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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