The Croquet Unomi

Croquet is such a pleasure. I love chasing balls around a not-quite-flat lawn to persuade them to pass through narrow hoops, in fresh air under a big sky with  cockatoos wheeling, all in good company.

These beakers aim to express that pleasure. Beakers are perfect for expresso coffee, but they are equally useful for other drinks (tea, herbals, whisky) or indeed chutney or jam.

They are thin porcelain, rolled, shaped and decorated, then fired to 1170 degrees.

   These are some of the techniques I used

Sky I used cobalt salts so that I could create Clouds and cockatoos by drawing into the blue with acid.

Balls

It is very hard to paint identical circles, far less with clay where you need three coats of colour for each ball. I made identical tissue paper circles by enclosing the paper between two coins, and burning the paper back to the edge of the coins. Then I painted the 3 coats of colour onto the paper circle and attached it to the clay.

Hoops: I made them with copper wire which has fused and melted in the firing.

Lawn surface with bumps and dips made by filling a line of holes with iron oxide.

Grass texture is created by mixing poppy seeds into the wet clay. The seeds burn out leaving a texture behind.