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Our assistant and encourager, the lovely Karen.

 

Karen, we may have mentioned before, has been helping us out at seatree for coming up for two years. In that time, she has grown in confidence and skill. But all the time has been encouraging and cheerful – seeing us though an exhibition, shop orders and Potfest as well as a few Open Studios.

 

Michaela met Karen at a couple of community workshops and could see that she had a feel for the clay and a head full of ideas so invited her to come and help out in exchange for some pottery time of her own. It works well. Every hour that Karen helps out, with recycling clay, loading the kiln, tidying, making pots and glazing, or wrapping up orders, she gets an hour to get creative with clay herself, and gets her pieces fired for her. We don’t measure the cost of anything except the time. It puts us on a level playing field, an hour for an hour.

 

Karen can do so much more now than before, when helping us. Sometimes she has a better way of doing things that works. And she can tidy the drying room like it never gets tidied otherwise. But what’s been amazing to see is how her pottery has developed – she is very bold with colour and design, as you can see from these images. She is now starting to sell in shops and galleries too, which is so exciting and we feel so privileged to see how she is doing.

 

Please do check out her instagram and facebook feeds – Karen Middleton Ceramics. You’ll be glad you did.

 

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