Clentrie Farm plate decoration progress

This little shard was found in the field where we dug the clay. It's inclusion in the plate tells the story of our clay digging, but it also makes you wonder who once owned the piece and how did it get here. It makes you think of the cycle of life too, where even fired clay goes back to the earth. Our soil not only feed us, but can throw up our history too.

Eating out at St Andrews Cheese

Making connections

Making connections...

I (Christine) am reading a beautiful book called Spittalfields Life by the gentle author. I was drawn to the book by its book cover with twa Wally Dugs actually two Staffordshire dogs decorated by Rob Ryan. It turns out Spittalfields Life is both book and blog telling the stories of the lives of those living and working in the East end of London, especially those lives of the stallholders working in the various markets. You find yourself privy to intimate conversations of exceptional lives. Each entry is categorised with street life, human life, past life, culinary life, market life etc. My current favourite page is 367 and the paragraph describing the merits of a Spittlefield weavers chair, it shares such affinity with Sean's Whitby pancheon I'd like to see both artefacts get together for a photo. Do we have a gentle author in Fife?

The gentle authors mission to record the stories of Spittalfield highlights my shared desire to reveal other stories and expand on the processes in which we find ourself through this commission. I think these might be less holistic than I'd like and present more as fragments of our sustainable intentions.

"I like this sad old stool for its functional austerity and evidence of wear. Commonplace objects that are used my many people in the course of daily life always speak to me more than rare precious artefacts. "

In piecing together bits of information about our first visits to collect clay and bring together what we've collected from pillars of hercules and puddledub, I feel the visual narratives will be fragments of our experience and this could be used as a decorative device as plate patterns/decoration. I couldn't resist collecting 8 shards of pottery from the field at Clentrie farm,  wherever you go in Fife evidence of the potteries heritage is washed up on our shores and found in fields-the revelation of treasures. At present I'm swamped by the quantity of information that might adorn the plates and goblets, trying to remain true to the simplicity of the country potters pattern making might prove difficult. The shapes of the ceramic shards make attractive shapes and might provide a framework for symbols and signatures associated with the producers foods and recipes - The difficulty will be reaching a consensus with Sean.

Telling this commission process might not be as as in-depth as our digging, our intention is that our digital stories will create further curiosity, our fragments might led like place markers to new journeys and future stories at Farmers Markets throughout Fife, finding new gentle authors in Fife!

Billy's fish van

More shards

Collected from the water front in Tayport.

Shards

These shards were picked up in the field we dug the clay on Clentrie Farm (Puddledub). Christine and Erin have sharp eyes for them. Where do they come from, though? They are some distance from the house or an obvious midden. We were told later that the burnt remains of slum clearances were spread on fields...

Shards might play some part in our decoration of the plates. Each one tells it's own incomplete story...