As the Crows Fly is a design business run by Bee Hayes in Fife, Scotland, specialising in handmade ceramics and illustrated home wares. ATCF produces both hand-thrown and slip cast porcelain ceramics with distinctive ranges incorporating botanical hand illustration; Japanese inspired monochrome pieces with a volcanic interior and polished exterior and polished stained porcelain vessels cast from original lathe-turned forms and found objects. Original, hand-drawn illustrations are also applied and fired in-house onto fine bone china ware, and made into tea towel which are screen printed in the UK.

With a background in Fashion Design, designing for boutique London brand Whistles, followed by work as in-house graphic designer for an international NGO Bee has come to ceramics and home ware as an ideal medium with which to see the creative process through from initial idea to finished product. This allows for unlimited scope and freedom in product development and experimentation.

Here’s a taste of the process involved in my Botanical Porcelain ranges. After the pieces are thrown, partially dried and given neatly turned footrings and handles, the pieces go through their first ‘bisque’ firing to 1000C. After this they are strong enough to be decorated and glazed – I begin by hand illustrating linework and dandelion and wild pea motifs using a very fine nibbled underglaze applicator:

After that, parts of the design are picked out with accents of raw copper oxide and cobalt oxide to give the finished illustrations more depth:

The next stage is glazing – ordinarily a piece may be dipped in a bucket of glaze, but for these ranges I want some areas of the vessels to be coloured and some simply a transparent gloss, so these are applied separately using a brush. The bright brick red will turn to a pale glossy celadon-like green when fired:

Once the pieces have all their layers of illustration, oxide and glaze applied they are then high-fired to 1280C to melt and fix the glazes and vitrify the porcelain, which shrinks down by approx 15% at this stage and becomes extremely dense and strong:

Please contact me at asthecrowsfly@live.co.uk if you would like further details of product ranges or to enquire about trade prices or exhibitions.

As the Crows Fly is based at: Studio 21, Fire Station Creative, Carnegie Drive, Dunfermline, Fife, KY12 7 AN

You can read more about the artistic process on this blog interview with Made in Bristol.