Rye Pottery

Video – Hand-Painting the Wife of Bath

We’re loving the buzz around the launch of “The Wife of Bath: A Biography” by Oxford Uni Chaucer specialist Professor Marion Turner. The book is published by Princeton University Press & has had incredible reviews. And lots of you will know that we love anything that celebrates & demystifies the many women who have been airbrushed from history.

So to celebrate we filmed our very own Wife of Bath figure being painted so you can see how we bring our own amazing version of this renowned medieval woman to life. We know lots of our collectors love seeing how we actually make and paint things here, so this is a short 1 minute insight into Chaucer’s most famous pilgrim being hand-decorated by one of our talented team – using freehand brushwork. You can see how the colours change after she’s been fired for the second time.

Discover more about the professor’s book by visiting the Princeton Uni website here and if you’d like to see more about the 37 figures in our hand-made Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Collection do click here.

Wow! The Guardian names Rye Pottery one of the UK’s top Ten Indie Shops

A bit late to the party, what with the run-up to Christmas and all that, but we were chuffed to bits to be named one of The Guardian‘s Top Ten Independent Shops in the UK at the start of December. And the reason it’s a particularly big compliment is that all the shops featured were voted for by the newspaper’s readers.

They were looking for, ahem, quirky places, so our totally bonkers approach to working and making a living finally came good.

Do click here to read the article on The Guardian’s website and discover the other fab places suggested for shopping inspiration. And if you like the look of our Mid-Century Modern lamp base in the photo then click here.

Food service now open at Gusbourne Vineyard

Anyone for Cheese?

We’ve just finished a great commission for one of England’s finest wine makers – Gusbourne.

They’re just over the border in Kent and on top of producing delicious booze they’ve now launched a new Discovery Tour & Tasting. So if you visit their new restaurant “The Nest” at Appledore, you may well find yourself supping something delicious, while nibbling something local … from one of our beautiful terracotta plates.

Do pop in to see us if you make the trip & check out Gusbourne and their wines by clicking here. 

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White City House

Our last few tweaks to the final of four majolica decorations chosen by the Soho House Interiors team for their Mid Century White City House project.

Practice makes perfect.

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Our stand at the Wealden Times MidSummer Fair

We thought it would be fun to share a pic of our stand at The Wealden Times Midsummer Fair.

June 2014 was our first time at the show, which is staged at Hole Park in Rolvenden, and we’re pleased to say we had a fun and busy three days.

Our tent was packed full of other stylish stands and we met lots of charming visitors, and from a selfish point of view the reaction to our pots, not least our new lines, shapes and colourways, was very uplifting.

So the next step will be planning the stand for the MidWinter Fair at the Walled Garden at Bedgebury Pinetum in November, once we’ve recovered from three days on our feet that is!

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The Prince of Cambridge – Finally here but for us no name means …

We all send The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge our best wishes on the birth of their first son – The Prince of Cambridge.

But please may we beg the happy parents not to keep us all waiting too long to hear what he is to be called. We – alongside countless other British companies around the country – are all waiting primed and ready to fire our hand-made and hand-decorated commemorative ceramic tankards in the kiln, but, when, and only when, they reveal the last piece of the puzzle. Like many other British firms, we have the additional problem of summer holidays, as if they delay the naming for too long some of our talented but small team will be away on their well earned holidays. HM the Queen was not the only person wanting everything to be sorted before the holidays arrived!

In the hope of being as prepared as possible we’ve worked through a host of different designs to allow for different months, long names, short names and so on. Not that it’s useful to anyone but privately some of us reckon it won’t be a Richard (pre-Tudor), or even a William (too close to his dad), and definitely not Cnut! But we quite fancy George or possibly Albert. If it was a girl we were quite sure Alexandra, Elizabeth or Victoria had a very good chance – but alas, that’s for the next one, and fortunately our business is making pottery not bookmaking!

Our hand-thrown tankards will be produced just as they were when Prince William was born back in 1982.  Featuring the two most popular colourways for our Royal Commemorative pieces, Cobalt Blue and Blue Green, these charming little mugs will be decorated with hand-printed (not digital) transfers and additional hand-painted banding. All very traditional and quintessentially Rye Pottery.

The waiting list for these limited edition tankards commemorating the Birth of the Prince of Cambridge is already growing from our band of dedicated collectors, so do let us know soon if you would like one. The mugs are £18.00 each plus p&p.

As soon as we have a name we’ll hope to provide a sneak peak here of the design.

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Edward Burra & Wally Cole at Rye Art Gallery

Wally Cole’s “Swan” – photograph courtesy of David Crew – Click to enlarge

Rye Art Gallery has a wonderful exhibition on at the moment featuring the work of printmaker Norman Ackroyd RA. Entitled The Furthest Lands – A journey round the British Isles, the exhibition runs until 30th June and is well worth a visit, with cheque book in hand!

We’re also very pleased to say that running alongside the main exhibition, Gallery 5 is featuring work from its permanent collection by renowned 20th century British painter Edward Burra and Rye Pottery’s own post-war co-founder, sculptor and potter Wally Cole.

Celebrating what would have been the Centenary of Wally’s birth in 1913, the show features Wally’s striking sculpture “Swan”, which the Cole family donated to the Rye Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection. There are a handful of other examples of Wally’s work on show at the moment, not least a powerful studio ceramic bowl which is on loan from painter David Crew. Wally was a regular exhibitor at the gallery during his lifetime and since his death in 1999 the gallery has also staged a number of retrospectives there too.

Do take a look at all the work on show at Rye Art Gallery whenever you’re visiting, there’s always a tempting array of contemporary arts and crafts to be seen and bought as well as work on show from the gallery’s permanent collection. Find out more on the Rye Art Gallery website here.

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Potting as pain or pleasure

Listening to the Today programme this morning while  potter/ author Edmund De Waal was being interviewed, we were delighted to hear him describe potting as “A tremendous art which we should all take seriously.”  It is always amazing and indeed rather off putting to be told by a customer looking at a one-off hand painted pot or tile ” Ooh that is very expensive”  while telling you of the lovely “art print” they have just  bought for a much larger sum of money! We have always felt that not only is a pot just as beautiful as a painting,  it often has the additional advantage that you can use it as well as look at it.

Here at Rye Pottery we produce a considerable number of one offs at, what we think, are remarkably low prices, especially when you have just opened the kiln to find that 3 or 4 pieces have decided to shatter during the firing cycle.  The flip side of the coin is the joy and excitement that opening a good kiln brings to all of us. Better than Christmas – is how Wally Cole used to describe handling a newly fired perfect pot which had come through its ordeal of  fire with the final result excelling anything you could have possibly imagined.  De Waal perhaps should have added this morning, that Potting is also a disease for which there seems to be no known immunisation!

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