Holidays

As I write this, I am sitting in my room with the view of the Swiss mountains. Yesterday I came back from my trip to Croatia. I am not sure if I can really call it holidays: a yearly family reunion is fun but not necessarily a perfect choice for a relaxing vacation. However, we had a great time; my parents’ house was crowded, noisy and filled with children’s laughter. The food was great. We picked veggies and salad from my mother’s garden. We ate fish that we fished by ourselves. I even had the chance to spend some hours at the deserted beach, accompanied only by chirping crickets. 

Some people still would call it holidays, I guess. 

Now that I have tanked up enough sun and filled my lungs with sea air, I am more than ready to do what I love the most: ceramics. 

Peka - a traditional Croatian way to grill

Just in case you thought I had some lazy holidays, you can see that both, my ceramics and I, worked very hard. Here you have some real Croatian Blues!

Gnome’s Egg

Today’s post is not about some religious holiday that includes coloured eggs and fluffy bunnies. It is about how my son has motivated me to work more monumental. I have mentioned already that we are spending a lot of time outside; either working in the garden or having some long, long walks through our village and nearby woods. On this sluggish walks we would stop to admire flowers, animals and all kind of machines. He also likes to look at the garden sculptures like huge snails or garden gnomes. These gardens and front yards are mostly very neat and well cared for – which gives you the feeling that they all look the same. Also, there is something like the garden trend when it comes to the outdoor decoration.  

So, as soon as my boy showed some interest in those charming garden gnomes I started to think about decorating my own garden. It had to be something new and something my son and other kids would have fun with. The result is this huge egg. 

It may seem as a no big deal but this egg is my first sculptural works since my school days. I built it with the clay leftovers that I had recycled just few weeks ago. It was a great feeling to form something that wasn’t going to become a cup, a bowl or any other functional piece of pottery. It’s only purpose is to be an egg. Few kids asked me already where it came from so I let them guess. Mostly they tipped on the dinosaur egg.  

And, I almost forgot:

Love For Tiles

When I watch a film I always take a close look at the ceramics being used: Sometimes it is a fancy Victorian lady enjoing a porcelain cup of tea and other times it is a hobbit drinking beer from a stoneware mug. The film with the most fascinating ceramics is Pedro Almodóvar’s Todo sobre mi madre. I watched the film 13 years ago, but I can still remember those astonishing colourful mosaics from the Barcelona apartments. 

Ever since, I have had a dream to make my own tiles. So here is my humble attempt. These mosaic tiles are going to become the top of a small wooden night stand.