I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m an old-fashioned type of person – my pottery has always - and will always - be influenced in large part by the pottery that sat on my Granny’s old Welsh dresser (and her pastry making skills – apple pies with thumb prints to crimp the edges).
Over the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of time at my childhood home helping my parents recover from ill health and working with them to pack up their home ready to downsize/move; during this time, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about our family memories and discovering all sorts of things around the house.
What has been wonderful is finding some old letters from my Dad’s father and my Great Aunt Vi (who our daughter Violet is named after) and looking through a recipe book of my mothers and seeing recipes written in by Granny. It was wonderful seeing what they wrote but also looking at their handwriting, which then got us reminiscing about how similar my handwriting is to my sister and to two of my aunts – so much so that Granny always used to say that she had to check the signature at the end of letters we used to write to her (remember life before emails and texts!) to know who the letter was from. As I am considerably younger than my aunts that always did concern me – but let’s move!
We all have incredibly large and flowing writing and looking at the letters inspired me to think about using my writing within my pottery. Ta da a new design: the Signature Collection!
I’m launching the LOVE version now, but any day expect to see a Christmas version with NOEL, PEACE and JOY in deep red and festive dark green!
For now the Signature Collection includes serving bowls, cereal bowls and platters – but expect vases to be included shortly! For now you can choose between a lovely soft red or a pale cream (the closest colour to white I could find where you can still see the words!). As well as the oversized words themselves the edging of the pieces is also coloured.
Will the words/edging be perfectly coloured? Possibly not because each and every one is free hand glazed – I don’t/won’t use transfers, stencils so each is different, and I love it because of that. But don’t expect matching or perfect – that is what is wonderful because of it…. the pieces themselves are chunky, the writing oversized with heaps of texture and individuality.
I love, love, love them - hope you do too!