Pretty, Pretty, Pre - Tea!

This month I challenged myself to making tea pots, I have only tried once or twice before without much success but when I received an invitation to take part in a tea pot show I decided it was about time I took the pot by the spout as it were and made a serious effort to make some that I liked. I wanted to make them in a sort of art deco, Susie Cooper style with some retro designs, which sort of worked but after discussing them with my friend Rose and realising that the spouts looked quite 'beaky' she suggested that bird designs might be appropriate. I have been looking at the work of Charlie Harper for some time and just love his illustrations, I think they're very clever, especially the way he shows 2 different perspectives in one drawing ( if you look up Charlie Harper in Google make sure you add 'illustrations' otherwise you'll just get lots of pictures of Charlie Sheen...and I really didn't need to see any more of those).

Although I looked at his style for influence and used a similar technique of simplifying and breaking down bird shapes to create patterns I hope they will not be seen in any way as appropriation. I think I'll keep going with them though, and I'm being more disciplined about focusing on fewer designs so I'll probably develop a couple of these and try them in different colour ways and on other forms.

They're going in the Greenhill Galleries Teapot show in April.

'Tis the season...to sell, sell, sell!

Whew its been a busy couple of months! I've had my head down making work for the summer/festive season but at last I think I have enough stock for the markets and some for the shops too. I love doing the summer markets, its a great opportunity to meet lots of lovely people and get some direct feed back on my work, there's always a great atmosphere, great food and often great music too, and if the weather is fine all the better. Last weekend was the Mount Barker Waldorf School Spring Fair which was a great start to the season even though I managed to lose the beautiful bunting that I had made to attract people to my stall. This weekend its the Whitmore Square Artists Fair in Adelaide and at the beginning of December I'm doing the Art at the Hart 2 day Artists Fair and Celtica Festival at Port Adelaide with Ang and Rose, we're sharing a big stall and doing throwing demos too so I'm really looking forward to that, last year was a great success with beautiful weather and an added bonus of a perfect view of the dolphins frolicking in the Port river.

A couple of weeks ago my friend Erin challenged all the potters she knows to a 'throwathon' which meant we all had to throw as many pots as we could on one particular day, it was a great idea as it got everyone very motivated and boosted out Christmas stock nicely. I managed 70 pieces but came no where close to Erin who threw over 140! ( But I did run out of clay).

I have developed some new lines this year which are proving popular already so I've decided to concentrate on them next year (and not get to distracted by trying new things!), I'm going to set up a new website that features my new cups, then I'll link it to my other website (theadelaidegiftcompany.com.au) so that customers have the option to purchase from either or combine items from both as a special gift.

The best piece of advice I've heard this year is that one should never say, " I hope to...' or 'plan to...' or 'try to...' do something but instead say 'I'm going to..' So now I'm going to get a glass of wine!