Paintings, Fabric, Quilts and Pots

This one could get complicated so bear with me ....  it's worth it!   A lady called Em made a fantastic quilt for her old school friend Liz.  Liz looked for some special way to thank Em and, on seeing my Quilt Bowls out there somewhere, she had the brilliant idea that a quilt bowl based on the exact quilt Em had made for her would be uniquely appropriate!

She contacted me and of course I jumped at the chance - what a brilliant project to work on!  I asked for photos of the quilt and these came back ....

The quilt is a tribute to time spent in New York, with the individual blocks representing city blocks and the leafy central panel representing Central Park - you quilters are sooooo clever!!!

I know all you fabricaholics out there will instantly recognise this wonderful fabric based on the paintings of Gustav Klimt.

It made the project even more enjoyable for me as Klimt is one of my all time favourite painters - which is no surprise really - it's obvious from my own work that I love colour, pattern and ornament, and you get this in spades with Klimt.

So, I got to work.

is the bisque-fired piece.  The design is impressed into the clay in most areas, but the darker sections showing the swirls and flowers are painted on with wax, so that once I brush glaze over them, the wax will resist the glaze and remain the pale cream colour.

The above shows the central block all glazed and once the border is done it will be fired a second time ...

and will come out of the kiln the next day looking like this!  Obviously it's not an exact copy of the quilt, but is my own representation of some of the key elements in it.

I have to say, I was really pleased with the finished piece and would gladly have kept it for myself, but Liz was delighted with it and had me dispatch it straight to her friend, who instantly recognised it from the quilt and thought it was stunning.

It find it uniquely satisfying that someone did a painting, which someone years later used to design fabric, which someone later used to make a quilt, which someone later used to make a ceramic bowl

Am not sure what Klimt would have made of it all - it was the 150th anniversary of his birth last Saturday!  It's only fair to include something of his here too, so here is a section of his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, in which you can see the same patterns and colours of the quilt and bowl.

Have a lovely rainy weekend!

x Cathy