Today was a good day!

Today I took some of my work to an art seller in Sevenoaks in the hope of finding an outlet to sell from. It was rather nerve-racking, and I was thoroughly relieved when she offered to display my work to see if it sells!  She particularly liked my porcelain bowls with pooled glaze in the centre. She offered to display six pieces of my work, three bowls, two of which I made over the summer and three pots.

Trees In Winter

I am hoping that there are still a few people who are frantically looking for Christmas presents and might happen upon these bowls…

Our Park In Winter

 

 

Please Buy Me! http://www.etsy.com/shop/SouthgateDesign

Here are some of the pieces that I have up for sale on my Etsy shop. I am thoroughly excited to see if I can sell anything, and I hope this is the beginning of a prosperous career.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SouthgateDesign

 

 

Pewter On Top

 

 

 

I have to say this Pewter Glaze hasn’t failed me yet, and I am not any closer to getting bored of it. I hoped it would give a breath of new life to these slip cast bottles.

Moth Bottles

I started collected vintage glass bottles rather recently, although it can be said that my obsession with antique glass began as a child, playing with my parents collection of perfume and medicine bottles. I also spent summers combing the Dorset beaches for sea-glass. There is something wonderfully tactile about old glass, and I especially like taking moulds from these bottles and slip-casting them numerous times, giving them a new life. This was also the first time I used my own illustrations for decals and after many hours on photoshop (about 10, in which I very nearly threw the computer out of the library window) I created an A3 page with a few hundred moths on. So here we are… Moth Bottles.

A friend bought me this bottle when she spied it in a Antique shop, the name Mrs A Allens runs down the sides.

Although the shape of this bottle is less interesting than the others, I have to say I like the bold text on the front, and it definitely made it easier apply decals on. This bottle has a rather grim history, as Magnesia Citrate was used as a laxative, often used before examination and surgery on the colon. Nice bottle though.

I am not an illustrator by any means, but I did enjoy drawing all the moths that I used, which turned out to be about twenty in total, using a black fine line pen. I worked from a book that had photos of moth and butterfly specimens, and I tried to be as accurate as possible at capturing the patterns of these delicate insects.

This bottle was bought for my by another friend from a charity shop. I grew up with Pyrex, and I was absolutely thrilled to be given this antique babies bottle, which has measurements down two of its eight facets.

 

 

Grey

Using a combination of commercial stains and glaze, I finally devised a way to create a near-perfect stone-grey interior for these three pots. Through experimentation and several failed attempts, this trio are possibly my favourite from the entire body of work. Grey is one of my favourite colours, and it is particularly difficult to make a  good grey glaze that fires at stoneware temperatures without the use of a reduction firing. My aim was to create a grey interior that resembled stone with a slight fleck throughout the glaze, and I succeeded.

This bowl held its shape better than all the others that I fired, with minimal warping and slumping, because I left the slip at the base thicker. I was careful not to wipe away too much of the slip when I was using the Shellac-resist technique. This is the one and only bowl where I like the results from combining commercially stained porcelain with a pool of glaze in the centre. In hindsight, I would leave the interiors of the bowls white without staining the slip, and just use the glaze pool in the very centre.

This was one of the failed attempts to make a grey glaze. The interior came out a mottled sky-blue with white flecks, not what I had hoped for at all. However, I was reasonably pleased with the overall finish to this pot, even though it was a test piece.

I could not be happier with the grey interiors of these three pots. This is definitely a glaze/stain combo I am going to develop in my technical project next term.

The Green Within

Within these two vessels sits a pool of sea-green fractured glaze. The peaks of the mountains are subtly depicted in a matt dolomite white glaze.

The combination of the green glaze over the blue stained porcelain gave me a beautiful turquoise-green within these vessels. I am particularly fond of the way the glaze has fractured.

Some Like It Deep (Blue)

For this project, I wanted to create vessels that worked with layers, hidden depths and movement. I took inspiration from the landscapes I have been luck enough to see, in particular the French Alps and New Zealand. I wanted to preserve the simplicity and purity of naked porcelain, as well as highlight its beautiful qualities with the use of glazes. I have learnt so many things during this project, and have developed a greater understanding of porcelain, its properties, and I have grown to love and respect it. The Shellac resist technique that I started off experimenting with led to an entire body of work that I am more than pleased with.

I wanted the interior of these vessels to resemble glacial ice, but instead I find myself thinking of the deepest of oceans beneath the Arctic ice. The turquoise glaze grows lighter towards the top, with crystal like navy flecks in the base.

I chose this glaze to draw attention to the interiors of the vessels and to contrast the simple white dolomite glaze that highlights the mountain ranges.

During the firing process this bowl took on an ovoid shape.

I wanted the mountains to appear to rise from an icy lake or a distant shoreline, the sun catching on the snowy peaks. I tore the rim of the bowl to follow and reflect the undulating currents and the movement of the landscapes from which I took inspiration.

My Favourite

There is nothing more satisfying than when experimentation leads to something aesthetically pleasing (to myself, and others I hope) and to something that you really want to develop further. This bowl literally arose from flicking slip around a mould. It is one of my favourite happy-little-accidents to arise from my first year at degree, and I really can’t wait to gather together what I have learnt and get designing.

A Little Pewter Goes A Long Way…

Cracking Up

Cracking Up

White Crackle Up Close

You Crack Me Up

Meet The Team