Robyn A. Bartlett

Brainstove Productions

Clay

I came to pottery recently, and it grounds everything else I do. Clay doesn’t care about arguments; it asks for patience, close attention, and a willingness to start over.

I throw on the wheel, and I have begun to experiment with glaze combinations, layering and pairing them to see what happens. Bold colour and a British-Japanese sensibility inform what I am learning to make. Also: trying not to drop anything.

Newest: bigger bowls

Two large wheel-thrown bowls, thrown from five and six pounds of clay
Bigger bowls! 5lbs and 6lbs.
The two large bowls seen from above
Bigger bowls (top): 5lbs and 6lbs

Along the way

A wheel-thrown mug with carved horizontal ridges under a pale blue-green glaze
A ribbed mug in celadon glaze, held up in warm light
Celadon mug
A cream speckled mug with inlaid bands of blue and yellow glaze and a blue handle
The blue and yellow mug from the handle side
A round-bellied mug, white above and green below, with a pale glaze drip pattern
A lidded jar with a knob handle, glazed in layered blue-grey
The lidded jar opened, showing the unglazed inner flange of the lid
The lidded jar seen from above, its glaze breaking into speckled rings
A small black pot with grasses carved through to the pale clay beneath
A pot with carved lines
Carving! Lines!
An unfired bowl with a pale blue band carved with curling sprigs
An unfired mug with outlined ovals painted in lavender-blue underglaze
Four unfired mugs drying on a studio shelf

Moonlight’s urn

An unfired round urn with a cat on a crescent moon carved into the lid
An urn for our beloved Moonlight.
Close-up of the carved cat sitting on a crescent moon
Beloved Moonlight
Moonlight’s urn with the lid lifted
Moonlight’s urn

Early days

Robyn’s first wheel-thrown bowls, carved with minims
First bowls, a few weeks in – carved with minims!!
An early piece decorated with sgraffito
Early experiments in sgraffito, 1
An early sgraffito mug
Early experiments in sgraffito, 2. But fired – not so much, ewwww. And drinking from this early mug is like weightlifting. lol.

In the studio

Robyn showing Ed and Max how to throw on the pottery wheel
Teaching Ed and Max wheel basics 🙂
Ed and Max trying the pottery wheel with Robyn
Teaching Ed and Max wheel basics 🙂 (Even though Ed is a lost cause lololol)
Robyn and Angela Patterson in clay-spattered aprons, smiling in the pottery studio
My wonderful teacher and dear friend, Angela Patterson of Zenfire Pottery