Clare Gaylard Glass 

The last Suffolk Open Studio weekend is over - thank you to everyone who passed through: visitors from other years, other exhibitions, people interested in learning or even in setting up their own studios. One of the questions I have learned to ask first is: 'Do you make?'.

There is a ring here for Jenny - it's a commission, now she just has to decide which one!

'Buried Treasure' in this gentle, Suffolk landscape comes in the form of Viking treasure, fossils, and towns taken back by the sea.

A bee explored my landscape pendant while I was taking outside photographs today. Putting me in mind of this lovely thing:

'.....Last night as I lay sleeping,

I dreamt – marvellous error! –

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.'

Antonio Machada

 

I make a lot of twisted cane when I'm doing demos for Open Studios and the last couple of centimetres are of limited use, but too pretty to throw away - my stash continues to grow.

Was drawn up by Lorrette E Roberts - an illustrator widely published here and in Asia, so my barn has had the five star treatment...

Sketch and some glass ready for assembly for my 'Three Crowns' theme - East Anglian ghost kings, buried treasure and memento mori inspired by M R James short story set in local  Aldeburgh:  'A Warning to the Curious'.

Not for everyone but definately for me! Grayson Perry 'Sketchbooks', Niki de Saint Phalle and 'Heavenly Bodies': 'cult treasures and spectacular saints from the catacombs'.

Two extra reasons to take the A1120 Trail; Saxtead Windmill - less than a mile from my studio, and Framlingham Castle - two miles further. My barn studio speaks of a rather different heritage - it was here where the piglets were kept warm.

An ambitious, atmospheric exhibition at the British Museum, two of my favourites above. You are shown underwater footage alongside the salvaged treasures and given a clear idea of what the city was when above water.

Have another little piece of my heart now...

Millefiori two ways - on a wax candle in the background and my own handmade ones in glass on a pendant. The same process of pattern constructed on the cross section, elongated then cut into chunks or chips and applied. A thousand flowers.

Delft, Ming, Ghzhel, tatoos, indigo dyed fabric. Floor to ceiling cabinets of blue and white china in the British Museum and the dangerous stacks of it in Bangkok's Chatuchak Market, I love it. Its been nearly ten years since we left Thailand and my mongrel collection of blue and white pottery is sadly thinned out. A good enough reason to reach out for the colours in my glass. 

'Eastern Promise', our art exhibition is showing at The Quay Gallery, Snape Maltings until 5.30pm Thursday 12th May. We have had four days of magnificent sunshine and welcomed many visitors already. A new Henry Moore statue looks out over the reed beds and the widening river along all the usual reasons to visit this uniquely cultural and historic venue.

I'm part of the A1120 Artist Trail, a downloadable map is available from the Suffolk Open Studios website. Serendipitously, the artist who created the map: Lorrette E Roberts also lived and worked in Asia and her work was familiar to me from our time in Singapore. What are the odds on us ending up in rural Suffolk in adjacent villages?

A song sheet and a stencil, I'm curious, was it for someone?

Sketching for 'Treasure in the Landscape'.

The teapot equivalent of fireworks.

The stones and fossils get sorted out here before the holiday laundry does.

A deeply satisfying shape, from Whitby with some rings I made yesterday.