Chris and Laura's Easter Salt Firing

Chris and Laura two of our third year students specialising in Ceramics had a great opportunity to fire a salt kiln over the Easter Holidays with Mel Brown ( Mel teaches part time with us )

They made some work in Stoneware Clay specifically for the firing and here's some pictures of the firing and unpacking - it's a unpredictable and magical way of firing with the kiln being fired up to 1300 degrees and adding Salt through the spy holes with a controlled reduction atmosphere in the kiln .. There were some great results ...

For an arch of roses ...

This awesome piece was designed to sit within a arch of roses at Berrington Hall , it's ambitious , well designed and made by Bob Thomas a second year Artist Blacksmith , I particularly enjoy the details of the rivet's . I've added some photos of the final stages of construction at Holme Lacy and snapped some photos of sketch book to illustrate his design process ...

We are planning to take some images of it in situ next term so I'll be blogging this piece of work again.

Congratulations Bob it's a great piece of work ..

Amsterdam Trip

There's just been a great trip to Amsterdam it was four days away and 40 students went with 4 staff , Kate and I didn't go but lots of students from across the Crafts Cluster went and had a fabulous time here's a few pics ...