Cork Potters Web site is up and running!
February 24, 2012Important information for members!
Thanks to a lot of work by Jum Kelleher, the Cork Potters Web site is now up and running. You can find it at www.corkpotters.com. Please make a note of that address NOW!
There are individual web pages for each member. If you want to communicate directly and privately with another member, all you have to do is go to their page and click their email address. No need to send messages on these pages any more!
The new Web Site now makes this WordPress blog virtually obsolete, since www.CorkPotters.com incorporates all the information available here, with the added facility of a Members-Only Forum, where members can discuss issues with other members. To access this part of the site all you have to do is Click Members Log-in, and register a username and password. Once your membership has been confirmed, you can access the Forum.
If there is just a blank box and no image of your work on the Members page, or if your personal member’s page is empty, it is probably because you did not send your information to our webmaster, Jim Kelleher, at clayforms@gmail.com. Please contact him and send your information and images NOW!
Don’t forget the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Society-of-Cork-Potters/
Hoping to see you all at the meeting on March 11th.
Jane.
Cork Potters now have Facebook page!
February 3, 2012Hello all.
Jim Kelleher has been working very hard behind the scenes to get our new web site up and running, and he has also set up a facebook page for members. This provides an ideal way to communicate quickly with other potters in Cork.
So, please show your appreciation! Go here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Society-of-Cork-Potters/
now and “like” our new facebook presence.
The web site will be here shortly. If you sent Jim your images and information, you will be featured on it. If you didn’t, you know what to do!
Jane.
Mariann Bán Workshops a Great Success!
July 6, 2011Mariann Bán Workshops, Rossmore, June 2011.
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Mariann painting gold lustre
Born in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, a Jewish girl brought up by grandparents after most of her family perished at Auschwitz, Mariann Bán has always been a loner, an outsider, an individualist. After a year working in a puppet theatre in Budapest, she entered Art School (Ceramics) and trained in mould-making, a skill that proved useful in her subsequent career. Later, when she began to work in her own studio, instead of conforming to the Communist ideal, she looked back to her roots in Hungarian peasant pottery. She remains an outsider, her work has always reflected this folk tradition: it makes no concessions to changing fashions in “International Ceramic Art”.
Her pieces are small, never larger than can be held in two hands. They are always in some way functional. And they are highly decorated. Every surface is embellished. Sprigs (often birds, doll faces, angels or cats) are applied. Fine lines of black or coloured slip are painted, incised or inlaid. Each feature (rim, foot, aperture, lid) is accentuated by an outline of spots or lines. No area, not even the base, is left undecorated. More decoration is applied on top of the fired transparent glaze with painted on-glaze colours, lustres and sometimes with commercial floral transfers.
The material, originally terracotta with cheerful slip-trailing, has progressed through stoneware and porcelain, white or black-stained. Sometimes she has coloured the white body by soaking the bisqued ware in soluble cobalt salts to achieve a soft blue background.
Watching a demonstration
The forms range from tiny bird whistles, chubby dolls and flying angels with moving limbs, bells, hinge-lidded boxes, cylindrical boxes with dolls for knobs. There have been “wall pockets”, based on traditional holy water stoups, sarcophagi with wheels and figures inside, and now there are bird-feeders. Sometimes the pieces have tiny drawers that open to reveal a little treasure inside, maybe a cat or a whistle. But always there are cats, sprawled asleep or wide awake, chasing each other around rims and across lids.
Flying Angel in Etain's shop window
During the first two weeks of June, Etain Hickey exhibited examples of Mariann’s work in her Gallery in Clonakilty, where many found delighted buyers.
There were two workshops, held in the first two weeks of June 2011. Both started on Friday afternoon and ended at mid-day on Tuesday. Most days commenced with a slide show or video of Mariann’s work, the work of others in the “Sound of Clay” symposium at the Hungarian International Ceramics Studio at Kecskemét, or of early Hungarian Folk ceramics. This was followed by demonstrations of techniques by Mariann. Participants then worked on their own pieces, inspired by what they had seen. Interaction between participants meant that many technical hints and tips were exchanged. Pots were dried unbelievably fast and fired overnight.
Two small electric kilns, a gas kiln and numerous raku firings were orchestrated by Jim, who heroically got up in the early hours attend to the firings.
Jim pulls pot from raku kiln
The weather, on the whole, was kind to us and most days we were able to take our lunch outside in the sunshine on the newly-installed decking above the workshop.
On the Monday nights Mariann cooked a cauldron (literally) of Goulash and Hungarian Bean Stew for everyone to enjoy. A good time was had by all, and we returned home exhausted and inspired by the experience. It is hoped to exhibit work resulting from the workshops in an exhibition in Clonakilty in August.
Our thanks go to the West Cork Development Partnership for their generous sponsorship, and to Jim and Etain for sharing their house and workshop with us all.
Jane Forrester.
