Young Arts August 2009 - Message in a Bottle - Part One

Part Two 20 August 2009 >>

Building Day Programme 13 August 2009

A West Street Potters Farnham Summer Project with Tom Barnett,
an incendiary ceramicist, funded by the Young Arts Group of FDFAS.

Over two days, with a week in between to allow for drying, a bottle sculpture was constructed and fired in Alice Holt Forest. The clay mix, designed to cope with rapid drying and unpredictable firing conditions, was trodden by energetic children who out-performed any machine that could have been used. This ready mix was rolled and cut, using a cardboard template, into scaled down bricks - customised by each maker. Faces, animals, bored holes, abstract impressed designs and signatures brought a graffiti quality to the ‘bottle wall’.

Tom and a team of volunteer apprentice masons used the conventional method of wall building, the only differences being 'slip' (clay and water mixed to a soup) was used to join the courses, and the masons had to cope with rather wet bricks. Late in the day there were alarming signs of bulging , counteracted with improvised bandages and a small fire lit [in the firebox] to aid drying. On the pre-firing day a double thickness Ceramic Fibre blanket was secured around the bottle and this effectively became the temporary kiln.