Wednesday 2 December 2009
Monday 9 November 2009
Thursday 22 October 2009
Goodness gracious, great balls of mud...
My burgeoning obsession for the surface decoration of ceramics has led me to the above site (click on the picture to go to the site). Gotta love the Japanese for finding beauty in the simplest of things...
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Friday 24 July 2009
Thursday 16 July 2009
Why your bread is f*cking disgusting...
80% of English bread makes me angry. Do you know why?
The Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP).
This is how your (cheap/crap) loaf is made:
CBP is able to utilise lower-protein wheats, combined with chemical improvers, and uses intense mechanical working of the dough by high-speed mixers, together with solid vegetable fat, high quantities of yeast and water, which produces a loaf of bread from flour to sliced-and-packaged form in about three and one-half hours. By introducing several minutes of high energy mixing into the baking process, the fermentation period is substantially reduced, which increases the production speed of each loaf. The CBP method of making bread cannot be reproduced in a normal kitchen because of this requirement. Solid fat is necessary to provide structure during baking or the loaf collapses. Higher protein wheats may be used but are more expensive.
Flour, chemical oxidants and "improvers" like water, yeast, fat and salt are mechanically mixed and the dough is violently shaken for about three minutes. The large amount of energy used generates high temperatures to raise the dough with its large dose of yeast, and computer regulated cooling systems modulate the next stages. The air pressure in the mixer headspace is maintained at a partial vacuum to prevent the gas bubbles in the dough from getting too large and creating an unwanted "open" structure in the finished crumb.
The dough is cut into individual pieces and allowed to "recover" for 8 minutes. Each piece of dough is then shaped further, placed four to a tin and moved to the humidity and temperature controlled proofing chamber, where it sits for about an hour. It is now ready to be baked. Baking takes 20 minutes at 400 degrees F and then the loaves go to the cooler, where, about two hours later they are sliced, packaged and ready for dispatch.*
Pretty horrible, eh?
These guys are trying to do something about it, and so can you.
1. Don't eat CBP bread
2. Pay more for a loaf of artisan baked bread (this also supports smaller, privately owned, nicer businesses). If this sounds expensive (£2-3 for decent bread) then try to reduce your overall intake of bread.
*Czapp, Katherine. “Against the Grain: The Case for Rejecting or Respecting the Staff of Life”
Tuesday 14 July 2009
Bonkers. Brilliant.
Includes the best use of plastic cutlery tied to clothing I believe I've ever seen.
Tuesday 7 July 2009
Race relations
This, however, is both massively geeky and interesting: http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/category/journal/issues/4-the-wire/
They make it good...
http://wemakeitgood.com/
The downloadable music mixes are excellent and if the TV stuff is of the same quality, I'm not getting much work done today...
Wednesday 24 June 2009
Where did the crazy obsession come from?
I once threw a pot at an altar boy's away-day when I was about ten or eleven. It wasn't fired, it just hardened and I used it to store my coppers in for years. The pot was thrown with red clay and was about 10mm thick. It did, however have a lovely form and sat nicely in the hand.
Ever since then I've been looking for a creative outlet (guitar playing, computer music composition, drum lessons, even juggling). I've enjoyed all of these things (and still do) but it always felt like there was something missing. I suppose hanging about with all manner of creative people meant that I really wanted to stretch my artistic wings.
Being fundamentally lazy, I find that pottery ticks a lot of boxes through 1 activity. Firstly you are creating something which has a function. You can eat off it, drink from it, cook in it (another obsession!). You can even fill it with sand and hold doors open with it.
Secondly, you can touch it. Too many forms of art are "look - but don't touch". The amount of times that I've visited galleries and looked at wonderful pieces of art which beg to be touched are innumerable. I seriously doubt that fine artists all insist their beautiful, sculptural, textured pieces be viewed under the steely gaze of a gallery attendant from 4 feet away. Tate Modern take note, why are you only catering to 2 (but mostly just 1) of our 5 senses? That said, I am now struggling to find a way "smelly art" can be catered for!
The third reason for ceramics as an outlet is that it really satisfies my inner nerd. The chemical processes involved in the creation of a glaze are fantastic! Glazes can contain almost every element from the periodic table. They will all affect the final outcome in ways that can be very controlled, guaranteeing consistent output, or you can open the kiln and have only a very limited idea of what to expect. This creates either contained, regulated design or a loose uniqueness - and everything in between.
All of the above reasons create the fourth and final one. Pots can be a beautifiul canvas, just look at the work of Grayson Perry (figurative, literal) or Kyra Cane (abstract land/seascapes).
Those of you who can get down to Cornwall this summer would be well advised to make a trip to St Ives and check out The Bernard Leach Pottery. This is the guy that kicked off the craft potter's movement and, whilst (allegedly) he wasn't a tremendous thrower of pots, his influence has been huge and his writings on beauty through form have influenced thousands of potters worldwide. The pot at the top is one of his...
Thursday 18 June 2009
Wednesday 17 June 2009
http://www.martin-klimas.de/
Combining my love of ceramics, with my love of smashing stuff up!
More ceramics related postings to come, but if anybody is interested, there's an open studio at Cockpit Arts in Deptford (SE London) this weekend, more details here: http://www.cockpitarts.com/shopping-and-events/open-studios.php
I particularly like Jon's work:
