like hyacinth flowers to bees the Jue creative market on Sunday proved a magnet to image conscious Beijingers, many sporting matching bicycles… bamboo and string
not in Beijing
I can hear the bees buzzing through the double glazing kite flying in the carpark knitted creation in the Hutongs children honing their marketting skills according to Robert Macfarlane, the 2008 Oxford Junior Dictionary excluded this list of words “catkin, brook, minnow, acorn, buttercup, heron, almond, ash, beetroot…gooseberry, raven, blackberry, tulip and conker”
Hong Kong’s pierced concrete patterns merge with surface designs from 1970s’ tableware in many of the pieces I made whilst living there – not always an easy fit. Now I live in Beijing and vintage elements can be spotted around the city.
Denby jug linocuts
Here’s a favourite Hong Kong building – a church in Garden Road – quite hard to photograph on a busy uphill dual carriageway.
According to Jonathan Adler, “the reckless disregard for convention…is completely liberating…When I’m feeling restricted by pottery dogma…I think of the organic, rule-breaking forms…and I feel inspired.”
Garden Road church
Some baby blue concrete in Beijing.
this is the garden wall of the embassy of Somalia here in Beijing’s diplomatic quarter
Cylindrical earthenware vessel with pierced holes, scraffito, stencilled coloured slip and copper and cobalt oxide.
there are so many great vintage pieces of design to inspire – ceramics, textiles, crafts – I guess it’s a subliminal nostalgia thing – I’m drawn to explore the retro theme, to respond with my own work and experiment with juxtapositions that reflect the changing nature of contemporary life and new opportunities and influences…
this Lisa Larson cat has travelled from Glasgow to Hong Kong to Beijing along with the Hornsea plant potthe Japanese love Scandinavian vintage design and they publish a plethora of books and magazines on the subject many featuring enticing looking shops as if we need another reason to visit this fabulous countryevery cat enjoys a sunny spot, our local coffee shop cat is no exception – it is a friendly and possibly slightly unhygeinic accompaniment to the amazing New York style cheesecake they bake on the premises
With plans for studio Beijing, in the year of the goat, to be up and running soon I’m looking over images of some formative pieces as inspiration for the future and a reminder if what’s already been achieved…
sushi plate with fish for Ubi gallery, BeijingG.O.D. selection
A very early work from my GSA degree show reappears in Florette’s beautiful gardenbird tiles waiting for some legs to make a coffee table, vintage style circa 1960stiles mono-printed with Hong Kong pigeons and gate detailFIVE – JCCAC 5th anniversary exhibition, December 2013 – note to self – always place work on a plinth – someone walked backwards into these whilst taking a photo and smashed them like skittles !fracturing the concrete rhizome – Unit Gallery , September 2012, I have many macrame plant pot holders waiting patiently for plants in pots to bring them to life…mono-print plant pots
There’s a tangible sense of excitement in the air here. The skies are clear and the pollution is absent, for the time being at least.
clear evening sky may not last for long
New Year’s Eve in China
Fireworks exploding in the street – misrule is the order of the night – lit by cigarette. Loud bangs definitely more important than visual display. Fire engines and street cleaners kept constantly busy. The local security guards all posed with fire extinguishers for a photo-op at the start of the night as we live within a historically important – and mostly built of wood – location.
security guard observes fireworks across the road from our apartmentstreet fireworksfireworks in the hutongshutong rocket
Snow fell and settled briefly, a rare sight in Beijing and evaporated quickly, no lingering ice on the roads, thankfully.
cycling in the snow, hard to spot, you need to squint a littlesnowy landscape seen from the trainlamma temple flags – the few million people left in Beijing congregated here on New Year’s Day
street crochet outside our apartment
As if being on the back of a bicycle in Beijing wasn’t quite hazardous enough, it seems that children sleeping on the way home from school are taking things to a new level, although the traffic is slow and the road surfaces are smooth you really need to have your wits about you as there are no traffic rules here when it comes to cycle lanes.
sleeping child balanced on the trip home from school
The Spring Festival ends with the full moon and of course another full night of fireworks!
a glimpse of the full moon that rounds off the spring festival
The following images are from my visit to the world famous porcelain city in July 2014. Just a short flight away from Shenzhen, we had a great time and saw so much that it’s hard to pick just a few pics that give a small taste of what we saw. Jingdezhen is a truly amazing place that embodies living history not just for China but for the whole planet as ceramics is one of the oldest human activities and there’s a real sense of this in the town. China was obviously way ahead of the curve making ceramics on an industrial scale. I recommend the trip for anyone interested in the making process, not forgetting Britain’s own industrial heritage at Stoke on Trent.
At the ancient kiln museum all the workers are [sorry!] ancient. Here is a carving demonstration, this pot has not been fired so this is a very skilled job, hence the age perhaps.Yes it’s translucent.more intricate carving on a dry unfired clay body, this can take months so not making a mistake is quite importantmass production Jingdezhen style
Applying decals to bowlsmoving pots [yes unfired] by manual labourmore pots on the movehaving tea with the artistmaking tiles, cigarette essentialthe tile maker’s studiomaking giant pots, connecting sections requires a team of workers [usually topless men with cigarettes]another giant potperformers preparing to demonstrate the porcelain orchestrain the YHA computers speak a universal languagesaggars as plant holdersthe brush shop owner and inspector of brushes, another revered expertthe “antiques” market, best to get there at 4am if at all possible, we made it at 7a view of the hills from the pottery workshop
bamboo and string
kite flying in the carpark 
knitted creation in the Hutongs 
children honing their marketting skills 
according to Robert Macfarlane, the 2008 Oxford Junior Dictionary excluded this list of words “catkin, brook, minnow, acorn, buttercup, heron, almond, ash, beetroot…gooseberry, raven, blackberry, tulip and conker”
![At the ancient kiln museum all the workers are [sorry!] ancient. Here is a carving demonstration, this pot has not been fired so this is a very skilled job, hence the age perhaps.](https://rachelceramics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/j1.jpg)
![moving pots [yes unfired] by manual labour](https://rachelceramics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/j8.jpg)
![making giant pots, connecting sections requires a team of workers [usually topless men with cigarettes]](https://rachelceramics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/j14.jpg)
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