This month we are delighted to have another guest maker join us

Ceramicist, Bee Hayes from As The Crows Fly

We thought Bee's work would sit well with all of ours and it's already flying out the door with happy customers !

She has essentially two ranges: her beautiful hand thrown and hand decorated ceramics - for that special occasion!

And a her Peacock and Partridge collection of illustrated fine bone china which is fun, retro and stylish but also very affordable .

We asked her tell us a little about herself,her work and what inspires her.

Firstly please can you introduce yourself

My name is Bee Hayes and my business is called As the Crows Fly. Here's a self portrait of me in one of my favourite places – the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh – half an hour from where I grew up in Dunfermline.

I’ve been running my own business as a designer maker since the end of 2013. My work has changed so much since I started! It’s been a really exciting, evolving process. Currently I am concentrating on a few different things: hand thrown porcelain; illustrations translated into bone china ware and tea towel designs; slipcast stained porcelain. I come from a design/illustration background, having trained and worked as a fashion designer previously, so surface pattern and detail have always been really central to my work. I also love to use material objects in my own home that bring a sense of joy, satisfaction or pleasure when doing small functional things such as eating, drinking, displaying flowers or washing dishes. So, bringing affordable beauty into functional ware has always been central to my practice

This year I’m concentrating on new skills – I’ve just completed a ceramics residency in Denmark, learning the art of plaster mould making and slip casting so I’m hoping that later this year I’ll be in production with my new coloured porcelain slipcast range. It was a much more technical and design led way of working- much more like my pre-ceramics working practice.

I’m also exploring a subtler approach to surface interest by experimenting with new glaze effects as a contrast to my hand illustrations. Amongst all this, I also love to simply sit and draw and illustrate and I feel immense satisfaction when firing my illustrations onto fine bone china vessels from Stoke-on-Trent – that sense of a ‘perfect’ product with an identical, regulated form and pattern gives me a completely different thrill from the wares I produce from scratch from a ball of clay!

Can you talk us through the process of creating a piece of your work?

To make a hand thrown porcelain mug, like some of the pieces currently in Fig, first I weigh out a ball of clay and carefully knead it – a process called ‘wedging’ - to make the clay pliable and get rid of any air bubbles as these would expand and ruin the piece during firing. Then I centre the clay on the wheel, spinning fast, before slowing to pull up the walls of the mug and refine them to a nice smooth surface using a tool called a ‘rib.’ I set this initial vessel shape to dry off for a while until it’s ’leather hard’ – usually the next day in this weather! Then the mug form is turned upside down on the wheel and carefully trimmed using sharp tools to smooth and shape the foot. While I’m doing that I will have created handles for my mugs and set them to harden off so that when the cup is ready I can carefully affix the handle and wrap it all up to dry slowly before the first ‘bisque’ firing. The next stage is to illustrate the piece – I use a fine underglaze bottle with a nib to hand draw botanical and slightly whimsical illustrations of wild pea pods, flowers and tendrils, or dandelion leaves and seed heads around the mug. I then add some swishes of metal oxides on the linear motifs to deepen the colour in some areas before glazing in a combination of transparent and subtley coloured glazes. Finally I fire the mug to a very high temperature which makes the porcelain extremely strong and dense. I love the way porcelain really enhances the colours applied to it’s white surface, and the smooth silky finish it gives.

Where do you find inspiration?

All over the place! I love to trawl through mid century design photos, just internalizing all the colours and shapes. I’m always snapping things I like too – colour, shape, texture, packaging, architectural features, I love these shots I took of Portishead’s Art Deco lido.

I love picking my favourite plants and getting involved with really detailed drawings of them that I can then manipulate into my designs. I’m influenced by all kinds of things really from travel in far off places to fantastic exhibitions by favourite artists such as Joan Eardley, David Hockney. I love the coast – the rocks and pebbles and beach-combed treasures are all consuming while I’m there for collecting, drawing, collating, arranging. I think something that inspires and confounds me most is trying to get to the bottom of how our design brains work – what makes me see something and respond to it in such a different way to another artist or maker – always trying to push yourself to be more true to your own vision is in itself an inspiring process.

Who inspires you? Who are your favourite makers ?artists?

I’m really excited by a lot of contemporary makers just now. I love ceramics by Wenda Vincent, a talented studio mate and ceramicist Katharina Klug, both of whom have an enviably strong handwriting to their work. I love the striking jewellery of Caroline Finlay and Miya Hayes. I was hugely inspired by many of the people I met while on residency in Denmark, in particular New Zealand sculptor Jim Cooper [pic. And on a larger scale, as I mentioned earlier, Joan Eardley is a permanent fave – a Scottish painter from the 1950s, very well known at home in Scotland but perhaps not so much down here. Her vision and relentless dedication to her artwork and the energy and personal interpretation she managed to bring into her landscapes and slum portraits are phenomenal. I’m also really into Peter Randall-Page just now, his sculptures, yes, but mainly his fantastically striking earth-pigment drawings.

Describe your studio or workspace?

At home I draw and illustrate and design in my overgrown garden, [pic] or my overgrown studio-office room, none of it is ergonomic or practical, all of it is messy and full of ‘things’… For my ceramics I have an equally overstuffed studio space at the fantastic Maze Studios in Barton Hill – home to an inspiring community of makers, all producing remarkably different wares and pieces, it’s a great place to be because of the people there and the amount of communal space to work outside of your own little cubby hole. In the picture my desk is full of bisque fired porcelain waiting to be hand illustrated.[pic]

Bee will be with us in Fig for at least3-6months don't miss the opportunity to come and see her stunning work. We figure you'll be sorely tempted to buy some to take home with you !

Posted by Katie Wallis