the design issue.....

It's very strange, in fact I think it's a pride thing, once you've shared your dreams with a few people and people you respect at that, you feel like you 've got to go and actually do something to prove you're not just all talk. So having shared the dream with my dragons the next thing to do was to put my money where my mouth was and give us something real to talk about. One of my special dragons kept telling me to remember that the design was the easy bit for me, with that ringing in my ears I felt an enormous amount of pressure to come up with something brilliant.....this resulted in a few sleepless nights and times of blind panic and lots of ideas that ended up in the bin....it's that pride thing again. Once I'd calmed down I started to tackle it as a design project.

Now if there are any fellow pot geeks out there you'll probably be as in awe of Midwinter, Hornsea and TG Green as I am. Midwinter looks as good today as I'm sure it did in it's heyday, there is something amazingly refreshing about the product, the shapes and patterns just do it for me ! I decided to be heavily influence by the shapes of midwinter. The plates are made in the same way and dare I say some of the craftsmen at the factory ( more of later ) originally worked at Midwinter.

                               

   my little sketchbook of mugs

So the plates and bowls came together pretty quickly, the mug was
a different challenge. Our home needs from drinking vessels has changed quite a lot from the 50's, so the challenge was to create something distinctive and practical, now I'm not that bad at mugs so I came up with the little walton bank mug relatively quickly. I knew it had to function brilliantly, the handle had to be comfy for a wide variety of users from delicate hands to the big butch ones - the mug is quite a personal piece of pottery - we all have our favourites and we all have ones we hate using , lets be honest it's something we actually put our lips to , it's a very intimate piece of equipment. My solution is quite simple - to take the shape of the plate ( a soft square ) and combine it with a round, lets face it circles are a big part of our lives, echo this on the handle and we've got a practical yet beautiful mug.....it' been designed to be used, generous capacity and yes it keeps your drink warm for longer, most people want to hug it.

With the shape sorted the pattern side of things started to take shape. I decided to stick with the things I love, colour, texture, words and a little bit of retro....

moodboard for 'birdware'

With the pattern gaining momentum I decided it was time to be brave and show my dragons how the design was progressing. So over a glass of wine I started to share the concepts....they liked the design/ style direction and felt I had enough information to find a factory who would be willing to make it.

At this point my studio space at Little Walton Bank was my second home, I'd come home from work sort the children out and when they were tucked up in bed hot foot it to my desk to get things going.

my studio