Satellites by Dan Coopey at Corvi-Mora
Dan Coopey is a British artist living and working in Minas Gerais, Brazil. To be honest I’d not heard of him until a friend sent me a link to one of his Instagram posts about this exhibition. The Corvi-Mora is fairly local to me but again, I’d never visited. So a double first! Coopey studied […]
Coiled scrunchie
Teaching is never a one-way process. I often learn things from my students – as they do from each other. It’s one of the most rewarding parts of the job. On one of my coiling courses last year we were exploring how the technique can be used to create alternative forms. One of the students […]
Dryad Basketry: A Global Collection
The Dryad Furniture Showroom in Leicester was founded in 1907 by Harry Peach, a businessman who was interested in craft and design. He sold cane and wicker furniture, and during the First World War donated materials for wounded soldiers to make baskets as occupational therapy. This was so successful that he opened a handicrafts section […]
Elements 4: Earth
It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally finished the final element of the four: Earth. To be honest, I found this the trickiest one to conceptualise. My first idea was of a snow-capped volcano (think Mount Fuji), but that didn’t seem very challenging in terms of coiling structure, though I could have added folds and […]
Elements 3: Fire
Of the elements I’ve made so far, Fire has had the most conventional start – a circular bowl starting from the centre. When I felt that the base was big enough I started creating protrusions that would become the flames. I wanted there to be further spaces in each flame on each round, so the […]
Polish coiled straw basket workshop
A couple of weeks ago I went on a one-day workshop with Anna Niedzielska, a visiting Polish basketmaker. The workshop was organised by Halina Ward, a current student on the two-year City Lit basketry course who is half Polish and also acted as (excellent) interpreter for the day. Anna teaches both willow and straw basketry […]
Elements 2: Air
After the easy flow of Water, Air was always going to be more challenging. After all, it’s invisible most of the time, which makes it a bit tricky to visualise! My first thought was of isobars – those lines you see on weather maps connecting points of equal air pressure (like contour lines connect points […]
Elements 1: Water
This didn’t start out as a series. I just wanted to refire my making mojo after six weeks of lacking the energy even to read or watch TV, let alone make anything. I’d been looking at some of the wonderful Japanese wave and ripple designs published by the Public Domain Review. So I picked a […]
Pine needle baskets in Guatemala
Well, my last post turned out to be a little optimistic! After my bout of flu before Christmas I went down with another respiratory infection (possibly Covid, given how long it took to recover), followed by a urinary tract infection. But finally, after six weeks or so, I feel more like my normal self and […]
Bindweed (again!) and cordyline inflorescence
We recently had the fence between our front garden and that of our neighbour replaced, as it was in a sorry state. Sadly, many of the climbers and plants close to the fence did not survive the operation, but it also turned out that our neighbour’s garden was home to an incredible amount of bindweed, […]
