This blog will be bigger but for now some pictures to get an idea....
This week is a milestone week for us...
Yesterday we started with our first french creative holiday in France.
In Heucourt-Croquoison to be exact and oh what a joy this is. Besides our lovely studio in Utrecht we had this dream and yes this dream came true....
]]>Because of the basic and strong design it is soooo lovely to combine different stoneware clays, glazes or/and decorations. All on the same size cup...the middle one :)
Also it was getting a bit confusing, we make a lot of custom orders and sometimes persons ordered the espresso but they meant the risretto and the other way around. So yes it is time to simplify...
Here we point out the ristretto and this cutie will disapear...
Here we point out our old espresso cup:
And T A D A!! Here we present the new size Ristretto/Espresso cup we will make from now on:
We are happy that we made this decision, no more confusion and a delightful cup in all our styles that will fit together... But never forget these cups are totally handmade with a throwing wheel so little difference in size can always occur...
When you browse our shop we will wright the size in the decription for you.
So you know wich cups you buy, we will tell you in the description if they are:
- the old ristretto
- old espresso
- or the new middle size that it will be from now on :)
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Contact us :)
]]>These are modern, totally handbuild, fun and part of a bigger design. About this we will tell & show more later. This flower bricks have a shape in common a half oval kind of shape...
In basic proportions, tiny, small, bigger, stretched and were ever the shape will bring us. The first designs were made in multiples and also a few days ago the first "Wholesale" order of 14 of the same was ordered. And yes they are more work than we imaged. Always a thing and because they are totally handmade they take a while. The chosen decoration is also a 40% time consuming part because these here are not glazed but decorated with our lovely designed slib and it takes three solid layers to have this look and feel....
More about the developements will be shared here....
Here some "Work in Progress" pictures - Put together from pre designed slabs of clay, rough....yes, but for now left to dry for more finetuning later...
The next stage in the making is finetuning the edges and the overall shape in that lovely half pill (modern oval) and smooth them and prepair them for the first of three layers of our special spotted slib....
A few sizes of these vases are available in our webshop :)
]]> Clay can be kept sort of ‘indeffanetly’. Once dried out, it can be re-activated again by getting it back to mud and getting it back into clay form by drying it partly on plaster boards and wedging it to get the air out and make it more malleable.
This activating/reclaiming of the clay can be a messy and sometimes smelly bussines. As you can see in the clip, its a really 'hands-on'job :) - so a workout in the gym is not necessary after this.
Every piece of wood out of the shop has been reclaimed and been re-used in our studio now in utrecht.
Also we use a lot of trolleys bought from a bakery and just needed a proper cleaning. these are used for shelfing and organising the projects for all our students that come to our studio weekly.
All of our kilns are second hand and just overhauled. these machines are fairly easy to maintain. Lovely to see these old machines still doing what they do best.
On top of every kiln we have some ceramic statues wich we call our 'kiln-gods' who look over the fyiring-proces.
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In these ceramic throwback blogpost we will reminisce about older work, designs & ideas....We start with our Splash tableware line :) Somewere in 2002 and it all started with throwing the wares, decorate them with three coates of underglaze and (discovered by accident because i'm somewhat clumsie) splash the colored surfaces with black slib and voila...In this time we already developped our colored slibs and made good use of those lovely colors...
Wauw it has been more than 18 years ago now.
Funny thing that not only the ceramics change in your lifetime but all things arround it, so also the pictures ofcourse...
Ahhhh sweet little butter dishes with even other color combinations and swirly knobs...
Problably there was some brighten up the pictures in those days :)Also making a lot of teapots in those days (a lot more than now) as i can see on these pictures. Ohhhh and men what could go wrong....so many tlittle things when you are working with this style of ceramics. Of course a teapot is kind of a challange but putting on the three coates of colored underglaze....men.....
Because the fun is gone when the ceramics came out of the kiln with a thin spot of underglaze, then the whole idea was gone, the effect we wanted to have was a very solid color....
Also cups were made in the plenty...
A charming item we made in those days were chocolade fondues and it all the colors we could make and imagine, ofcourse with the splashes on them.
It started out as a request from a good friend, but they were a hit so the making of the chocolade fondues continued :)
Raw - thrown, trimmed, cut but still need to be sponsed, finetuned and decorated and for the first fire...
Unfired underglaze coat, nice and pastel.....these will get super bright after the second (glaze) fire...
With there powdery white coat on from the transparant glaze, ready to be fired for the second time - the glaze fire. As the ceramic years fade away...
The feeling of opening a kiln is still as exited as the first, it never, never, never gets old or boring. Love it to this day and back again ;)
And yessss in these days we also were making samples, samples and more samples for color exploration and discovering lovely colors shemes...
The mint and lime green we still use today, designed many years ago :)
Maybe there is a bit more clear about our style in 2020 - we tried so many ceramic technics, so hard to choose for a stable collection. As teachers it is even more difficult because we want to show our students everything we know, learned, etc.
But you will be needing a few lives to take it all in - always learning, always...
Hope you have enjoyed our first ceramic throwback, it was a colorful one indeed.
If this work got your interest we can still make it with the technics we use now :)
Only on special requests, you can always let us know....
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Starting point...
Designs made by Maxime
And here is the design it has become :)
The first we use as the banner of our website.
Maxime made a lovely design and here in an other mix with brown.....yummie.
Here was a funny option with a little paw {for our Vink}.
So now we are going to put it on anything we can :).
- Nerikomi -
Slabs of different clays or clays colored with stains or oxides, are stacked, folded, pressed into logs, sliced, and arranged to form a vessel. In this way, the numerous stacked layers appear as fine undulating lines embedded in a surrounding color in the finished vessel.
About patterns that are created in a nerikomi roll and than sliced up to create....This technic can be done with the natural colors of all kinds of clay, in the above pictures we used colored stoneware clay bodies...
Here we are making the layered slabs of clay.
Making the layers with triangle shapes in different colors stoneware...
Porcelain is used very much so in this delicate technic and gives a bright colored palette...Would you like to learn to make your own Nerikomi small objects and jewelry?
We are organizing a lovely 2/3 days short course, were you will learn the basics. This will be 9, 10 & 23 may 2020 here the link to purchase the course.
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John Britt was a joy and also the ladies of Het Amstardams kleibedrijf they made it all a super complete, big learning and such a lovely experiance...
So after joining this workshop we made some serious glaze samples on cone6 (1220 degrees) in a group. The outcome was so nice and it was the path for more. Later we will share more :)So we highly recommend this combination, we will be busy designing new glazes for our private products & our classroom.
;)
]]>It is already a few months later (this was juli/august 2019) - because of the blog lose..... but still wanted to share....
]]>It all starts with the interest in our handmade products of a person when they come across us trough internet, word to mouth or an other way.
We make an appointment in our studio in Utrecht. Then an exchange of ideas & possibilties happens and lovely ideas get born.
Here the pictures of 16 cups that fit together sublime in our signature styles, but put together buy our customer. Really happy with the outcome....
f you are interested in a custom made order in our signature style please let us know.
When we have the time we love to design & make it especially for you.
]]>So learned a thing again and we will start over again.....
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