Shoreline, designing with collage

In 2019 I started work on a new range of shapes and designs for ECP Design. I am not a potter, so I enlisted the help of a potter I knew would immediately understand the shapes I wanted.

I wanted a glaze that resembled the putty’ish shade of old stoneware potion pots – not grey, not cream – and to include very subtle throw lines. Watching him turn the shapes on the wheel, allowing me to say ‘out a bit more’ or ‘take a little more off’ was very exciting even as I froze in his unheated studio in March. Actually, I think my favourite images are those of the freshly-thrown shapes resting on the stone bench in his studio. Of course, these were all protoypes: the production was going to happen in Poland, which is where the sample pieces shown here were created. 

I designed the seabirds using collaged remnants of antique watercolour paintings found, rolled up at the back of a dealer’s van. They were some of the worst amateur paintings ever, but treasure for collage. I could have explained but decided to let him carry on thinking that I had very bad taste in art. Until working on Shoreline, all my design work had been done with appliqué and embroidery which had been interpreted with wonderful hand-painting by Vanessa Knight and her team at English Country Pottery, run by John Collett, in England.  Shoreline was going to be transfer ware, which means painted artwork, like the beautiful paintings by the late Lizzie Sanders of my needlework for the ranges of bone china I designed with William Edwards, which I will write about in another post.

It is unfortunate  that the combination of the pandemic and Brexit halted production of my ceramics. I receive a lot of emails from  people desperate to replace pieces and am thinking of setting up a message board page on Instagram for them in case there are others who might keen to sell all or part of their collection. 

Shoreline was nonetheless one of the most enjoyable design experiences and I hope one day to work again with ceramics.

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