Over the past few days, we have finally set up the display in our ‘shop shed’. This video hopefully gives some indication of where we are up to.

We can’t say thankyou enough to those wonderful people who made this possible by crowdfunding us. It is incredible to think that others will invest in us, just when we needed it most in the middle of a pandemic. We will be in touch with you all…

Where would we be too without friends? Our friend Nigel helped Chris with whole process. He is a hero!

In case you missed it, here is a bit of a montage of the building process;

This year, we decided to focus our attention on a limited number of Christmas decorations instead of spreading ourselves too thinly. Last year Karen and I had a competition to see who glazed the most decorations. Karen won by glazing lots of workshops decs and I made her a special one-off as a reward! But this year, there’s only sixteen being made by me. I made twenty, used two for trials and dropped two! So, sixteen it is…

I bought some beautiful slate grey ribbon – not my usual starting point! I tried two green glazes, seen in the photo. I love the silver flakes, provided to me by Raine Clarke artist – if you don’t know her work, you can check it out here at Underwing Studio. Anyway, having done two trials I decided not to go with green but to follow my first instinct and go blue. I’m hoping with the silver they will look beautiful. It’s a small thing, but making something that feels right, is totally ‘seatree’ is really important – so, blues it is and a special word on each one, pulled out of some of Chris’s poetry.

We hope you like them. 

Watch social media for photos of the finished pieces.

We’ve just watched a beautiful talk by Rob Bell called ‘Drops like stars’. It was about the way that destructive forces, like bereavement, betrayal, debt, changes things for us in a positive way – the way that they define the future and the choices we make. He wove so many stories through the talk, including from a ceramic artist. Of course, those words really grabbed my attention. The way that every piece of clay, every error, every success, every disaster, is precious because it either works and something beautiful emerges, or we learn from it. 

In the studio, not one piece of clay is wasted. Everything that breaks or goes dry or stops cooperating in some way, gets recycled and used again another day. Some pieces that go ‘wrong’ get used for glaze trials. Some get sold as someone else loves them. Some get smashed in a very therapeutic clear out. 
Here’s a recent sculpture in the making. The poem says ‘I’ll not be drowning today’. She’s the third in line of recent makes – the first worked then cracked while drying, the second just didn’t work, and she is the third – we’ll see how it goes. I so enjoyed making her. It just came together how I imagined it. I have so very much to learn but this is one way of learning – I’ve been frustrated at times but am determined to keep moving forward. She is now fired (phew) and waiting to be glazed and fired again next week.. Watch this space!

I’ve been really lucky to receive an award from Craft Scotland for a sculpture course. It was the chance to apply for something that was about developing my art, not about the business skills. I feel so blessed to have an investment into me as an artist. The course will hopefully take place early October, virus permitting! I’ll be back to blog about what I’ve learned!

Seatree is a small, independent business; what we like to call our ongoing experiment into living creatively and sustainably. It has been a labour of love for both of us for four years now. Like many businesses, the pandemic has forced us to do a lot of rethinking. We know that we need to make changes in order to be more resilient and to build into the future.

Part of this plan involves creating a shop space in the garden so people can purchase things we make locally and so we can create more space in the studio for socially distanced workshops.

We are excited about both prospects – creating a beautiful shop space and having more space for workshops both during the pandemic and onwards.

The funds we raise will be used to create a platform (we live on a hillside) on which to build a structure with a secure door and windows for natural light. It will also have electricity and shelving, storage and display units. We hope to be able to show our work in a well lit and attractive space and use our reclaimed studio space for creativity and classes. It would be lovely to have this in place by September, ready for adult and children’s classes to resume. 

We have been researching options for buying or building a shed and visited some fellow business owners @econaturehols to check out their lovely garden shop shed. We have decided that building our own is the cheapest option and have already gathered some second-hand windows ready.

We are so grateful for all the support we have received from our community, both locally, through our stockists, and on social media.  We love the connections we have made over the years and think that this might be an opportunity to share this project with others. 

We think that it is possible that some of you lovely people might like to join us on our journey, through our Go Fund Me initiative.

So here we are, asking for more support but we would love to give you some tokens of our gratitude too. For every donation, we will create for you a limited edition decoration and an invitation to our grand opening! For every donation over £50, we will also include a hand-drawn seatree poem. And for or every donation over £100, we will offer you a poetry or pottery workshop, or a piece of ceramic art. With thanks from Chris and Michaela at seatree!