Google rating
We were recently thrilled to notice that our website came up No 1 on Google when searching for the phrases ‘Raku glazes’, ’smoke firing’ and ‘pottery glazing tips’ and No 2 for the search term ‘raku kiln’.
October 5, 2009
September 19, 2009
Ceramics in Italy
We love Italy and go there at least a couple of times a year but have always been disappointed by the pottery that is available there. Generally you can only find Majolica ware or, particularly in Tuscany, reproductions of Medieval pottery.
We would love to hear from anyone who has found ceramic artists or studios in Italy where more ‘adventurous’ pottery can be found, especially in Northern Italy.
January 26, 2009
Latest Score: Fun - 0, Tedium - 6
When we started running pottery classes for the Adult Education Service, Adult Education was almost synonymous with Leisure Activities with many classes for painting, jewellery making, keep fit, languages etc in addition to the more academic subjects. In our own field of pottery we ran five classes a week, all heavily oversubscribed, with students drawn from many walks of life.
Among others there were those who enjoyed the creative experience, those in stressful jobs who found working with clay very therapeutic, those with special educational needs who found, in pottery, a means of expressing themselves and those who just needed to get out of the house and do something in a relaxed social atmosphere. There were very few who intended to earn their living through pottery or get the qualifications to enable them to do so.
In short it was FUN.
Then one awful day the Adult Education Service fell under the auspices of the dreaded OFSTED. For those of you who don’t already know, OFSTED is the official body for inspecting schools and having already successfully removed all enjoyment from teaching and learning in Nursery Schools, Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, Colleges and Universities with their insatiable appetite for a strict syllabus, detailed schemes of work and lesson plans, evidence of progress and rigorous evaluation of results, they now looked to Adult Education to extend their web further afield.
Ofsted has rapidly transformed Adult Education from the thriving, enjoyable voluntary acquisition of learning that it was, to a sterile, qualification-orientated grind. Unless a course leads to a recognized examination qualification it is actively discouraged or not offered at all.
In short it is NOT FUN and talented and creative students are staying away in droves.
And so are we!
October 27, 2008
Thanks Hamish and Robin
It’s always nice to learn that your efforts have been appreciated so we thought we would publish this email that we have just received.
In early summer, my 13 year old son decided to choose Raku pottery as the subject of his major school project. As my wife was an active potter in her younger years, the pottery & glaze aspects were well covered. Building a kiln was the only problem. After an extensive internet search, I decided to use your plans from internet for our kilnn. I must congratulate you on your very clear and easy to implement plans. In a couple of weeks I had a kiln, which as it turned out, was fully functional & works very well! We have also found that a firing up to 1000°C takes between 20 & 25 minutes using a simple comercial burner & manometer. It’s also great fun for both my son and I!! We have now done 8 firings with results between acceptable & very good. What we have’nt really learned yet is to influence the degree of crackling. Upon reading your web site again I noticed that you leave the pots in the reduction chamber for up to 20 minutes! Maybe this is the reason why we sometimes get a great crackling effect and sometimes none at all. Can you perhaps give me any tips on this? Thanks for your delightfully clear plans & very interesting web site!
Hamish and Robin (13)
October 12, 2008
Making your own Raku kiln
If you have ever wanted to have a go at the exciting process of Raku firing but have been put off by the cost of a specialized Raku kiln, help is at hand in the form of instructions on building your own ceramic fibre kiln which can easily be fired with a standard propane blowlamp.
October 11, 2008
Lockettpots blog launched
Thanks to John at Monakmore Design we now have our very own pottery blog attached to our website. You can still easily get to the main areas of the site by using the tabs above but we hope that you will find something of interest in this blog before exploring the rest of the site.
We will use this blog hopefully to keep you up to date with our adventures in pottery.
You can of course come back to the blog when you have finished exploring our main pages.
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