Wallwork?

This is a good point if you can purchase something with damage you like cheaply and displays as well as a perfect piece , go for it

i worked for alan in the early 60's at no10 blackheath road greenwich,i mixed the glazes,and the clays,loaded and fired the kilns,and decorated hundreds of pilkington white tiles round and square large and small,i believe the colour quality was better and clear on the pilkinton tiles than on the later used johnson tiles ,this was because of the compatability of alans glazes and the manufacturers glazes when they fused and flowed during firing.igrew to know alans methods and techniques and stile of his work at this time.i left alans employ as i did not want to move to marnhull with him (wish i had in a way looking back).have great respect for alan,best man i ever worked for,can't understand how he never forgot me,a really nice guy.by the way the other workers were robert,john,sue,jill,and barbera(alans life long friend),we were a great bunch and happy.during my time there alan sold a lot of work through heals.and i believe harliquens.i believe i could tell alans work for my time with as good as any other than alan himself.

good to have you on the forum arthur,I'm sure we will be asking lots of questions over the next few weeks if you stick around.

My question is about the pierced spheres, have one with crystalline,reflective,turquoise glaze inside which can only be seen if I shine a torch in one hole and hold another hole to my eye.
Did Alan itentionally make it difficult to appreciate this?

i cannot truefully answer alan's reasoning behind this but i do know upon asking him why he glazed the inside of his partialy outside glazed stoneware pots he said it finished the decorative effect of the pots off and stopped them looking just plain.perhaps the crystaline effect may have been an effect of kiln gases trapped insde the sphere acting on the glaze during the firing prosess,alan experimented at one point with retort firingI(closing the gas escape vent for varying periods of time and temp to see what effect this had on glazes) sometimes resulting in collaspse of contents of kiln.expensive experiment .most pots made at this time had the same glaze used inside so would usualy have same inside colour as was mixed as a finish effect rather than a true decoration

thanks arthur

thats ok, i believe he most probably dipped the spheres first to glaze the insides then washed off glaze outside with a soaking wet sponge (washing this glaze back into its original container to save this glaze) then ,when clean and dry, decorated outside with slips ,oxides and glazes.alan also used small quantities of fireclay in his clays to obtain those little black burnt marks in his finishes i hope he won't mind me telling you this.

I bet Alan reads this thread so he'll probably let you know