I managed to get the latest batch of work dried, bisqued, glazed and fired again in spite of the recent heat and opened the kiln yesterday.

So I was able to let Eric Metcalfe and Monique Fouquet have their work from the last raid today when those two artists and also Mina Totino and Renee van Halm were here for another  busy creative day.

Eric had three new plates to study. One is a wedding gift painted on a white ground. There’s one on his familiar yellow ground and the third is a new combination on a turquoise background.

Today he worked on a plate with sage green as a base so that’ll be interesting.

Monique’s two are fascinating studies in black, white and grey.

Today she painted two more, one in the same greys and another with bold red.        

Renée didn’t finish her four plates on the last visit so today she carefully finished them to her perfectionist satisfaction. Her one new plate was a somewhat larger one that I’d made for her. It’s oval with no rim but with a foot, looking rather sixties-ish. I like it.

She brought along a found light fixture part. I showed her how I use my slab roller, then cut out the precise circle of the metal lamp shade from the fresh clay slab and slumped it, supported with a piece of T-shirt fabric into the underside of the form. It should be a very interesting plate/bowl. I’ll dry it carefully for her so that she can paint it next trip.

And Mina painted four oval plates underneath and above with bold underglazes and finished her day by having another go at working with slips on a leather hard squarish plate form.

There are some good photos of today’s work party and lunch on the patio so they can be a separate blog.

And I’ll be posting photos of all their new work in a few weeks, when I return from a short holiday I’m taking to England next week.

Tomorrow I’ll post photos of some of the new jugbirds which I will be delivering to Primavera Gallery in Cambridge.