Vajrasattva
Pollard
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Pictish
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the middle watch
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Categories
1513 fusion 
These are beautiful Harry 🙂
Beautiful work. You are very talented Harry, both with words and hands it seems. I love the trees. I had a look at the gallery pieces too and they are exquisite. Your daughter obviously takes after you, I just adore the carved pieces she has created. A very artistic family.
Dee
Thank you, Dee. I paint the tree enamels from memory impressions, I spend ages just looking at trees, or at rocks, until the images soak in.
Your latest collection is stunning. My favourites are Wetland and Lothlorien
The Middle Watch is a bit — zen like!? Pollard — what a mysterious tree. Your work can open up to many interpretations and I like the free spirit that they represent.
Hello Janet. Pollard is from a sketch I made of an ancient pollard oak near Wymondham in Norfolk. Middle Watch is from a sketch of a shadow cast upon a wall by a six inch Buddha figure – so, as you say : a bit Zen like.
I’m leading a workshop next year at the Guild of Enamellers Conference and so am ‘pushing the boundaries’ with my latest work. The images on this site are earlier and mostly in galleries or have gone. I keep Vajrasattva on the wall to my left. He gleams.
Hello Harry
Is The Middle Watch in a Gallery /for sale? I recently visited The Coast Gallery and saw some of your work for the first time. I bought Shower of Flowers – ethereal , transcendental – I love it!
Thank you, Marie. Sorry, but ‘Middle Watch’ has gone. I will be attempting similar images today, but with enamels and kiln firing it seems impossible to faithfully reproduce work – there are so many variables.
Harry, your work is simply amazing! I have been gawking for the last half hour. I wish I could have one of your works in my home.
Thank you for the affirmation, Vera. Enamellers are much rarer than potters and painters; often people don’t know what true enamel is, even though it is an ancient art. The work is fired several times at around 900c – it could be said to be alchemy rather than art or craft. There are others of mine at http://www.turnstonegallery.net/
under my name (also see my daughter’s (Ailsa Nicholson) ceramics at the same gallery.
Harry, I have just been to Turnstone Gallery to look at your works. I am as fascinated by the creative process as I am by the art emerging from it. Is there any way in which I could view a more comprehensive range of your oeuvre online?
Hello, Vera.
See:
http://grainsofglass.ning.com/
and go to the gallery.
It is an international enamellers site (based in the USA) and is probably the best place to see the full range of method and style.
Harry, I really like your works as seen in Turnstone Gallery Sandsend under your name, especially the middle one on the top row. Would you happen to have the dimensions of that marvellous work?
Those enamels are really lovely particulary the first one. Love it.
That’s kind of you, Ted. Thank you for calling in.
Hi Harry,
Lovely enamel pictures – I wish I could do something artsy-similar! Keep up the good work. Thanks for having a look at my blog, and best wishes with your writing.
Deb
Wonderful site, Harry,
I love all your writings, very deep and moving!
Regards,
Trish White
http://www.grainsofglass.com
Thank you so much for these, a piece of your soul in each one of them.
Oh Harry, these are all breathtakingly beautiful. I must pop into one of the galleries you’ve mentioned and see them. Do you lead courses or workshops?
I thought I’d replied to this – but it seems not. I lead workshops sometimes on enamellers’ events – but I’m happy to pass on what I’ve learnt to individuals at my workshop.
These are beautiful!
You have a great gift!!!
Christine
Thank you, Christine. I’m packing the car today, with enamels and tools for a workshop event in Edinburgh – I always take too much stuff.
LO L! 🙂
Have a good workshop!
Christine
Very interesting as well as beautiful! Loved each one. I’d love to watch this done.
It is good for steadying the hands, Ector. It is also surprising – a sort of alchemy.
What a beautiful art you make! Enamel, is it the same as Dutch ” email ” (not e-mail lol) ? Lovely colours and shapes.
