Tuesday 6 August 2013

An Update from Anastasia Simmons


I'm half way through AaP apprenticeship with Jeremy Steward at Wobage and having recently moved into a cottage on site I am fully absorbed into ‘potting life’. It’s been a hectic, but inspiring and rewarding few months with the summer courses and a trip to ICF at Aberystwyth. 

The summer courses play a big part of the potting year at Wobage – although a lot of man-hours go into the prep of each course, the courses themselves are really vibrant and exciting. I have especially enjoyed the guest demonstrators - Antje Ernestus, Niek Hoogland, Nic Collins and Steve Parry demonstrating on the final Jar Making Course, starting tomorrow.

Jeremy had been invited to build and fire a kiln at the ICF. Having invested a lot of time in the prep work for the construction of the kiln at Wobage and with the help of Penny and Jack (two 2nd year students from Cardiff) we managed to build, pack, fire, unpack, dismantle the kiln in just 5 days – no mean feet! The pots Jeremy got out looked really great considering it was the first firing of a new kiln with unsalted bricks and a lot of the pots sold still warm! We also got a bit of time to go to a few lectures and demonstrations. The whole experience was a really valuable lesson and I learnt a lot about brick laying and arch former carpentry (namely with the carpentry that I should stick to clay and not wood!)

Check out a few photos from the last few months…







Take a look at my blog for updates on my own practice:- http://anasimmons.wordpress.com/blog/

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