My first ornaments survived their final glaze firing! 🍀✨️ One didn’t make the cut and the Claddagh, with river pouring into Galway Bay and the nearby Atlantic scenes came out murkier and moodier than I anticipated, but the city itself is very similar.
Dark at times, brightened by colourful characters, street buskers, buildings and businesses…a mysterious place full of Druid, Celtic, Irish Gaelic and Spanish history and connections. If you haven’t visited this part of Ireland along the Wild Atlantic Way yet, add it to your travel bucket list.
Photo: Four of my white stoneware ceramic ornaments, scenes of The Long Walk in Galway City, a Brigid’s Cross and a flower (which didn’t make the final edit). All are handcarved and painted with underglaze and sealed with clear glaze, before a final kiln firing.
These clay ornaments are handbuilt from stoneware, smoothed and then hand carved, hand painted with underglaze and a clear glaze over top. When I hold the final pieces in my hand, they resemble palm or worry stones and the texture is similar. A simple piece of mud formed into a vibrant scene.
The third ornament is a Brigid’s Cross, in honour of the woman herself, the triple Goddess of healing, poetry and fire, and an item we keep hanging in our home for protection, to mark her February 1st Irish holiday. A connnection to this is my Dad wanted to call me Bridget after my Great Grandmother, which my Mom declined once I was born (sorry GG!)
However, I ended up marrying a man from Ireland, becoming a writer, working with fire (pottery), the healing arts and we spent a year and a half living in Co. Kildare in the mid 2010s.
This is where Saint Brigid rolled out her cloak and set up her monastery, with Brigid’s Well and other sacred sites and mythology related to her namesake are found there. So in the end, I reconnected to my roots in a roundabout way! Alongside Macha, Brigid is the Celtic Goddess I love the most. Many things to explore, learn and integrate into modern day life from these forces of nature.
Photo: My first three stoneware clay ornaments after their final glaze kiln firing – scenes of The Long Walk in Galway City and a Brigid’s Cross, which survived at the community studio, picked up right before the end of 2023.
It’s my way of recycling bits of clay and hand carving and painting these became more meditative than I thought. They also took less time than handbuilding a piece, so I may have discovered the perfect naptime pottery studio practice.
Happy Saint Brigid’s Day, new beginnings and the start of Spring in the Celtic Wheel of the Year!
Stay well everyone,
– Amy (+ Family) xx
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