Etsy Shop Now Open!

I have now opened up a shop on Etsy called Conceptual Ceramics where you can view full product details, photos, and buy items easily and quicky using paypal.

At the moment I only have a few items listed on the site but I shall be adding to them very shortly. Some of the art work I have for sale includes the images below.

To view all work available please visit www.etsy.com/shop/conceptualceramics

Detail of a hand painted watercolour. Comes framed with mount. Available on Etsy.

Framed thrown bone china. All details found at www.etsy.com/shop/conceptualceramics.

'My Collecton' 2012

This piece of work pictured below is what I produced for my degree show at Loughborough University and it was also on show at New Designers in London the other week.

 

My Collection; bone china, various glazes, fine silver, copper, wood; 2012.

This is about me collecting my day to day work. Each tile has numbers inscribed into the surface which records the date which it was made, and which glaze was used. I wanted to use this kind of recording or cataloguing to emphasis that this group of ceramic tiles is a collection.

A tile from My Collection.

In the past my work has looked into what other people may collect or hoard, but with this piece I wanted to focus on making a collection that is completely my own.

My Collection; bone china, various glazes, fine silver, copper, wood; 2012.

I am interested in repetition and multiples. These tiles depict circles because for me they are the ultimate symbol of repetition, they are never ending. By also using a simple shape instead of an image there is no distraction, you can get straight to what the work is actually about. 

My work always seems to provoke feelings in me of the human soul.  I use circles quite often within my work; I imagine little orbs that are floating and that these orbs could be little souls. If the soul did exist then we would all be never ending like circles.
 

A tile from My Collection.

All my work is for sale. This collection can be sold in individual strips, as a whole, or as many as the customer would like. I designed it this way to make it flexible for customers. There are 15 strips, each made up of 7 tiles.

Website.

I have a new website coming soon!

Please contact me if you need any information about my work via my profile.

New Designers 2012

I am very excited to say I shall be exhibiting at New Designers this week (04.06.12 - 07.06.12). New Designers is the biggest annual exhibition solely for the newly graduated. It is made up of two weeks (I am showing in the second) and shows everything from product design to craft, and jewellery to furniture.

It is held in London at the Business Design Centre and is definitely worth a visit! I think there are up to 200 different universities and colleges that are represented at New Designers so I am very much looking forward to seeing the variety on show. Also can not wait to explore London once again, I love visiting, there is so much to do and see, I believe a visit at least once a year is a must!

I am slightly nervous for the exhibition but I'm sure it will be a great experience... I'll have to wait and see...
 

Detail of My Collection, 2012; 

exhibiting at New Designers, Business Design Centre, London.

For more images of my work please visit my Google profile using this link https://plus.google.com

Degree Show

I can not believe how long it has been since I wrote a post! It shows how busy I have been working with a final deadline looming. However, at last the degree show is here and I have submitted my last work ever as a 3D Design student. I am very pleased with what I have produced and also the year as a whole.

This year's show is definitely one of the best and it's really great to see how hard every one has worked, and what they have been able to achieve. I am particularly impressed with how a couple people have worked.

The course is so varied that it makes a very interesting and diverse exhibition. Our show is called 'MADE by' and everyone's work can be seen at www.madeby2012.com.

'Eye-Spots': Thrown Bone China.

All the images below are of ceramic pieces which belong to the collection 'Eye-Spots', 2011-12. This is the first project I produced for my final year at university.

 

'Eye-Spots' explores the human soul and it being related to the butterfly. This link is made in many mythological stories, cultures, and old wives tales. 

I started this project looking at the butterfly, and through many drawings came to concentrate on a butterfly's eye-spots as the main image source. This was reflected well in experimenting with bone china on the potter's wheel. 

 Bone china is well known as a superior clay, pure white and extremely translucent, but also known for how difficult it is to work with. Because of this, bone china is not recommended to throw with, and there is actually not that much clay in it!

 Bone china is my favourite clay to work with, I love its qualities, and enjoy trying to make the most of its white translucent nature. At its thinnest bone china can be almost see through. I also enjoy the challenge of trying to work with this material, and so this is the reason I chose to throw with it. Throwing with bone china is not the best material to use to produce technically correct pieces (especially if you're a novice like me!). However, an organic essence can be achieved without it looking forced. This sense of organically formed shapes relates strongly with the concept of butterflies and souls. So throwing with bone china turned out to be the perfect way to produce items for this project.

I experimented with many reduction glazes with these pieces, which being fired in a gas kiln can mean that results are hard to control. This is because so much relies on what chemicals are present in the firing, and so one thing absent in the next firing could possibly change the result. It helps if you are a scientist!

 I had a lot of fun producing tiles of experiments for this project, and it is something I wish to spend a lot of time doing again in the future. However at the moment I am concentrating on electric firing, as this is what I will have excess to after university.

Experimenting with these glazes on bone china was very exciting because it was quite unpredictable as to what actually would happen. There is nothing present in the clay as a colourant that could react with the glaze chemicals.

I believe that this work has a lot further to go, and I look forward to pushing further it at some point in the future.

 

Thank you for reading about my work, and any comments are very welcome.

Very First Post!

For my very first post I think I shall share some brief information about my profile picture...

Eye-Spots by Rachael Lawton. Thrown Bone China, 2011-12

This image features some of the pieces from 'Eye-Spots'. A collection of ceramic pieces which explore butterfly symbolism, and the human soul. There are many mythological stories, and cultures which relate the human soul to butterflies.
This concept was approached through drawing, as well as experimenting on the potter's wheel. Through this, I came to concentrate on the butterfly's eye-spots as the main image source. These eye-spots are found on many butterflies wings.
All the pieces from 'Eye-Spots' were thrown using bone china, and then a selection were coloured in various high firing reduction glazes.
The result is an abstract image of a butterfly, which helps to create the sense that these circles could actually be individual souls. I enjoy the ambiguous nature of this work, I believe it helps to carry a strong concept, particularly one which involves mythology.