I spend a lot of time searching, sourcing and specifying products and finishes for our interior design projects. Basically I spend a lot of time buying stuff for my interior design clients!
It’s very satisfying when I get the chance to actually see those things in production too. That could be a factory making products on a huge scale, or a workshop making bespoke items which have been specially designed for a project, or sometimes an artisan maker who crafts special one-off items.
But now I know that the most satisfaction comes from actually making something myself! I’ve just completed the second of two sessions with Angela Carter at Milland Pottery in West Sussex, trying my hand at making pots. The first session was enormous fun – on the wheel shaping the clay to make our pots. In the second session we took the leather-hard pots and tidied them up before decorating them with coloured slips, and here they are:
With a combination of dipping and brushing I’ve ended up with a pair of pots that I think I’m quite pleased with! They weren’t exactly as I’d imagined as aspects of the process contributed to the final result – such as the slip leaving an undecorated gap on the pot above as the container it was dipped into wasn’t deep enough – although that’s part of the beauty of their designs now.
What do you think? They’ll be fired in the next couple of weeks, so I should have the finished pieces to show off soon…
