Tuesday…after the West Elm workshop

I spent most of last week getting ready for the workshop I was running at West Elm in London on Saturday…I was never one for  party bags when my son was younger, but I was obviously making up for it…everyone would receive their own goodie box, with a box of Pastiglie Leone, individual ceramic hearts made specially for the event by ceramicist  Holly Bell as were the gingham aprons beautifully made by Emma from Sew Recycled…I spent quite a bit of time experimenting… and collecting inspiration… …I arrived early at West Elm on Saturday morning to set up ( with fantastic helping hands from Griffin, Rad, Dom and Arresta ) in the Market area of the store which was perfect…I brought a few of my own props including an old family copper kettle and old cigar tins my Dad used to keep electrical bits and pieces in……once the boxes were opened
…lots of wire, mess and creativity got under wayI was particularly chuffed that Xanthe Berekely came along too, to document the whole workshop photographically, and so at this point I hand the images over to her… ( ie: all the beautiful pictures below are Xanthe’s… )

I encouraged people to work with a thought for ikebana, particularly with their fascinators ( even though ikebana actually means ‘cut flowers in water’ which these weren’t ) and the creations were absolutely wonderful and a real highlight of the morning… every time someone produced one I wanted to wear it; they were so simple and so beautiful!

Japanese ikebana is a big thing to me and has been hugely influential and inspiring to my work over the last few years; the art of ikebana speaks volumes, and I have come to to it via the amazing collection of 1960’s Japanese ceramics, books and certificates ( one of them is in the picture below ) which belonged to my Granny as she was a qualified practitioner and which I saved after her death…

( there’s another blog post about that here )

‘The artist’s intention behind each arrangement is shown through a piece’s colour combinations, natural shapes, graceful lines, and the usually implied meaning of the arrangement’.

Every piece I create has some sort of meaning, either subtle, subconscious or abstract and is always open to the viewers own interpretation…

…and then today when I was out on a half term walk, I couldn’t help thinking that I’d sort of like to wear this…

You can see some of my experiments and fascinators from the workshop on my Steller Stories account here too