Pottery at Bell House

This Autumn saw Bell House running for the first time weekly Pottery classes guided by expert potters Ekta Chakraborty and Annie Antoine.

The classes have been buzzing - a hive of activity - friends made, conversations flowing, skills learnt and importantly work to show for their time spent. Everyone enjoyed getting their hands dirty working the clay and revelled in decorating their pieces.

All work has now been fired and the results really do speak for themselves.

Big plans are afoot.

These classes were the first toe in the water for pottery at Bell House. 

We are currently building a Community Pottery Studio in the garden which is scheduled to be completed in July 2023. There will be a new and larger kiln, half a dozen wheels as well as every other piece of equipment needed to run a thriving and dynamic pottery space. Our tutors Ekta and Annie have been supporting and advising with the build  as well as several local professional potters including Julian Stair and Birgit Pohl

There are no community pottery studios nearby. Bell House wants their studio to be not only for building pottery but also for building friendships.

The studio will be used in the daytime, evenings and weekends so that all our local community can enjoy potting!

In the meantime, Ekta and Annie say: “We want to be able to grow our workshops over the next year to a number of days during the week and turn the pottery into a friendly, creative hub with regular, repeat, diverse participants.”

The new classes for 2023 are now available to book - go to our events page to learn more.

We also look forward to interviewing Ekta and Annie in the new year to find our more about their love of pottery and to hear about the building progress of Pottery studio.

But in case you need some more persuading to sign up for a pottery class - this is what Annie and Ekta say about working with clay.

“Clay is a great medium as it’s so tactile and very forgiving with mistakes. Nothing ever goes to waste, everything is recycled. It’s grounding and a mindful practice and also known to be beneficial for people on the spectrum or with ADHD.

Not only do you gain a new skill and hopefully learn something about the science of clay but you also devote time to yourself and your friends. It’s a slow process to be able to create an object with clay and results are generally never exactly the same and so this encourages the potter to enjoy the process, slow themselves down and focus!”

Creative Arts Club for older adults - Watercolour workshop

Sarah Wetherall ran another successful and happy 2 hour workshop on Friday 30th September - the second in a programme that will be run monthly. Many of the group were new to using watercolours and with Sarah’s inspired teaching everyone got stuck in with little hesitation.

She suggested we choose a painting from one of the books available and then take a small section and concentrate on this - to experiment with brush strokes and wetness and depth of colour. It meant that we could focus on the process rather than trying to copy the artwork. By doing this we learnt so much about how watercolour reacts on paper and what reactions we particularly liked and would want to use in any future paintings.

Look out for Sarah’s next class later this month.

Sarah’s work can we seen at www.clockworkstudios.co.uk

The Garage Press is now permanently based at Bell House - an interview with Simon Trewin, the owner.

Simon has now moved his extensive collection of presses and blocks - in fact “everything he owns” - into the garage block [once the old stables] at Bell House.

He fell in love with letter printing when at the age of 10 he accompanied his father - who was the then Literary Editor of The Times - to see the printing of the newspaper in Grays Inn Road. His first impression was of noise, mess and industry and yet out of this chaos appeared a clean newspaper - beautifully written and a font of knowledge and opinion. It caught his imagination.
He said he grew up believing he had a creative mind but was unable to put his ideas on paper. Years later, he was reminded again of the appeal to him of a printing press when he ‘had a go’ on the one his wife owned. He decided he must find a course. 
Simon found a course to learn how to use an Adana Press - the press that could be found in most schools, police and other official offices in the 1950’s. 

He remembers with pride his first attempt - he was hooked! He realised this was how he could ‘put his ideas’ on paper.

On the course he met a couple who were downsizing their studio and wanted to get rid of a large press - named ‘Gloria’. ‘Gloria’ has a wonderful history but suffice to say, in more recent years it was named after a lady called Gloria who owned a shop, ‘Unite and Type’. Simon met her and learnt she was selling up and needed to find a new home for the rest of her stock. 

Simon bought it all and moved it into a garage he owned. And so the Garage Press was born.

Simon says that the craft has enabled him to interpret his ideas. Now he knows that when he has an idea, he just has to sort out his mind because everything he needs to put it on paper is in his workshop.

Letter press was classified as an endangered craft by the Heritage Craft Associations and in the last 15 years, thankfully, Simon has seen a revival of the craft.  He will run courses at Bell House but he also recommends The London Centre of Book Art - which runs workshops and offers workspace. https://londonbookarts.org for anyone who’d like to have a more intensive introduction.

The Garage Press plans to integrate closely with Bell House - from printing signage (eg for the recent Dyslexia Fair), offering printing workshops (eg Xmas cards, info cards) and he is also planning to create inks from the plants in the garden.

He is currently making an ink from ‘oak gall apples’ which he has collected from the garden’s oak trees. These ‘apples’ result when a wasp stings the oak tree bark and the tree reacts and so the growth appears. He is currently drying the apples and will then grind them. He will make a ‘medieval black ink’, used in the past for manuscripts. His challenge he says will be to make it thick enough to print with, otherwise it will be a watercolour ink. As Simon said “anything that stains can work”.

Simon by day is a Literary Agent. Because of his contacts he is able to source paper and inks - often donated by his suppliers for free. One of his long term authors he represents is John Boyle. His most famous book is “The boy in the striped pyjamas.”

John has accepted an invitation to come to the Garage Press as part of the promotion of his new book - “All the broken places”, a sequel to his most famous book. This is a private affair but Bell House will be there to report. Simon has kindly offered a signed first edition of John Boyne’s new book as a raffle prize. Details of which will be announced nearer the time.

The Garage Press is a wonderful addition to Bell House. Keep an eye on the coming events to see when he’s running his tasters. He is normally around on the days when there is an Open Garden and is often there on a Thursday if you are passing and would like to say hello.

Before signing off, here are two further points of interest Simon shared.

1. The terms UPPER and lower case are derived from the type shelves. The capital letters were at the top of the drawer. A good setter didn’t look at the shelf, he knew where everything was, rather like on a keyboard.

2. The phrase - ‘You’ve come a cropper’ - when someone got their finger caught in a WH Cropper press - ouch!

You can find out more about what Simon is printing via his instagram feed @thegaragepress

Creative Arts Club for Older Adults (60+): Printing with Light

On Friday 22nd July 11, a group attended this club launch workshop. Sarah Wetherall was our tutor - a local artist, who is going to run the Arts Club on a regular basis offering a variety of taster 2 hour workshops to introduce different creative processes.

This time it was - Cyanotype - a contact photographic print made with paper impregnated with a light sensitive chemical and using UV as the developing agent. Simply, you place an object - we used foliage picked from the Bell House garden - onto the light sensitive paper, expose it to UV light and this makes a beautiful white and blue print.

As it turned out, there was a group of 11 ladies - and as the class title stated - all over 60!. Although understanding why the limit had been made - the ladies did find the description difficult to accept. But this is not the place for that discussion!

Everyone was able to follow Sarah’s lead - there was only one moment of ‘stress’ during the whole workshop - the need to “QUICKLY place your design onto the impregnated paper and then cover with Perspex.” Once successfully completed - and everyone did - we all returned to a very zen state of creativity.

Look out for the next Creative Art Club workshop in September.

Sarah’s work can we seen at www.clockworkstudios.co.uk