Celebrating Art No 2 - Marianne de Trey Bowl

I'd like to start by saying a big thankyou to everyone who commented on my 100th Blip yesterday and how supported I feel by your comments. THANK YOU.

I've had a request for instructions about how I created yesterdays image and I'm going to write this now - if anyone is interested let me know. I can either e-mail it or put it onto my `Posterous site'.

Today's been a funny day in that I've been attempting to finish writing the teacher toolkit for `Australia Here we Come'. Most of it was completed by the beginning of September and I really hoped for some editor feedback at that time. Unfortunately because of her workload this didn't happen. I knew once time had passed I'd find it difficult to pick up the threads again, and this is exactly what has happened. I'm trying to complete the introductory pages and now I have a model I can see that the editors interpretation of what should go on page 6 is different to mine! I've spent an awful lot of time writing round in circles this morning and I'm hoping I've done enough to be able to write some sensible stuff when I start again tomorrow. It's really very hard to regain my enthusiasm for the project at the moment. Hopefully just a post Christmas `blip'!

I love the delicacy and richness of this bowl and the way the wax resist pattern provides a visual counterpoint to the symmetry of the shape. It's quite small, measuring 11cm across and 4.5cm high, which isn't immediately obvious in this image. I've added an additional image of this bowl to my Blipfolio Artefact Gallery.

Marianne de Trey was born into a Swizz family in 1913. She originally studied textiles at the Royal College of Art before setting up a pottery at Skinners Bridge, near Dartington with her husband Sam Haile. He unfortunately died in a road accident the following year. There is lots of information about this potter on the web - a good place to start is the Octavius website >>> The bowl was a present and I think was probably purchased from Dartington Hall in Devon. It probably dates from the mid 1990's, though a similar design on the web but in a different colour pallette gives a date of 1980.