Hand made Paper

My fascination with beach-combed objects stems from the fact that man-made items enter the sea at a place and time unknown.  At this stage, they are often useful, in good condition and are similar to many many other such times.  By the time, I retrieve them from the shoreline they are no longer of any use, they are worn and distressed by time and tide, and they are unique.  It is the alteration that occurs during this unspecified time period that interests me – it raises so many unanswerable questions: When did it enter the sea, why and how?  How long has it been in the sea?  How far has it travelled?

One particular fascination is brushes.  I find many plastic brush handles but more interesting are the bone or wooden ones.  These sometimes present with bristles, whole or partly intact, but the really interesting ones no longer have bristles, just the holes where bristles once were.

I like the contrast between the worn finish and the precision of the holes.  I am starting to explore this idea further, combining the found with the made; the old with the new; the perfect with the imperfect.

These three pieces combine hand made paper with found elements.  I’d love your feedback!

Reinvention

On our way home from Scotland recently we stopped off for lunch at Middleport Pottery near Stoke on Trent.  As an aside, the cafe was recommended in an excellent book “The Extra Mile” which we picked up earlier that day at a very good and unusual service station, “Cairn Lodge”.

Middleport Pottery
Middleport Pottery, Stoke on Trent

Having had our lunch by the canal, and had a mooch around the pottery and shops, we had a little wander and came across Harper Street.  My husband and I were both drawn to investigate further:

 

Harper Street view 2
Harper Street, Middleport, Stoke on Trent

I love rust and texture saw the street scene as a series of beautiful textural portraits:

Whilst I love the street as it is, we were glad to see that, rather than sitting empty, Harper Street is going to be redeveloped and repurposed in a way to pay homage to the industrial past and present of the area