Ref: SWE32639
This two-day course provides an opportunity to explore the traditional Folk Art Pew Groups and create your own ceramic pieces inspired by these. The tutor will explore why this object was a powerful medium for our collective social history and how it informs her own ceramic practice.
The course is suitable for beginners, and those with more experience of making ceramics, who will be able to broaden their skills and realise more complexity in their designs. The tutor will illustrate and demonstrate appropriate skills and support you to follow the step-by-step creative process to make your own narrative Pew Groups.
By the end of the course you will have gained an understanding of the history of the Pew Group figures, experience of traditional skills such as sprigging, granulation, impressing, pinching, slabbing techniques and slip decoration or underglaze on greenware. You will have made a sprig mould in plaster and created and decorated a Pew Group to your own designs. These can then be under-glazed ready to fire at the College for you to collect at a later date, unless you have access to a kiln elsewhere.
You can prepare for the course by considering what subject you might like to create. It would be advantageous to keep this to a loose idea so that it can adjust accordingly with the creative process. If a commemorative item is being considered, such as a wedding, please bear in mind that it should be at least six weeks clear of the date the course ends, if leaving work to be fired.
Please bring any personal small textured items to embellish your narrative. These could include non-precious jewellery, natural found objects; shells, leaves or domestic items; buttons, lace etc.
On the first evening there will be an introduction to sprig making. On the first full day you will work to handbuild your Pew Group using your own design as a template. On the last day you will refine and decorate with slip and underglaze paintsing.
Arrival Day - this is the first date listed above
Courses start early evening. Residential students to arrive from 4pm, non-residential students to arrive by 6.45pm.
6.45pm: Welcome, followed by dinner (included).
8 - 9pm: First teaching session, attendance is essential.
Daily timetable
Classes 9.15 - 5pm, lunch is included.
From 6.30pm: Dinner (included for residential students).
Evening working - students may have access to workshops until 9pm, but only with their tutor's permission and provided any health and safety guidelines are observed.
Last day
Classes 9.15am - 3pm, lunch is included.
Residential students are to vacate their rooms by 10am please.
(This timetable is for courses of more than one day in length. The tutor may make slight variations)
Involved with ceramics since 1998, Rose studied at Buckinghamshire New University attaining a first-class BA (Hons) in 2008 and being selected for the Craft Potters Association in 2010. In addition to her studio work in East Oxford, she runs pottery courses for Abingdon & Witney College.
Residential option available. Find out accommodation costs and how to book here.
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