Generally, when our work is sold in a gallery we have no idea who has chosen the work, where it has gone and why they add it to their collection. Recently it seems I have had more contact with folks who buy a jugbird or plates. I show new work on social media (instagram and facebook) and in my blogs and often somebody will get in touch to request that piece or order something new. As a result of this personal contact I sometimes receive a photo of said pot in its new home.
I think Christie bought a jugbird and its matching sugar bowl at one of Port Moody’s annual ArtWalks several years ago. Then she must have registered to receive my blog by email because she has clearly been following my work ever since. When I wrote that I was making wildly colourful, folksy plates for our daughter-in-law Jen last summer Christie phoned to ask if I would make, say, 15 teeny plates for her. She wanted them to be the size of a saucer with the idea that they’d be suitable for bridge group snacks (remember when you could have several people over to socialize?). That order was a perfect project for me just then. One pound of clay does not take a strenuous effort to throw, I really enjoy the subsequent trimming of the underside and painting them with my slips was serious fun.
Around that time Jonathon Bancroft Snell had invited me to send a variety of pots, both soda-fired stoneware and earthenware jugbirds and plates, to be displayed in Jonathon’s Gallery in London, Ontario. When he saw the teeny plates I’d made for Christie he asked for a baker’s dozen too, again in a crazy variety of colours. Since then I’ve sent him a set of red, black and white ones for Valentine’s Day and yet more, painted in Spring pastel colours for Easter. Brian Barnum Cooke, Jonathon’s right-hand man in the gallery, then noticed that the red, white and black ones would be perfect for playing cards plates.
Christie noticed those and wanted a set of four too. Not only that but she began to notice the grooved pots that I made in the past and have now begun to make again. They’re often lidded pots or, at J’s request, lidded eggs to accompany my birds. Christie’s commission was very specific. She asked for a grooved pot that was big enough to hold at least 3 large buds of garlic and wanted the unusual sunken lid. I made that with the red earthenware, made holes to keep the garlic from rotting and left the pot unglazed, merely coating the outside with terra sigillata for a lush, satiny finish. Now Christie delightedly tells me that odd spare cloves of garlic can be popped into the lid cavity and not get lost in the large space below.
Just the other day Christie and Ron drove over here from South Surrey on a sunny day to collect the garlic pot, and a large green and red plate (for Christmas?), its matching dish and her set of ‘card’ plates.
When she sent me photos of her collection I see that she also has the ‘cream and sugar’ jugbird pair, a big blue ‘vegetable’ dish and her original set of jolly teeny plates. With her permission I am showing these here.
Below are photos of other pieces in their new homes. I’ll just leave the owners anonymous, but thank you all for letting me know that my pots are comfortably settled.
