Molly

Mollv came to us in September 2005.

 We visited the Stubbington Ark local pet rescue center, thinking about a small short haired dog, for fun and walkies.

Molly was the last dog in the last cage.

She didn’t jump up, she didn’t bark. She just rested her beautiful soft head through the bars and made contact.

Her soulful eyes looked right into mine.

 They said

“I know you better than you know yourself and I chose you”.

We had ten matchless years of action, adventure, love and constant companionship.

She left us on 3^rd January 2016.

One last wildly enthusiastic swim across the Alver River and her heart gave out.
Our comfort and joy, gravity is gone from our world.

Frozen

Time to fit the underfloor heating system and in spite of a lengthy planning process
 ( we started in April) its been the most disorganized and harem scarem part of the build.
After much head scratching, many phone calls, endless discussions and an eternity of reading installation manuals by our installers, the cassettes are finally laid on the whole of the ground floor. Progress .

More phone calls, more head scratching and even more reading and the water pipes are 
eventually slotted into the cassettes.

And all pipes connected to the manifold

We recognize our two fitters have no chance of successfully pouring the huge amount of screed unaided and press our genius plasterer and mate into service. It was not a high tech process.

Eventually all the tubes are submerged into 22ml of screed ( or at least most of them).We are now waiting for the installers to decide when thy can return and commission the whole system.

Commitment phobic, its like trying to get blood from a stone. Meanwhile all other trades are on hold till we have the floor died out and we are living in the arctic wastes of an unheated house. Not nearly as much fun as the film. Let it go, let it go.

                                  

One down and one to go.

A great big thank you to all the exhibitors, friends, family and
lovely new customers who made such a great contribution to the first
Workshop Christmas Sale PORTSMOUTH. If you didn't make it, you missed.

The talented Pazuki's gorgeous scarves and Hilary Graysons intricate, inventive textiles.

Malisa and her minions from Cinema no6. 

Miesje Chafer with her bold and bang on trend textile creations. 

The energetic Clay Station perfectly embodying the fun and diversity of clay.

Exquisite jewelry from lydia feast.

Fun and functional fused glass from Josephine lapage

Fine art prints from Kevin Dean










Now girding our loins for the 5th December at The Workshop Christmas Sale London

Oasis

In the midst of all the noise and clamor the Studio is the oasis of calm we retreat to for snatched moments of creative bliss.
Were enjoying our annual clear out when we cull all our surplus stock, seconds and all the weird and wonderful experimental samples that never make it into production.
This year we have two selling events where you can add to your collections at bargain basement prices. Join us with over 20 other talented Designer makers at  

The Workshop Christmas sale PORTSMOUTH. Sat 21st/Sun 22nd Nov.

The Workshop Christmas Sale LONDON. Sat 5th Dec.
Here are just a small sample of our many bargains on offer.

Progress report.

The house renovation is plowing on with a noisy, dusty, relentlessness that's has us reeling in its wake.
Upstairs now has windows and we've moved into our lovely new lake view office.
The smallest room in the house is now handsomely clad in our Blue Orbis tile collage.

Our state of the art boiler is installed and working and looking for all the world like a miniature Pompidou center.

All of the main walls are down and out and the debris that hasn't settled on our hair and clothes has been expensively hauled away in an ever growing convoy of skips. The main beam has been installed Phew and were getting a feel for the final space at last. 

Our kiln room is finally up and running and currently providing excellent extra service as a field kitchen.

Onward  and upward.

We've been to the Venice Biennale so you don't have to.

October every other year finds us in Venice for the Biennale as my birthday treat.

Highlight of this year was the Japan Pavilion. Two wooden  boats in a complex web of red yarn, hung with thousands of keys, packed an emotional punch and tangled our hearts in its webb.

The Russian pavilion opened with a typically understated piece of Russian bravura.The face in the respirator was animated and followed you as you moved around. 

Canada recreated a backwoods shop with all the merchandise boxes and labels just off focus, very disconcerting and a re imagined painters studio with lots of jolly paint dribbles,. Fun Fun Fun.

We loved the Australian pavilion. packed with multiple collections of crafted objects with leaves and money, old sardine tins, bread and driftwood.

The weather was  heavenly so we took a trip along the Brenta canal where many Venetian patricians built the summer houses. The first visit to the  gem Malcontenta by Andrea Palladio set the bar too high for what was to follow so we jumped ship after a couple of hours and fortified by a canal-side lunch hopped on a bus back to Venice.

Informal formality.

One of our most exciting Christmas pressies was a box of Heritage vegetable seeds. They were burning a hole in my creative pocket, so to speak. In the light of the slow progress on the house renovating  front, we pressed on with the creation of the productive area of our garden.

 
Using oak sleepers stained black to create six raided beds across the whole width of the garden. The gentle slope created the stepping effect we had seen in so many formal Italian gardens. Using more of our recycled paving slabs and brick mowing strips with grass paths.

 


Molly was a great help in moving the 8 tons of topsoil and promptly made good use of the raised beds as a bed.!

Planting got underway immediately .
 Little in this world is as unprepossessing as a packet of seed and nothing touches them for explosive potential.


We are now practically vegetarian and enjoying freshly harvested French Beans, Borlottie beans, Courgettes, Asparagus peas, Beetroots, Perpetual spinach, Carrots, Sweetcorn (decimated by greedy Badgers)Rocket, Mitzuna,Radish and looking forward to Ruby chard Pak choi and Black Tuscan Kale.