New Lunar Vessals

ian carty ceramics ireland

Lunar

The Moon has always held a place of particular fascination in our earth bound lives. This lunar range is inspired by the moon as it passes over Irish bog lands at night.

My Lunar ceramics are a mix of function and fine art, allowing your imagination to escape its limits you can rearrange the ceramics in many ways, stack the moon lights on top of each other to create a full moon, or place them side by side or back to front, and you can follow her motion and even mimic the moons gentle and unending pull on the forces of life

Each lunar piece is handmade on the potter’s wheel then I hand build and sculpt the lids using geometric ceramic patterns to create a unique range that has a function as sculpture as well as beauty      

All my ceramics are hand made using a mix of new and traditional techniques.                                  The process is very time consuming, often taking several hours to complete just one piece. finished works are not covered with glazes or surface preparations of any kind Instead I use smoke and horsehair to pattern the clays surface. The fine surface and beautiful shine is merely polished clay.

 

 

My technique is based on a type of Roman Pottery mass-produced around the first century AD these pots were coated with a very fine slip which Greek potters had been using for hundreds of years to create there famous white and black pottery.                                               I have made my own Irish version by adding Irish turf into the kiln as the vessels are fired, the turf releases carbon, in the form of black smoke which is infused into the pottery creating a dark black finish, and leaving the carbon of the bog infused into the pot.