Earlier this year the talented R&A Collaborations came to see me in London to make a short film about me and my work. This is the latest in their series of films about makers and their work and I’m really pleased to now have this film about me.
Hand of the Maker – Linda Bloomfield from R&A Collaborations on Vimeo.
Over the last few months I have been solidly making tableware for restaurants, first 160 matt white plates for Luca in Clerkenwell, then 300 pieces including cake stands, plates and shallow bowls for Jamie Oliver’s Barbecoa Piccadilly. I have developed a routine. I make forty plates every Thursday, turn them on Friday, fire them over the weekend and glaze them on Monday and Tuesday. I have been doing this for about three months, sometimes making two batches in a row so that the heat from the kiln firing of the first batch dries out the second batch in the warm studio. I delivered the plates to Luca in November and to Barbecoa in January. I am really looking forward to going to the opening of Barbecoa in February and sampling the afternoon tea.
My latest article, in Ceramics Monthly September 2016, explains the science behind colour.
I am really interested in why things are coloured. When white light falls on certain objects, they absorb some colours of light and what we see are the remaining colours of light reflected from the object. Some objects, like trees and grass, use light as energy in photosynthesis and absorb red and blue light, causing them to appear green (the three primary colours which make up white light are red, blue and green). Other objects such as coloured gemstones and glazes have transition metal atoms in them, either as impurities or added intentionally. These absorb some colours of light by promoting some of their electrons to higher-energy orbitals. For example, cobalt silicate in glazes absorbs yellow light. The colour we see is the complementary colour, blue. The colour depends on the type of transition metal and the shape of the electron cloud around it, which can be different in a gemstone from in a glaze, for example, chromium impurities give a red colour in rubies but usually give a green colour in glazes. This is because the surrounding atoms in the ruby crystal are forced closer to the chromium atom than in a glaze.
Click on the link to read the full article: Bloomfield_CMSept16
Recently I have noticed a beautiful pink-grey-mustard colour combination in art, prints, textiles and interior design.
I have made a collection of porcelain bottles with the same colour combination. The bottle shapes are inspired by the still life paintings of Giorgio Morandi. The glazes are all made from raw materials in my studio. The mustard yellow comes from nickel and titanium, while the pink is made from rutile and tin oxide. These are chalky matt glazes with microscopic crystals covering the entire surface of the glaze. The pale grey is made from a combination of cobalt and nickel oxides in a dolomite glaze. Where the glazes overlap, there are interesting reactions. The dark grey box frame was made by Henry Bloomfield.
I will be showing the new bottles and vases in the British Craft Pavilion at the London Design Fair, the new name for Tent London at the Old Truman Brewery on September 22-25. Also during the London Design Festival, on 20 September I will be demonstrating throwing on the wheel at the Canvas Home showroom.
Clay is an amazing material. You can shape it and it holds its form, then you can fire it and it turns into stone. Under the microscope, clay is made up of tiny stacked hexagonal crystals, which are able to slide over each other when lubricated by water. The kaolinite image below is reproduced from the Images of clay archive of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain & Ireland and The Clay Minerals Society.
Each clay crystal is made up of thousands of layers of silica tetrahedra and alumina octahedra. These can build up in alternating layers as in kaolin, or in three layers; silica-alumina-silica, as in bentonite. Water can get between the crystals, which enables them to slide easily over each other, allowing the clay to be moulded into shape. Kaolin is less plastic than bentonite as it has a larger particle size. A third type of clay, illite, is derived from mica, and is a constituent of red earthenware clays.
Diagrams by Henry Bloomfield. Read the full article here: Bloomfield_June16
Originally published in June 2016 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 64-65. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org . Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission.
I often receive emails asking about glaze problems. It seems that students on ceramics degree courses are not taught very much about science or understanding the materials, but concentrate more on learning about art and design ideas and philosophy.
In Chemistry at school, I loved the periodic table. It neatly groups the elements so that each column contains elements with similar properties which react chemically in the same way, with metals on the left and centre and non-metals on the far right. The periodic table here shows the elements found in clays and glazes. The blank spaces are elements of less interest to potters. You can find the complete periodic table here.
I have been writing a book on Science for Potters for the American Ceramic Society. Several chapters are being published in Ceramics Monthly. You can read the full article on Chemistry for Potters here Bloomfield_Feb16
Originally published in February 2016 issue of Ceramics Monthly, p60-64. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org . Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission.
Last week artist Sophie Glover came to my studio. She is making a large series of drawings of people working in their studios. She is really good at telling a story, showing multiple stages in the making process and picking out interesting details. I love the illustration of the wedging process and the wobbly bowl being thrown in the front centre of the drawing.
Sophie studied drawing at Falmouth University. She went to St James School in London, where her younger sister Amy was in the same class as my daughter Alice. Last year Sophie had a residency on an island near Finland, where she drew rocks and experimented with clay. She is using drawing not just as illustration, but as an art form in its own right. She is planning to make a large number of drawings of studios which you can see on her website www.sophieglover.co.uk.
My open studio at the weekend was the busiest yet. I have been taking part in Artists at Home since 2003. This year I showed my new bottles and vases inspired by the still life paintings of Giorgio Morandi, as well as my usual porcelain tableware. The new bottles sold really well, particularly the grey and mustard ones. I also sold seconds of my manufactured mugs and plates, which coincidentally featured in the Sunday Times Home. This year the open studio weekend coincided with midsummer and the roses in the garden were at their peak. We have a rambling rose which climbs along the fence on one side of the garden. It has clusters of white flowers which gradually turn slightly pink. Luckily, it only rained on Saturday evening just after closing time and on Sunday we had record numbers of visitors.
I have have been working on a new tableware range to complement the Morandi inspired bottles. So far, I have made mugs, teapots, plates and bowls. I experimented with overlapping glazes but I think a crisp finish looks better. I need to do more work on the plates and bowls but the mugs and teapots came out quite well. I am getting quite a few orders for the Morandi inspired bottles, and they seem to appeal to men as well, which is good, as most of the customers for my existing coloured porcelain tableware range are women.
Local TV Chiswick Buzz came to interview me recently. They filmed me throwing a pouring bowl and asked about my cake stands.
They are featuring local Chiswick artists in the run-up to Artists at Home Open Studios.
Lorna Ko who interviewed me said her Japanese father is also a potter, who trained with Shozo Michikawa, who will be running a course later this year on making teabowls at West Dean College
You can watch the interview here:
Studio interview with Chiswick Buzz
