Moretonhampstead Festival of Food and Drink

I have been busy designing and making a new range of tableware which I am planning to showcase at the Moretonhampstead Festival of Food and Drink on Saturday 9th March. The Festival is now in its 5th year and promises to be bigger and better than ever with stands all down the main street and cookery demonstrations throughout the day.

I will host two demonstrations at The Studio. The first will start at 11.30 a.m. and the second at 3.00 p.m. The demonstration will last for about 25 minutes. Influenced by the Japanese art of food presentation.

I am planning to put together a fruit platter and show how to assemble a salad platter from simple ingredients. I am excited (and nervous!) as this is the first time I have attempted anything like a cookery demonstration.

If you can, please pop in and have a cup of tea or coffee in the showroom whilst you have a look at the new pots and my demonstration.

New Tableware

January is always a tricky month in the workshop.  It is hard to motivate myself to get back to work after Christmas when the workshop is cold.  Luckily this year I had a Japanese potter friend working with me, who kept me going.  I was able to work on developing a new range of tableware.

The new tableware uses the soft grey and white palette which I have been trying out over the last couple of years.  It is great for serving many kinds of food.  These slab dishes are modelled on some which I bought years ago in Japan and have used a lot.  I have tried before to create something similar and these are the best yet.

The texture on them is inspired by the Jomon pots from the previous post.  I made some rollers using plaited string glued on to dowel rods and used them to texture the slabs.  Opposing corners were impressed using a shell I found on the beach last summer.

With the new pots, I am trying to keep it simple.  For me, that is often the hardest thing to achieve.