Workshop Report

Tom and Ginni Marsh Workshop - 16th - 18th March, 1984.

The Workshop began on Friday evening with a slide show and
discussion of Tom and Ginni's pottery, lifestyle and
philosophy.

Come Saturday, there are two wheels on stage, Tom and

Ginni sit side by side, a couple of feet apart. The wheels
spin slowly. Ginni starts with a series of 3/4 1b. Mugs y
formed, paddles square, and re-rounded at the top: Tom, a
series of tea bowls, thrown off the hump. <A communication
happens when they are working together. We all fesal it,
Tom throws a plate, and cutting it from the wheel, to our
astonishment, he holds it at 2 pointe and lifts it straight
up off the wheel. The thumb prints, he tells us, can either
be pushed back out when leather hard, or evened up with two
more prints in the opposite corners. He rarely uses a bat!
They make two styles of plates, the traditional, and the
informal. Tom pounds a large lump of unwedged clay pretty
much all over the wheel head, then flattens the middle with
a kidney leaving the edgas untouched. He then raises the
edges from the underside by forcing them up with a rib,

and then thins the walls between two ribs. The edge is
left uneven for interest, and there - an informel dinner
plate, Ginni starts by placing a 1" thick irregular slab on
the wheel head. She compresses the eentre area with her
Fingers and raises the edge slightly from the underside with
a rib - another plate.

They know exactly how the final pot will look before star-
ting and often make pots with a particular fruit. or vege-
table in mind,

A small pot is re-shaped to oval by making 4 horigental eut
through the wall immediately above the floor, pushing the
walls into the oval shape, re-joining them to the base and
removing the excess base clay from the outside. The shape
of bowls is altered by making 4 equally spaced 1" vertical
ineisions through ae rim, and then overlapping the cut

pleces and re-rounding the rim. Vertical grooves are eut
in the cone of a juicer, the hands cupped over it and the
wheel Spun to give a slight twist to the frooves.

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