Seeing as I now know that somebody out there really reads my blog (see my previous post) I thought I’d tell you about my weekend with Hadar……So last Thursday I set off (with a silly amount of luggage and shoes) for three days Hadar Jacobson. The course was organised by Tracey Spurgin of Craftworx, whose studio is located near the picture postcard pretty village of Beverly.
The three day course kicked off on Friday morning at 9am. There were I think 12 excited participants in all eager to learn from the fantastic Hadar. After a demonstration on how to mix her clays and some of her pieces off we went to do it our selves. Hadar asked us to make one small piece to ensure we all had something fired so we could go through the finishing process with our dremels. Naturally for all of us the temptation to make either lots of pieces or larger pieces with around 400g of unmixed clay each was very big !! By the end of the first day there were a lot of pieces around!!!
Hadar demonstrated how she makes her own firing box and loads it with coconut carbon and where to place the pieces. This was really interesting as i’ve thus far fired my Copper & Bronze pieces in the stainless steel container which I HATE as it makes such a mess!! Its not the carbon but the stainless steel that just sheds off black mess!! Firing this way there is no mess in the kiln at all!! Also – she fires with out a lid.
I think the pieces above were fired in an open firing – but I could be wrong – I didnt have a piece in this firing load and was busy working on what has become a bit of an EPIC bracelet ………….(more on that later). We all tested to see if the pieces had fired fully with our dremel – by sanding the piece on the back. If its at all grainy then it needs to be repaired and refired. Some of the above pieces didn’t fire fully and a couple crumbled as a release agent other than olive oil had been used. All part of the learning curve….. I was lucky – my piece was fully fired so I was able to move onto sanding it with the dremel.
This picture above shows some of what was made – much of this wasnt fired so went home with its creators to be fired later. As I type my kiln is firing my second text piece – its a thin square of copper and bronze – and firing at an hour at 832 resulted in it not being fully fired. This second piece I’ll fire for 2 hours…. fingers crossed!! I’m super keen to fire my parts for the bracelet and also a large pendant with a super cute bird image on it (thanks to the lovely Debbie Carlton who let me use her great texture stamps). You can see it in the picture above – the large piece on the left.
We were also lucky enough to be shown Hadars Mokume -gane technique which I LOVE! I cant wait to have a go. Its versatile and very clever, and Ive had so many ideas floating around in my head since been shown this! If you get the chance to go on a course with Hadar then GO!!! She is a generous teacher, phenomenally talented and very very clever! Huge thanks to Tracey for organizing it!
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And now to the reason for the title of my post ………..
Really what I wanted to say was load of bad words………… but fiddlesticks will do!! The above piece was large and had a significant bend in it after firing. It was hiding under some papers on my desk…. I unknowingly leaned on it as I reached for something and heard a suspicious noise, looked under the papers – and there was my broken pendant! Ah well – you live and learn…. don’t let your work lurk under papers on your desk!!
