sue pryke's design blog: ceramics

11.4.13

NEW TABLEWARE COLLECTION PREVIEW

BONE CHINA FROM STOKE ON TRENT

Really excited to be visiting Stoke on Trent this week, to see the first of my new tableware pieces being sampled.

My first job after graduating was as a junior shape designer at Wedgwood in Barlaston, what a fantastic place to start a career in ceramics! Full of history, expertise and quality materials and craftsmanship. Such a treasure trove of historical references in the musuem and also in the archives underneath the factory, so valued that they've built the Wedgwood Museum to house it all..

I lived just up the road from here - Longton. One of our ceramic tutors worked just over the way at the Gladstone Pottery Museum, he's still working as a master thrower last time I met up with him. He was the guy that they always had on the Generation Game as the pottery instructor! One of the best production throwers around... makes throwing look so so easy!

Derelict Bottle kiln in Longton

Moulds on the casting bench ready for slipcasting.
It's such a lovely smooth, luxurious material, and so robust and durable when fired, allowing for a thin cast thickness which helps with the translucent qualities.

filling up the moulds with bone china slip

Bisq kiln being packed.

Fantastic to see my new moulds on the benches, it's been a long time since I worked directly with UK factories, the last production I had was with Park Rose and Hornsea factories up in Yorkshire, making earthenware tableware ranges for me with matt silk glazes, which retailed at Heals, The Conran Shop and Liberty's.

Preview of new bone china work. Still a few details to finalise for the new range and some development to do for another range to sit with this before I launch the collection fully.

8.2.13

Utility & Craftsmanship

Absolutely fabulous website, fantastic stories, links, photography and content... here's their description:

A Continuos Lean
'A Continuous Lean serves as a discovery agent for those with an appreciation of quality, style and provenance'.

American Craft Project

THE AMERICAN CRAFTSMAN refuses to become extinct. While computer-controlled robots and Chinese factories are churning out most of the products that feed the great machine of consumption, along the less traveled backroads and in the dustier corners of our economy, the craftsman keeps an older, slower, more picturesque kind of work alive. The American craftsman still thrives, because when it comes to getting certain things done well and with beauty, a human hand guided by a human eye, ear, and imagination can still be the highest technology of all.~David Culp, writer (excerpt from the original ACP booklet released in 2009)

Henson Hand Crafted Brooms

Henson Handcrafted Brooms
Symsonia, KY

Richard N. Henson

"My success with brooms has come because I was not afraid to experiment, take risks, and let no one outwork me."

"Every time you fail to make a broom perfect... it will only make you better."

Danforth Pewter
Middlebury, VT

Fred & Judi Danforth

"The handworking of the material has a value that comes through in the finished goods... and it has a soul"

"I continue to be energized by the process of bringing an idea from a line drawing on paper, to a tangible object that brings daily joy to someone. What could be better than that?"

Danforth Pewter