Hello Ina. Your ’email’ is the same as enamel – but is the French word (I assume). The process, being vitreous, ensures a long life for the artwork, it should be good for a thousand years in most circumstances.
Your work is so beautiful, I’m in awe. I’ve just started going to a jewellery for beginners course over the past year and we touched on enamels briefly, I really enjoyed it:D
Is it ok to put images of your work on my blog? I will put a link so people can click and go onto your site.
Best wishes.
Tracy.
Hello Tracy,
Thank you for calling on 1513fusion. I’d be delighted for you to use images from my enamel page and links on your blog.
Good fortune with your interest in enamel – I’d be pleased to help where I can.
Hi,
It was some years ago that you showed me your enameling and it has changed so much – wow! Lothlorien would get my vote . Hope your well – regards
Giles
Giles – it is lovely to hear from you. I am very well, and just back from the TBO convention. The greens in Lothlorien and Bardo are due to some old and now defunct Wenger enamels I found in a Whitby cellar – sadly I have only a couple of teaspoons of it left.
Vajrasattva is incredibly detailed. I cannot but goggle, and marvel at thie wonderful work. It looks as though you have used some kind of cloisonné technique.
I tried cloisonne once – but gave it up as a bit too fiddly for my fingers. This Vajrasattva is a 24×14 inch piece of copper cut into sections small enough for the kiln with a handsaw (broke loads of blades and took an age). I laid them out as one picture and began the layering and firing. The gold in the nimbus and on the skirts is 22 carat gold leaf.
The figure is a Tantric visualisation practice. He embodies purification.
What might seem a cloisonne appearance will be due to the edges of the pieces. There is a darkness at the joins enhanced by the burnt margin of each piece.
I don’t have much idea of the technique you are using nor one can really gauge that from the photogrphs here. …Enamel, glass copper ? But I liked the moonrise and the elf. There’s a dreamy quality to that. As for the subject “tea”, how about paying tribute to those anonymous ones who work in the tea plantations, their nimble fingers working for hours, plucking at the two leaves and a bud , which gives us that cup of tea, without which most of us cannot start the day?
Hello, Nadira. The enamel is a fine, powdered glass melted and fused onto copper (or gold and silver for Faberge) at around 800-950 C. I fire several times in the kiln for a minute or two each time.
The urgency for the ‘tea’ exhibit is over (but I see your point about the pickers) – next year’s conference theme is ‘jungle’, hence my attempt in ‘Burning Bright’
Wow you are so gifted Harry, love them all. My favourite is Vajrasattva. I’m a Buddhist and this work of yours…. my my, let me look at it again, it is so captivating!!
All the very best with your novel.
Thank you Umeshikad (a name I had not heard before). That enamel took long days to make; it was a struggle at times but worth the effort.
these are incredible – I love Moon Watcher – it has such an etheral quality
Vajrasattva is a beautiful image. May I copy it to one of my ‘arty’ files, so’s I can gaze upon it at will form time to time?LOL I’d like to see it at a larger size…it is definitely calling to me…
That would be fine, Penny. I’m going to photograph it again – the present image looks a bit soft focus. I have a better camera now.
I shall look forward to that! And now I know why it ‘spoke’ to me this morning, once I looked for the translation of the name – ‘Diamond Mind, or Thunderbolt Mind’ – You’ll need to look at Elizabeth’s blog tomorrow, and you will understand too… *smiles*
Beautiful enamals. If you say tourists buy them, where can I come and see them (though I doubt tourist would be the right term for me). The “Moon rise over the Somme” was very powerful.
The Lonely Recluse.
Thank you LR. You can see more at The Turnstone Gallery, Sandsend, Whitby, http://www.turnstonegallery.net/ the other galleries with them are: ‘Look’ at Helmsley, ‘Coast Gallery’ at Cloughton nr Scarborough, and ‘Artsbank’ at Saltburn.
I no longer have that Somme enamel, it was a test piece that I must take further.
