BEGINNINGS

In 1988 we left Ireland to be gardeners in France. Ten days later our employer told us to leave. Fortunately this inauspicious start was followed by its total opposite as we were very warmly helped and welcomed in St Cirque Laponie in the Auvergne, where we were pulled out of a ditch near Auch; given accommodation in Toulouse and finally relocated as guardians at La Gauterie in the Dordogne doing general maintenance and gardening in exchange for accommodation. To earn some francs I inscribed as a house painter/ ceramicist.

My wife Kay was the ceramicist, not I, I was winging it.

We had an outbuilding as a studio, a kiln on borrowed money and even an unofficial place at Riberac market thanks to the generosity of Roger and Janet who squeezed their own space to allow ours. We bought factory made plates, cups, bowls and tiles, hundreds of tiles, and decorated them with on-glaze colours and sold them, lots of them. Some years later Kay followed her own direction and I started to throw simple bowls with generous help from established local potters.

And that, dear readers, is where, totally unimagined by me, this story begins.

Jump forward 35 years and only then, after my 75th birthday does it occur to me that 90% or more of ALL the ceramics I've made, decorated and sold have gone via my little stall at Riberac market. No retail outlets, no other markets, no Galleries or intermediaries, no internet and no shipping. If you wanted a piece of this production you'd have to have gone to Riberac on a Friday morning when it wasn't raining and hopefully found an appropriate present for friends, relatives or self. In 35 years this invisible network of destinations has spread through large and sometimes surprising parts of this planet. It has taken me all these years to become aware of the impressive extent of this web.

 

That is what this book is about. It's an organic venture, guided by computer savvy friend Margaret Craig and Luddite myself. Who knows how it might evolve? I can imagine it like pins in a map of the world, photos from far flung destinations (or perhaps next door) stories perhaps, examples of other directions I've dabbled in; Raku, modelling, even anagama. Already the response has been very positive.

 

If you'd like to be included, available space permitting, please send me a digital photo of the ceramic piece, another of its location ( in a very broad interpretation: view out the window, car park, Chagos archipelago runway! Whatever. I also need the town and country. That's all we need to start putting the book together.

The email address exclusively for this project is
35yearsofwingingit@gmail.com

Please spread the word.