain in playing on the roof.