My pottery adventure mapped the journey I had taken on a fabulous PaperLove e-course run by renowned book binder and paper artist, Rachel Hazel. After being challenged to create a “personal map” of any kind we wished.
I immediately was drawn back to childhood memories of visiting the North Norfolk coast and playing amongst the dunes. I instinctively created a map of this coastline using old sewing pattern paper, which has a lovely sandy colour and has dotted marks all over it, that I used to show journeys between each place, which I hand-lettered with blue ink using a found feather quill…and a wash of blue for the sea…
The connection between the memories of the place and the visuals of a map felt too strong to leave it there and so, as I was also taking a pottery class at the time, I decided to create a hand-made ceramic plate onto which I could translate my papery map into something else. So I carved the map into the clay and used a combination of painting with cobalt (deep blue) oxide and impressing the letters of the place names using a set of alphabet stamps.
The plate is reminds me of exciting adventures we all take in our lives. It highlighted to me the joy of bringing a journey to life, creating tangible memories and it’s where I began my journey to create and share Maps of Joy.