Ref: SWE40433
This course provides an opportunity to explore the traditional Staffordshire flatback mantlepiece figure and create flatbacks with your own narrative, inspired by these. Your tutor will explore why this much-overlooked folk art object was a powerful medium for our collective social history and how it informs her own ceramic practice.
The tutor will illustrate and demonstrate appropriate skills, and she will support you to follow the step-by-step creative process to make your own narrative flatbacks.
By the end of the course, you will have gained an understanding of the history of the flatback, as well as experience of traditional skills, such as sprigging, granulation, impressing, pinching, coiling techniques and multi-hued underglaze painting on greenware.
You will create and decorate a single or pair of flatbacks to your own designs. These can then be clear glazed and fired by the College for you to collect at a later date.
You can prepare for the course by considering what subject you might like to create. It would be advantageous to keep this to a loose idea, so that it can adjust accordingly with the creative process. If a commemorative item is being considered, such as a wedding, please bear in mind that it should be at least six weeks clear of the date the course ends.
On this course, the college will supply all of the materials and firing.
Ideas for your narrative piece, sketches, images, photographs of details you may wish to include
Please bring any personal small textured items to embellish your narrative. These could include non-precious jewellery, natural found objects, shells, leaves or domestic items, buttons, lace, etc.
Apron to protect your clothes
A good variety of art and craft materials are available in the shop.
Firing and glazing options:
You may leave your piece(s) made at the college for the clear glaze firing, and arrange to collect within six months of the email notifying you that it is ready for collection. Alternatively, you are free to take away unfired pieces for firing elsewhere.
Please wear appropriate clothing/aprons for the workshop or studio, this includes stout covered footwear (no sandals or open toes).
Arrival day - first date of course
Residential students can arrive from 4pm, non-residential students to arrive by 6.45pm for registration
Student welcome, followed by dinner: 6.45pm (dinner included)
Teaching session: 8pm-9pm (attendance is essential)
Daily timetable
Course teaching: 9.15am-5pm
Morning session: 9.15am-12.45pm including coffee/tea break
Lunch break: 12.45pm-2pm (lunch included)
Afternoon session: 2pm-5pm including coffee/tea break
Teaching finishes: 5pm
Evening working: students may have access to workshops until 9pm, but only with permission from the tutor and provided any health and safety guidelines are observed.
Departure day - last date of course
Course teaching: 9.15am-3pm (lunch included)
Teaching finishes: 3pm
Residential students will need to check out of rooms by 10am.
Please note, the tutor may make slight variations to the daily timetable as required.
Involved with ceramics since 1998, Rose studied at Buckinghamshire New University attaining a first-class BA (Hons) in 2008 and being selected for the Craft Potters Association in 2010. In addition to her studio work in East Oxford, she runs pottery courses for Abingdon & Witney College.
Residential option available. Find out accommodation costs and how to book here.
Take the next step in your creative practice, with foundation level to Masters in Fine Art study.
Depending on your experience, start with an Online Foundation Certificate in Art and Design (one year, part-time), a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design made up of 10 short courses taken over two years (part-time) or advance your learning with our BA (Hons) Art and Contemporary Craft: Materials, Making, and Place (six years part-time). All will help you develop core skills, find direction in your practice and build an impressive portfolio in preparation for artist opportunities or higher-level study. See all degree and diploma courses.
