Vintage textile block

While perusing article on Ceramic Art Daily I came across a ceramic artist Gay Smith.  I really like her pieces for two reason, well three. First, her forms are very simple yet organic. Second, I love to see sets of pots with different colors rather than all the same. And thirdly, she used vintage textile printing blocks to add texture.

on AfghanTribalArts

It was this third idea that struck me the most so I set out on a shopping trip (online of course) to find some vintage TPBs for myself.
On etsy there are allot of beautiful carved wood TPBs. Some appear to be new and were great but what I wanted was a connection to the past, a TPB with history. Some etsy shops that I found with this type of TPB are amandajames1, afghantribalarts, and rayela.
I found the one I wanted at The Polkadot Magpie. She shipped out my order very quickly. The day I received the package I opened it and the first thing I thought was "yippee, she sent me peanuts"!  Being low on shipping supplies puts me in recycle mode.

Quickly, I snapped back to reality and eagerly dug in to find my new toy. It was every bit as beautiful as I'd hoped. After putting my new stash of peanuts away I went straight into the studio. Bearing in mind the CAD article I tried my TPB on a slab of scrap clay. I was disappointed to find that, rather than leaving a gorgeous pattern as I had anticipated, it stuck and distorted. Gay Smith said she wet the block to prevent it from sticking. She used her block on freshly thrown clay and I was doing a slab of soft clay but I figured I'd give it a try.  So off to the sink I went and back with a wet block I came. Well that was a bad idea! I spent the next 15 minutes scraping clay out of the tiny crevices of my new old TPB. The whole while I'm thinking of what to do next.

Dry didn't work, wet was even worse.

Perhaps powdering the TPB would work. So once dry I dusted it down with some baby powder and presto! I'm not sure whether it was the dryer clay, the baby powder or a combination of the two but it worked!

It was a clean crisp impression of my new favorite stamp! I wonder what the life of this cool TPB was, no doubt it was used for printing borders on some cool fabric.  I will be using it on my business card holders for sure and on dishes and mugs and platters and... You get the idea.

I'd run out of time for playing with my new toy for that day but learned a few things. First of all reading is great for getting inspired but there truly is no better way than hands on learning. Also, nothing is ever as easy as you expect. Lastly, trying new tools or techniques keeps you humble but it also fuels the fires of creativity.

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