Bowls, Birds and Indian Princes - sorry - Chintzes

After a very busy Christmas and too many home renovation projects going on at the same time I'm back in the studio and I've got that new term feeling - thats the one you get when you have a brand new pencil case filled with sharp pencils, coloured felt tips and a couple of fruity erasers - not when you've forgotten everything you learned last term. Thankfully it comes with lots of new inspiration and surfaces to decorate. The surfaces are my slip cast birds along with some larger plates and bowls made on some slump moulds that I made a couple of weeks ago. I had a lovely workshop day at Rose's studio, Ang and I went up there to make the moulds and Rose made a 4 piece mould of a little plastic sumo figure. The decoration is inspired by my visit to the Chinoiserie exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria last year, I have always loved that style of rich, colourful, over the top decoration and don't need much encouragement to get my fine brushes out. I'm using Indian Chintz designs as a source, which at first I pretty much copied on to the plates but as I'm getting more involved I am realising that anything goes as long as it resembles a leaf or a flower and I can be a lot looser with the designs. I like to break up the surface a bit before the design goes on so I've used some wide brush strokes of slip as a background or dipped fabric into slip and laid it on the surface to create some interest. These photos are of the unfired work, I've put these up at this stage because they look good now but that could all change when they are glazed!

Birds with Bling!

Since I started working from my studio at home I've been thinking about the birds in the garden...mainly because they don't give me much choice, pigeons land on the tin roof and stomp up and down like a marching band. Kookaburras frequently let rip with a laugh that sounds like a personal criticism and magpies compete to sing the loudest in the garden or chase the dogs when they get too close. So as many of our Australian birds have a such audacious personalities that could compete with any Fringe performer it made sense to start some work which talked about this.

I began by making some simplified clay models of Australian birds and then made moulds from them, as mould making is a process that I find far more entertaining in the planning than the execution by the time I'd finished, my initial enthusiasm for the project had subsided...

...about 1 year later... I began to decorate them! I've always loved decoration, especially Arts and Crafts, William Morris, De Morgan, Moorcroft and all that, so I used some of the designs as a starting point and kept going with underglazes, onglaze enamels and lustre until I had blinged them to the max!

Here are some of my first results, I'm working on a second batch now and refining the decoration - I think, I'm not exactly sure where its going yet but at the moment I have an urge to go all the way with additions of feathers and false eyelashes - maybe..