Pak Eko My favourite Chef

Here is Chef Eko in Mercure Hotel Serpong Jakarta.  He taught me so much about my favourite Indonesian foods.  Each morning breakfast was a delicious adventure.  First a 5 a.m. swim, pepping my system. The a restoring feed on lots of amazing fish with fragrant sauces, each day 3 new recipes to try,  tempeh (fermented bean cake), tofu, chicken and lots of wonderful sambal green chilli salsa. Followed huge quantities of tropical fruit, some we never get in U.K. kedongdong (in Eko's hands), snake skin fruit, asinan mango etc. etc.  I miss my breakfast!

Mercure breakfast compilation

 No wheat, no dairy for 6 weeks - did I miss it? Not one bit with all this on offer.

Home at last...

It might be a shock to the system going from 6 weeks on Equator to tip of Northern hemisphere, but its still amazing to be home walking the hills.

Zen Hankook Indonesia

Just back from spending an amazing 6 weeks developing a new collection of ceramics.  I was lucky enough to work with great people.  This is my team in the shape department. They worked so hard on the project and were enormous fun to be with too.

Colour palette from the garden

Blue Sea

Luminous blue chicory growing wild at the side of the road in Hungary this summer.  Then at noon the flowers close up and hold their secret until dawn the next day.

Last of the summer beans

I've done it again, missed out on a great swath of season.  The summer is always so action packed that I don't manage to keep up with my aims.  So please forgive my absence.  Now in late September we are savouring the last of things from the garden, Cos lettuces, Comice pears, and next up runner beans.  Cutting down the bean stalks always strikes me as a decisive moment in my year, never again in 2016 will I be hot in the sun and I must wait another 11 months to taste the perfect steamed bean,

Happy 100th Birthday Moondog

26th May

A really fascinating musician, not to everybody's taste but I can't help hearing this without shivers tingling up my spine.  Individuals who don't fit a mould are to be celebrated when they can produce something really special.
Here is his short Theme please click on it and listen.
Also a biography from American Spectator by Aaron Goldstein  A Classicist  in a class of his own.t in a Class of His Own

A Classicist in a Class of His Own

Making glaze materials bone ash

Following Saturday's walk on Norbury Hill, and my sheep bone finds, they are now "fired" in my woodburner and here I am bashing them up (finally I put them in my Spong coffee grinder to make a good fine powder).

Kiln cooled

The bisque firing is now finished and the kiln cool enough to open, and despite packing it within an inch of its life, there were no breakages, just lots of new exciting shapes.

New project bubbling up!

Here is a corner of my workshop with all manner of shapes and sizes I've made on the wheel.  Trialling 4 new clays, plus using up a bit of porcelain.

A finely etched line

Click here, then turn pages at lower right hand corner

Essentials of Life...

Favourite designs begin with what we love to use. I made this for Andrew's birthday

 some years ago and we bring it out each afternoon for tea.

February 2016

Is this the winter we didn't have.  If you can count 4 days of cold as such.  I am the last to complain given my love of heat, but now the promise of spring is believable I can now relish some of the nice bits - gathering kindling for an evening nestling next to the woodstove, and rich and meltingly tender shin of beef casserole for supper mmmm.....