Wedgwood Lustres out of the kiln...

Here are some of my lids, painted with lustre, just before they go in the kiln. The middle one is more simply painted, the other two are more expressive and watercolour-ish in style.

I was really happy with them when they came out of the kiln, there not completely even in colour and shininess but i think this gives them an exciting aged appearance. The next step is adding my transfers on top.

The two tiles I painted didn't come out quite as I expected, but the crackling and burnt away areas are interesting. Im not sure how I could get the same effect again though.

Im hoping the gold transfers will show up a little more when fired. They are quite subtle now which is nice, but it is difficult to tell what the drawings are of.

This design stands out a lot more, and I think the colours work well together. Hopefully they wont change too much when fired a second time.

Because the lustres fire at a lower temperature than the black transfers, I am trying them over the top. It will be interesting to see how much of the design shows through.

Here they all are ready for the second firing. I have put tiny transfer pictures on the inside of each of the box bases for added detail.

Wedgwood Museum project update...

Here are some more photos of my work, I started to play around with my slip casts. Using different shades of porcelain to create subtle patterns. I am also hoping to try adding texture, if time permits. 

Lid casts

These are some of my glazed boxes, glazing neatly and evenly is not one of my talents. I'm going to need practice. But the porcelain patterning worked well, so it might be a shame to cover these completely in lustre.

Glazed boxes

I'm very happy with my transfers, they have been printed in black and gold. These will hopefully go over my lustre hand-painting.

Transfer sheets

A lustre test tile. It may look all brown now, but this should come out bright purple, blue and red. Fingers crossed.

Lustre tile 1

Test tile two should be greens blues and, thanks to our lovely print technician, platinum.

Lustre tile 2

I will get some photos posted once these are out of the kiln, so I can show you the magic colour change of lustres... hopefully.

'Turning the Art World Inside Out'

In November last year I watched a BBC documentary on the world of Outsider Art, (with the same title as this blog post) it was a brilliant programme looking at the work of self taught artists, both past and present. I really recommend a viewing of this to anyone interested in art, when it is next available, although 'Hitler, the Tiger and Me' telling the story of Judith Kerr was also beautiful and very interesting.

Here are some of my favourite works by a few of the artists shown in the documentary.

Carlo Zinelli 

Rudolf Horacek

August Walla

Shinichi Sawada

Short clips from both of these programmes can be found here...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03js57h
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k09ch

Midway Presentation to the Wedgwood Museum

We had a meeting with the Wedgwood museum, so they could see how we were getting on with their brief, and they were interested to see how we had interpreted it.

We each talked about what we had so far, what had inspired us from the collection and what our plans for the final outcomes were.

They were very excited about our ideas, and when talking to me said they liked my hand painted samples and the idea to turn my illustrations from the museum tour into a fairyland style design. 

They also liked the texture of my samples, that I had pressed with fabric and drawn through, so that could be another interesting decorative technique to develop.

Wedgwood Museum project so far…

I decided to base my design on the Design ’63 cigarette boxes and Wedgwood’s famous fairyland pottery, as these were some of the most striking pieces in their collection.

Design idea

After creating a model for my box design, I produced a mould and now I am in the process of casting my boxes.

Casting isn't my strongest area, it is the one process I find very difficult to stay patient. This means I often take the casts out f the moulds too soon so they slump and I have to start again.

Model and moulds

First cast

I am really looking forward to trying out some hand painting on them, so I have created some test pieces. The patterns aren’t quite there yet though, so I have started trying to create my own modern fairyland style designs as well as using my illustrations from the museum.

Drawing into porcelain

Glaze test

Hand painted enamel samples

More Photos to come soon.