This is the 21st year that Ewelme Pottery has opened for Oxfordshire Artweeks and, partly to celebrate that, the studio and gallery have been entirely repainted and reorganised. I'm delighted to say that JOHN PARREY and MARY LOWRY will be exhibiting once again. John's work is completely original, sometimes quirky, even whimsical and always impeccably executed. Every year he finds fresh inspiration and new subjects. Mary's fine and luminous textiles continue, too, to evolve. They are as durable as they are delicately wrought, being of the finest materials: silk, cashmere, linen and lambswool.
Scarves, throws and even tea towels which last for ever, even with continual use. For the first time this year LOUISE ARTHUR will be exhibiting in the garden; she makes strong, versatile and beautiful baskets of all shapes and sizes in English willow - for shopping, picnicking, blackberrying and storing. They can be carried, worn like a backpack and even attached to a walking stick. For the Pottery, too, it is a special year: finally, after many postponements over the last two years, I (HARRIET COLERIDGE) will be firing the Anagama kiln in the Charente with a team of eight other potters. If all goes well and pestilence, war or locusts don't intervene, I will bring back a truckload of woodfired pots, in porcelain and white and blue stoneware, which will all have been decorated by the flames and the ash of oak, apple and pine.
We are very happy to be able to go back to offering tea and cake in the garden. It's a lovely place to sit for a while between studio visits, under the Rambling Rector and overlooking Ewelme Church. All of the proceeds from the teas will go to Ukraine.
This year there will be a great variety of ceramics in the gallery and the garden.
There is a good range of pots in porcelain and stoneware glazed with the carbon trap shino that I have been using for over ten years now. It is a mysterious and distinctive glaze - ranging from amber through charcoal according to the ferocity of the reduction process. It is enhanced with sprinklings of rose ash and calligraphic gold lustre brushwork.
I managed, last summer, finally to fire the salt kiln that stood in the barn so there will be a selection of pots thrown, impressed, slipped and salted.
I am still making mugs and espresso cups and painting them, on a tin glaze, with coloured metal oxides. The practice is similar to that of Aldermaston but I use stoneware so, strictly speaking, it is not majolica.
Most exciting is the collection of pots that I have been making over the last couple of years which will be fired in the anagama kiln in the Charente at Easter this year. Most of these pots are not glazed but decorated by flame and ash during a five day wood firing (pine, apple and oak). I will bring back what I can in time for Artweeks (14th - 22nd May). The pots range from sake cups and shots to jars for house and garden two foot tall.
In addition, I have devoted some time in the last couple of years to working with wood and will be exhibiting a range of wild edge charcuterie boards in walnut, elm and oak and sake trays in yew with cups in porcelain and shino.