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My vase is glazed and I’m very happy with the result.

I experimented with a couple of ways to drape the beads, but this didn’t agree with the slippery glazed surface, so in the end I just decided to tie them around the ´neck’ like a stacked necklace, which is reminiscent of the tribal jewellery I’ve researched.

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We went to watch a smoke firing and I decided to put a couple of my failed jewellery pieces in, just out of curiosity. I was warned they might brake but I’m looking foreword to seeing the result. It’s a very interesting process.

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When it came to making a jewellery piece to wrap around the vase, I took inspiration from both the tribal jewellery that I had looked at previously, and from traditional Ethiopian jewellery. It would have been closer to authenticity if the white beads had been black, but I was afraid that these would overpower the design of the vase. I used a thin gold wire to create the spirals.

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Carolinda Tolstoy

Tolstoy is a British Ceramicist and designer of Middle Eastern descent, which shows very strongly in her work, which is inspired by traditional Persian pottery. I imagine she is a lesser known artist as it was difficult to find pictures of her work of decent quality, but I love the way she uses nature and plant life as her inspiration and stylises it to become beautifully decorative.

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Finished the underglaze for the vase. I was very happy with how the colours turned out. For the outline I used a ceramic pencil, which was a challenge not to smudge as I worked but I liked the rougher effect it gave.

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I figured out how I wanted to decorate the surface of my vase in my notebook. I started by just looking at the plants in the landscape photos I’ve been using, then also looked at a decorative cloak one of the tribeswomen is wearing in the photos I used in my previous post.

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I started to think of the type of jewellery I might make as my second material to decorate te vase with. I looked at some photos of tribespeople from around Africa for inspiration, and in doing so also found some inspiration for the surface design.

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Attempting to make the jewellery was difficult. I tried rolling out a slab and cutting the shapes out but the slab was too wet and they came out very rough. I tried playing around a bit but nothing I made was really successful. I did however learn from this and would like to try something similar in the future.

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Laurie Bricker

Bricker is a designer and maker of bold and stylish ceramic jewellery. It is easy to see the African influence in much of her work with her use of geometric shapes and large statement pieces. It is somewhat unusual to see successful jewellers who work primarily with clay but I think it works beautifully.

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While the vase was being fired, I was feeling inspired by Africa’s widespread tradition of bold, oversized jewellery and decided to try making some. I took the tree in the above image as inspiration for the different shapes and arrangements I wanted to try and I started by making them out of paper.

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All there was left to do before the vase went into the kiln was to use one of the moulds I made to create a 3D element in the surface design. At first I wished that I had made more variations of the mould but I’m glad now that I didn’t because I like the repetitive design I ended up with.

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Finished the structure of my vase. I was very happy with it at this stage, despite that the surface could have been more even.

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Ardmore Ceramics

Ardmore is a luxury South African design brand with some of the region’s most successful artists behind it. I think the colours represent Africa’s vibrant culture and landscape very well and I love the combination of 3D and 2D decoration. I was inspired to incorporate both of these elements into my own design.

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I chose one of my ideas from my notebook & started making my vessel. I made the base in a bisque mould and then continued to build the form through coiling. Due to the shape of the mould the base was slightly wider than it was meant to be but this may have made it easier to create a balanced shape.

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I was inspired by Hitomi Hosono to create some moulds to bring a 3D element to the surface decoration on my vessel. I started by trying to create something realistic, as she would, but I found that I got a more interesting result using a sort of textured paper to imprint onto the clay.

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Hitomi Hosono

Hosono is a London-based Japanese ceramicist whose beautifully intricate pieces are inspired by both botanical studies and her own memories of the Japanese landscape and the greenery that surrounds her in East London. While her work does not remind me of the more exotic landscapes I’m looking at, it does show a deep appreciation for nature that I’m trying to convey in my project.

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I started to develop some ideas in my notebook, both for the form of the vessel and the decoration. Part of our brief for this project is that we need to combine our clay work with another material. I thought it would be interesting to try to make some sort jewellery inspired by African tradition, I wasn’t sure how to go about it yet but I did start to think about how I might drape it. I also made a small thumb pot to see if I liked this form;