Jill Ford
Old Fashioned Roses - Bowl
Thrown porcelain bowl with Old English Shrub Roses design.Old-fashioned English shrub roses are amongst my favourite flowers. Their full flat blooms with densely packed petals are intense and beautiful. The Charles de Mills rose has confetti like petals forming into whorls and is perfect for portraying in porcelain. The clay is rolled out thinly, rolled several times more, then modelled into flower heads and leaves. Hundreds of tiny layers can be used to make a single large flower.White on white always conveys the subtlety of forms, the colour of bare unglazed porcelain is delicate yet alive. To give sparkle and contrasting surfaces I add touches of glossy white glaze on the petals.
About the Artist
“The Lower Derwent Ings of East Yorkshire, with their flat flood plains and boundless open sky, inspire much of my work. The pattern of the landscape is dominated by strong horizontal bands of water, fields and sky. Straggly lines of willow and smoky blackthorn thickets mark out field boundaries. Sharp shafts of sun highlight the vegetation or silhouette spindly birch copses. In the winter months, freezing temperatures produce delicate layers of ice, which cling to the edges of brimming dykes.
"Much of my work is thrown on the wheel. Porcelain is a fabulous clay to throw; it is smooth and silken but also a hard taskmaster and easily collapses. Simple graceful shapes are formed; full round bowls with an elegant footring, slender tapering vases or distinctively tall jars with the added flourish of a quirky stopper. Minimal shapes and colour allow me to indulge in my passion for texture”