Sunday 2 October 2011

6. Presentation is Everything

Hello potters and friends,
It's the 2nd October and, incredibly, the weather remains hot, hot, hot, here in the middle of England. This made quite hard work of the lifting, carrying, pushing, stretching and all that setting up an exhibition entails.
This weekend was the opening of our first show to kick off the 'winter' season and this took place in Holy Trinity Church at the north end of town. Good thick church walls make for a lovely cool atmosphere and the setting-up committee was very grateful for that.


I called on Alan to help me put up the banner. It took three attempts to get it to this cock-eyed angle but I think it will do the job.

The exhibition is put on by The Association of Midland Artists. (AMA) and I discovered that I was to be the only potter exhibiting amongst the many painters. 


Work in progress


My cabinet, filled and lit.

So this is how my week panned out.
Firstly, I got together my most recent work and bearing in mind that I only have 4 small shelves I wanted a complimentary colour scheme. However, as most of my work is glazed green and white I decided to go for green and white. But I did splash out on some dried, yellow flowers to attract attention to the  centrepiece table vases.
Now, I wouldn't call myself finicky or even a pernickety type of person, but I do like smart-looking labels that stand nicely by each piece. No-one will ever remember your labels, nor will they compliment them but they will be remembered if they appear a bit tatty and dashed-off. It could indicate to the customer a lack of care and they possibly may apply that to your work. And that could be far from the truth. 
A friend once said to me as she carefully laid a table for a dinner party 'Presentation is everything.' So I gave the cabinet a good clean and washed all the pots.
My last job, and, yes ok, you could call me pernickety over this, is checking each pot to make sure that no lumps of batt wash are stuck to their bottoms. Nor do I like to feel a rough bottom that grogged or speckled stoneware clay can have. I don't want my buyers to hate the pot they've bought because it has scratched their polished wood furniture. 
So I use a coarse diamond file designed to sharpen garden tools, and this fits the bill exactly. Bought from Amazon, not expensive and it will even remove glaze from unwanted areas. It works best when wet and accompanied by a couple of minutes of elbow grease. 
But before signing out of this post I thought I'd show a new departure for me that came out of the last firing but wasn't right to be displayed in the cabinet. 


These are my flowers - for garden or home


Hand-painted inside and out. Took ages but very satisfying.


Bottle pots with underglaze decoration

Happy potting folks


  
  








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