PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF,

I’M A MAN OF CLAY AND GLAZE

PUSHED MUD AROUND FOR SEVENTY YEARS

OR TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND DAYS.

Robin Hopper is a man of many parts, mostly worn out, rusty or dysfunctional, due to a lifetime of excesses! He started working with clay at the age of three and is still doing it over 70 years later. His lengthy, peripatetic career as a mudpusher has included side trips into working as a Professional Actor, Stage Designer, Property Maker, Stage Manager, Stage Carpenter, Grocer, Greengrocer, Jazz Musician, Teapot, Wine and Beer-Bottle, Trumpet, Trombone and Bugle Player, European Travel Guide, Founder of Several Clay/Art/Craft Organizations, Alchemist, Geologist, Primatologist, Linguist, Ornithologist, Botanist, Ceramic Historian, Educator, Author, Garden Designer, Lecturer on Japanese Garden Design, Laborer and Star of Stage, Screen and Potter’s Wheel!

Sunday, April 7, 2013

ANOTHER ULTIMATUM!

TIME TO QUIT!

My medical team have again told me that I have to keep off the keyboard! So I regret to announce that this will be my last posting of this blog. I have had a good time doing it. Here are some of the images I was planning to use in this posting. It was to be about  agate ware.















Many thanks for being  a reader of this blog. If we can solve the health problems, I hope to be back.

BEST WISHES TO YOU ALL.

ROBIN




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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

WHERE DOES ALL THE TIME GO?


I'M TRYING AGAIN ON THIS!
I SEEM TO BE SLOWED TO ALMOST A STANDSTILL BY ALL THE FOLK WHO WANT TO BE FRIENDS ON KlubFAB! NICE BUT VERY TIME-CONSUMING.
MY COMPUTER SKILLS ARE MINIMAL AT THE BEST OF TIME, IMAGE MANIPULATION LEAVES ME IN A DAZE
AND OSTEOARTHRITIS IN THE HANDS MAKES TYPING A MISERY!

SO HERE WE GO FOR A NEW TRY!

PLANT OF THE DAY 
 There is so much coming up in bloom every day right now. Because of our super-mild winter this year, everything is about three weeks ahead of normal. Since I am as much gardener as potter these days,
I thought I should share some of the beauty that I am surrounded by and has given me both pleasure and decoration ideas for many years.


FAWN, TROUT OR DOG LILY (ERYTHRONIUM Tuolomnense "Pagoda")
THIS YEAR'S CROP IS THE BEST EVER. THE WILD OREGON LILY IS NOW IN BLOOM
Photo: Judi Dyelle
The bi-colored earthenware bowl below is from the earliest period of colored clay use. It is made by laminating colored clays, bending into wave like patterns and pressmolding into a bowl form about 5" diameter and 2.5" deep. It doesn't have to be big to be beautiful! It is covered with a clear lead glaze that turns yellow from contact with the iron in the clay. It was fired in Oxidizing conditions. It was made in China in the Tang Dynasty 660AD - 920 AD, a little over 1200 years ago.

Marbled Earthenware Bowl - Tang Dynasty China - Collection of the Royal Ontario Museum.
Toronto, Canada.

Colored clay use has been in sporadic, irregular use through a little over a thousand years. The Lidded Chocolate Pot below was made in the Stoke-upon-Trent or Potteries area of England in the mid 18th Century. Chocolate was one of the favorite beverages of high society at that time.

The process of making is basically the same as the Chinese bowl, but instead of Earthenware it is made in white stoneware and white stoneware stained with cobalt and manganese.  It is salt-glazed, a Mediaeval method developed in Germany. 


Salt-glazed Agateware Chocolate Pot - Staffordshire - England - Circa 1750 -
Collection of the Chipstone Foundation. 
I'm trying to pace myself so I have decided to do a little at a time and, hopefully, with a little more regularity. Please let me know if you like this format.

Best wishes, Robin 










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