Frog vases

So we are back from the garden show and it didn't rain (woo hoo!) however have you ever heard the phase "you should be careful what you wish for" ? as instead of the predicted thunderstorm we cooked very slowly in sweltering heat!!

Never mind! I have a day off today, before we set off tomorrow for Sandringham Flower Show (the show is on Wednesday but it is set up day tomorrow).
http://www.sandringhamflowershow.org.uk/

We had a couple of our new line trials with us this weekend and one in particular seemed to be a success and that was the Frog vases. No not (as I first thought) vases shaped like frogs! but vases with frog pins in them.

In case you were wondering a Frog pin is the heavy metal spiky thing that you see flower arrangements made in......

One of our friends who does lovely flower arrangements took pity on the Potter when she was setting up (without me!) and did a mini arrangement in one of our new designs (using some supermarket bought flowers) and they looked brilliant.
And to be fair made them look approachable even to the least floristry minded like myself. (I was taking notes as I have a feeling the Potter may be asking me to do this in the future!)

This must have been a thought that resonated with our customers as we sold all but the ones with the flower examples in. The Potter has added more frog vases to her list of jobs for the next couple of weeks! Unfortunately there is no way of making them ready for Wednesday, so we will have to keep them in mind for next week.

I know you are all desperate to see a picture now.........

 

 

Sorry the picture is sideways! That seems to have been happening to a lot of my pictures today. Mondays are obviously sideways days!!

 

The Frog has 2 functions. It is heavy so stops the vase from falling over when making it top heavy with flowers, and it holds the flowers upright without the need for tall sides to the vase.

 

I realise that my picture mostly focuses on the flowers, but the vase itself is leaf shaped. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of them on their own to show you, but we had 2 different shaped leaf patterns decorated in a variety of colours.

I will get some pictures of the next batch to be made.

House Names

A few weeks ago we were asked to make a round house name sign. We have been making house names signs for many years and they are something that the potter enjoys making.

We started out making rectangular signs such as this very early example:

At this stage we were also having a very high fail rate with the signs cracking in the kiln. We quickly discovered that our mistake was how we positioned the sign in the kiln. Poor air circulation around the sign meant that it fired quicker on one side than the other and caused the cracks.

Once we had worked that out our fail rate was dramatically reduced to (touch wood) almost none. Looking back we really had no idea what we were doing and were figuring it out as we went! Kiln loading particularly seemed like a dark art where you had to work it out for yourself what worked and what failed!

Other things like if you pack items close together or far apart, it changes the colour of the glaze were also discovered during these early days! Thankfully we have got the hang of it these days so we have a better idea of what is going to come out of our kiln when we open it!!

Anyway back to name signs...... We moved on from rectangular signs to oval signs as the potter became more adventurous with her designs. The oval signs left much more space for decoration, and the signs became much more detailed as a result.

I am glad to say that the rectangular signs have also moved on in terms of decoration from those early days!

 



When we were asked to make a round sign, we spent some time debating what would be the right size for a round sign, to leave space for some decoration in the middle. The client we were designing a sign for liked the idea of the central design (rather than just a border design like the rectangular signs) so we needed to leave space for that.
We settled on a sign that is approx 30cm in diameter. We liked the one we made for that client so much we have decided to add round signs to our official list of options (www.embarpottery.co.uk/housesigns.html)
This is an example plate that the potter made at the last show we were at, so we could show people an example of a round sign.

 

 

Ta dah! as you can see it came out rather well. Of course what I was supposed to be doing with this picture is adding it to the website page before we go out to our next show this weekend not writing a blog post about it, So I must get to that...........

 

If you are interested this weekend you can find us at the Marks Hall Country and Garden Show at Marks Hall, Coggeshall Essex (CO6 1TG)



http://www.markshall.org.uk/things-to-see-do/events/marks-hall-country-garden-show/
We shall be there rain or shine (hopefully shine... pleeeeeeese!)

It keeps on raining at all our shows!

The rain is a persistent devil! It seems that Embar Pottery at a show is a sure sign of rain. Tomorrow we are going to the Grundisburgh Art and Craft fair. A late addition to our show schedule as we had a weekend free and thought we would fill it with something local. However I have seen the forecast for tomorrow.......  ...... So it looks like our run is going to continue!

The last show we did was the Garden Show at Abbotts Ripton Hall. While it was raining (and thundering!) we had a trial of laying our stand out differently.

Although you can't see where my seat is (its on the left between the two tables) For the first time this season I haven't been hiding behind the house numbers board where I can't really see or speak to people. I have no idea if that made a difference of if it was a fluke, but in spite of the rain we had a better show, which made the potter very happy.......

..... although maybe less happy about having her photo taken! She was hard at work here making a winter lady (we sold the last one I told you about).

We also took the birdbaths out with us. In a previous post I took photos of them in the garden (on a sunny day) They made a statement on our fake grass stand as well!

They look a bit shiny as I had to take the photo with the flash on (all the black clouds made it a bit dark in the marquee!)

Fingers crossed the forecast I have seen for tomorrow is wrong and we have a lovely sunny day.