Green Man

It was Mr L’s birthday last month and rather than just buy him “stuff”, I bought him some things to do too – with me, of course! We’ve already enjoyed the Soulful Soundbath, which was a deeply relaxing experience accompanied by classical harp and Tibetan bowls and we’ve got to wait until December to see Kevin Bridges stand-up show.  The third activity that I bought was a pottery workshop to make a Green Man at Misty Ceramics studio.  If you don’t know what that is, the Green Man is an ancient figure, usually a face peering out of or composed of leaves, which symbolises nature, rebirth, and the cycle of seasons.

On arrival, Karen gave us a quick briefing and showed us some examples that she’d made, then we were off.  We started by rolling out the clay and cutting out a circular base.  The wooden sticks were to ensure the base was a uniform thickness.

The next stage was the most challenging for me – making a realistic face.  Fortunately, Karen offered brilliant tuition and advice on how to do this and I was quite pleased with my efforts.

The next stage was to add the leaves to surround the face.  It was time to get cutting and creative!  Here’s the pair of us in action.

Our finished men were then left with Karen for the drying and bisque-firing process.  Mr L’s man was looking particularly grumpy.

A couple of weeks later, we returned to decorate our men.  The kiln Gods had been kind to us and the only casualty was the end of a leaf on Mr L’s creation.  Karen had a huge selection of glazes to choose from and I went for greens with a browny-green for the face.  We were warned that the exact colours were not guaranteed as the firing process is alchemy!

Three coats of glaze were applied and my man looked very strange as the pre-fired colours were not necessarily the same as the finished colours.

The face of my man turned out more green than brown but the glaze on the ivy leaves is spectacular and I really like the variegated finish on the oak leaves.

Mr L went for an autumnal colour scheme on his man.  He didn’t look any less grumpy in glorious technicolour!