The boat will arrive around St Nicholas…

Results and packing

Project for De Nederlandse Bank

Workshops PWS

Workshop onglaze painting

Workshop sculpting

Workshop throwing

Workshop moldmakingWorkshop flowermakingWorkshop underglaze painting

Workshop carving

Two Chimneys Studio and Sculpture Factory aerea

http://www.treffer.tv/camille/

Since the last update…

Since the last update, as the pictures show, a lot of things have happened. We said goodbye to designlab , went on a excursion to Yaoli Village, went out dancing, wandering around, biking, getting massages and most of all we kept on working very hard in the studio.Also Bastienne has joined us, which is very nice. Now we are quite familiar with the place and so a lot of us go around to have things done at the mold makers, throwers, tile factories, glaze specialists, or walk around to find some old moulds or broken statues from the garbage as a new ingredient in the work.

It is truly amazing how many possibilities there are, but most of all the surroundings remain beautiful. Beautiful, strange, funny, chaotic, and so forth. It may sound a cliché, but all the small things that happen in a normal day can transform in something very exciting and ’new’ here. Communicating with local craftsmen about your piece may sometimes result in the total opposite of what you meant to produce, sometimes it will be better than you thought was possible.

There are a lot of different areas in the city and visiting them,  introduces you to new habits and ways of living, working, eating etc. For myself food is a good reason and excuse to go around the city and taste a lot of delicious and mostly very HOT things. Close to our hotel there is the ‘food alley’ in which there are several dishes you can find that will make you instantly very happy. It is mostly visited by students from Jingdezhen University and so it has also a nice atmosphere. But also if you are looking for decals, there you will be introduced to a new part of this city that is in Chinese eyes very small, but somehow does have many different faces.

 

Besides our own projects and the design competition for Pol’s Potten, we started working on the cylinders for the Dutch Bank. This was again a whole new experience. We worked on them at the ‘ Hutian Big Pot Factory’, where indeed they make enormous pots and cylinders. The factory is situated a bit outside of the centre area, closer to San Bao.

Taking the bike to get there means a very nice start of your day. As we started, the staff of the factory passed by to show us some tips and tricks, help us with the mixing of the pigments and most of all look at our ‘crazy’ western designs. Very often they had helpful comments and were very generous in showing us their methods and materials. A great experience and again I have learned a whole lot of new things.

 

Days go by very fast and now the deadline for firing  becomes more and more near. There are a lot of things which will be glazed and ‘finished’, but of course there is still a lot you can do in one week and so this morning a set of porcelain stools were delivered for a few of us to again go crazy about. Also new moulds are brought in, tiles are being finished and the glaze store is very often visited for new tests. A lot of people are getting into new ways of throwing because of  this different material. Maybe also this has to do with a lecture by Takeshi Yasuda, a Japanese thrower and ex-director of the Pottery Workshop, which we attended  recently and which was very interesting.

Besides being very busy ourselves the PWS is also very busy. They are preparing  their 25th anniversary, as well as the Ceramic Fair, which will be opened tomorrow. Already you can see the streets getting more crowded, flags are being put up and flower decorations are put out. In the studio we were surprised by a few experts on throwing from North Korea. Dressed in a silk suit and crispy shoes, this man didn’t hesitate to give us a demonstration of his work. Amazingly fast he had thrown a perfect vase, of which pictures will appear on this blog I am sure. The enthusiasm for this coming festival week is very much present and the works are catching. So tomorrow it is again a challenge to find some time for walking through the city to see the fair, and in the afternoon a ROCK concert takes place. Being now a bit more familiar with the Chinese way of spending time outdoors and dancing, I am sure this will be a very energetic event

Evelijn.

 

Clay factory and slipcast factory