Vintage plates , potters marks and my past life.

 I'm thinking about putting my ant design on to part of a tea service. Initially I thought a sugar bowl, but now I'm thinking of a series of plates.

I have a lot of vintage pottery from my business doing pop up tea rooms. One of the locations of this was at Newstead abbey.

I like the idea of using something with history, it adds authenticity, it's a vintage piece so has its own secret life before it was in my possession, it now has my history entwined with place at Newstead and then to add onto it with my ant design feels like a natural progression. The nature of the object, a dainty side plate for serving cake, a lot with very floral and feminine design, feeds back into my female worker ant. The irony of the working class who often are employed to make things or provide services that they could never afford for themselves.

This is both a historical and present theme as I see it.

I love this for so many reasons, symbols,identity,signitures of the workers, reminds me of the coat of arms aesthetic in the house. It also has a behind the scenes aspect. Much like the workers within a country house would be mainly out of sight yet responsible for the great theatre and spectacle involved.. The colourway is also suiting my colour themes.

Potters Mark on the Peacock plate

I've had this Peacock plate in my vintage pottery collection for a while and have used it for serving afternoon tea at the Abbey in the past. The design and blue pallet inspiring my ink pallet with the ant design.

Potters marks for green side plate

A side plate from my collection. I chose it as its plain so will be more neutral to take my design. Here I've made a mark just with latex paint simply to get an image on the plate  to see how it fits. I've done the same below using a marker, this time on a patterned plate. 

 Though I like the way the ant interacts with the flower pattern and I like it oversized how it fits on the plate the marker pen is obviously too crude looking and too dark in colour, I want something more delicate and refined.