The Idea Fairy

Where do our designs come from? All over. Sometimes we work from patterns purchased with commercial reproduction permissions and a lot of our less expensive designs come from modified existing patterns. When a client contracts a custom wheel we like to talk to them and find their likes, dislikes, favorite colors & animals, what artists do they admire, and so on. Then the brain is allowed to wander.

By far, however, our favorites are the ones that assault us in the night, sneak attack from the horizon, and pester us when we're trying to not be creative. Annoying creatures like this:

This deer-thing has been haunting me through the wall. It's been living on a plate in the antique shop next door since they opened for the summer last month. Today it had to come over to stay in the workshop for a bit. I don't know what it is, but something on this plate has me thinking of wheel designs. Not exactly the same, but definitely inspired by it. I think it's the background design. I dunno. But a wheel is definitely coming out of this thing.

If you're in Ashland, WI, during the summer Antiques on Main is a great place to check for cool stuff. They have walls full of beautiful china.

Expression is Not an Exact Science

If you've ever contracted out expensive custom work to our shop, you've seen the "art can be unpredictable" clause on our contracts. I've never had to actually use that clause, but it's better to have it there. When it comes to dyeing our shop is a formula shop. That means we make very repeatable colorways and colors are somewhat predictable. But sometimes the city changes it's water, a company ships a new batch of dyes, there's a little more of a breeze, etc and things are off just a little. But being formula guys it isn't generally a problem.

Today has nothing to do with dyeing or formulas or perfection. It has to do with what happens when Libby can't follow her own pattern....

After the initial design is done and before we even get out the wheel, we always do a test burn. We take selections of the final pattern (especially any motifs we aren't sure about) and do full size burns on scrap wood. Sometimes a scaled down version of the front design is done with a variety of textures and shading to determine the final look of the piece. At left is a sample from two wheels currently in progress, Gretchen and The Frog Prince. Doing test burns is an important step from what we see in our head to what actually works on the wood. Often there are marks, big X's, arrows, sometimes sharpie highlights, etc to help me prepare the final piece.

So what happens when you get it perfect and then you go and goof it all up...?

Art happens.