grandpa stamp

After  chatting with Cynthia about 'chops' - i thought a post about my grandpa stamp was in order....

My family emigrated to Oz when I was 6 years old so grandparents weren't a big part of our lives here so my reference point apart from fuzzy memories were old black and white photos of which we have a good collection of happy family snaps, there's something about that quality of photo that is endeering just by itself, this image is of my grandad sitting on a wooden crate in the doorway of the greenhouse... anyhoo when it came time to do concept work at college wacky family stories just jumped out for me, my grandfather was quite a character and always up to something comical. So instead of being political or environmentally conscious my studio work became about childhood stories of dinner time and vintage car stories. I remember well the old black morris 1000 my grandparents had, one of the tales goes like this.....

Following us on the motorway in his black morris 1000 he decided not to use the headlights, arthur wanted to save the battery....

A few of those stories i still use on my vintage car plates, and the stamp, well i have 2  one's at the club and one at home studio,  i developed the stamp a little later it's become something i use for decoration and to mark my work, I also sign the back of all pots and sometimes the front of tile work where it is more illustrative than form work...oh and the skull is from pirate nite 07 at the club, i usually make some beakers to celebrate the year for our dinner, have a search through my back posts you'll find some amazing pics from our  annual doo..

So following are some illustrations of that and the stamp themselves that are made out of plaster and hand carved fairly deeply, any excess plaster from mold making i pour into holes made by pushing a stick into a lump of clay and vwalla! instant surfaces to carve into later. It's easy to form the end shape by rubbing the plaster a bit on some rough concrete creating bevelled edges or curved shapes... so there you have it a little history about the mark i use often.... the tile is from a wacky glaze called perfect purple- the same glaze is on the barrel - it's is a bit illusive! but i love the intermittent reduction firing i really have to work for it....