Earth & Fire
Today I visited Rufford Country Park in Nottinghamshire for Earth & Fire, a ceramic event where international potters attend to sell their work. They represent many different styles, forms, and colours of ceramics, including pots and sculptures. This was my second year visiting this event. It's nice to visit an outdoor event in capacious green surroundings at the site of a roofless abbey. It's one of the few events in ceramics that is fairly local to me and most of the potters in attendance here are not found at other bigger events like Potfest. It's worthy of a visit should you be in the area and on from Friday until Sunday.
The potters who attend Earth & Fire tend to come back year after year. This includes, Richard Heeley who produces small porcelain cups and teapots with free-flowing brush decoration, applying cobalt oxide to create landscape scenes from his experiences whilst travelling in Japan. To me it is the epitome of perfection and restricted decoration in a small simple form. I bought one of these cups from him in 2015.
This year I bought a highly decorative wall piece by Jean Paul Landreau, a French potter who uses coloured slips to decorate abstract plate-like forms. In the past I have bought a small crystalline glazed vase and pot from Jorg Baumoller.