It is good of you to call in.
Shame you’re not closer to York, but I’m sure I can get there at some point. It was a brilliant test piece, definitely worth taking further. I’m glad I did drop by.
The Lonely Recluse.
Lovely pieces, impossible to choose a favorite. Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving breadcrumbs so I could find you. Hugs, pat
Thanks, Pat. The tourists keep buying them, so I get lots of experience at the kiln. The very best I tend to hang on my walls here.
Some days when I lose focus and turn out rubbish I take a hammer to the burnt images and recover the glass (those fragments can be turned to interesting uses).
Love your enamels, Harry!
Could you contact me re marketing? I wondered, amongst other things, whether you sent a copy of Tom Fleck to the Historical Novel Review? Or how did they find it? Because they haven’t reviewed The Testament of Mariam.
On the other hand, I have been commissioned to write an article for the November issue of their Solander magazine.
All the best,
Ann
I love these, especially the cat.
Hi Harry, just a follow-up to the email I sent. Thought I would check out your blog. Great to read the accolades bestowed upon you by your friends. Well deserved and well done. Bless you Harry. See you anon. Monty
Ah! Monica, lovely to find you here – it is nearly three years since we wrote together. I plan to be at the meeting this Summer.
Your work is exquisite, Harry. Wonderful colors and sense of design. And congratulations on publishing your novel.
Thank you. I work intuitively and let the enamel lead the way.
I did not have that affect here, Viv – although it was a bit ragged. It is now a three column display and does look better – thank you.
Harry, just to tell you: I genuinely think your enamel work is excellent.
Would you mind if I used ‘His First Snow’ as my desktop background?
I realise you woudn’t know either way, but it’s always best to ask.
Lee.
That is an original idea Edwin. I remember them. Hundreds of men on push-bikes with can of tea on the handlebars, struggling against the Hartlepool blasts, on their way to the shipyards.
A chap I worked with in TV once worked in Scunthorpe steelworks. He got into trouble for welding the foreman’s tea-can to a steel girder. He is now president of his own company in California’s Silicon Valley. Fred Bones is his name – he once met a woman called Nora Bone.
Tea – wow! There should be plenty to go at there. How about the slightly chipped blue enamel (cup for a lid) that Hartlepool steel and shipyard workers took to work hanging from the bicycle crossbar, or peeping out of the pocket of their shabby macs? When chipped it left behind a small black scar, or have I DREAMT ALL THIS?
Another snowy day – the ninth time I’ve been out shovelling.
Words came as I sweated:
We thank thee, Lord, for the snow we’ve had.
If we get no more – we’ll be very glad.
Yes, Tilly – I like it too. The stance of the child is perfect. Some fine images come out of the furnace, along with nasty black, burned, bubbling lumps of nothing. But the baddies become more rare with practice.
Viv, you can vote for my next Conference exhibit only on its merit – but I have not made it yet. To do that you would need to join the Guild and turn up for Conference (next year it is in Canterbury).
Thanks for your ideas on ‘Tea’. Perhaps something on the lines of ‘tea and sympathy’ – how can I render that as an image?
Hello, Viv.
You have an eye for the best. Wildwood is special.
The Guild of Enamellers asked me to produce a piece that would represent my style. It was to be presented annually at Conference and Exhibition for best ‘Themed Exhibit’. So ‘Wildwood’ now belongs to the Guild.
I made a special effort – it was such an honour to be asked.
You can have this for a year, Viv – if the members vote for a piece you have made. The ‘Theme’ next year is ‘Tea’ – I haven’t a clue what to make for that. Teapots, tea clippers? Not a clue . . . I need to get on with it soon. And so do you, Viv – if you want ‘Wildwood’ hanging on your lounge wall for 12 months.
How do I get to vote for your piece?
As for Tea: something like a cosy fire flaming in a hearth with a silhouetted cup and saucer, or – more symbolic – the comfort that a cup of tea brings: a hug.