I have continued to feel inspired by textiles in the Eastern collection at Ashmolean museum, in particular a textile fragment with trees and fruit which is part of the Newberry collection of Indian block printed textile fragment, image below.
This textile piece is cotton, hand-applied with resist and mordant-dyed red, and resist-dyed blue; with remains of stitching in blue thread, probably cotton. I was inspired by how it appears in the display, the fraying edges against the stark white background. I wanted to capture this aspect of display in my ceramic below which was created with earthenware clay using a pinching technique. It is finished with white earthenware glaze and the designs are inspired by the textile fragment described above. The motifs are painted using iron oxide (black) and copper carbonate (green).
The ceramic vessel below was also created using the pinching technique but this time in stoneware clay. The split glaze effect was fun to do, creating a definite sharp edge between blue (midnight blue) and orange/brown (shino).
It has been a really enjoyable and valuable experience creating these first few ceramic forms as part of my skills development for the DYCP.
