Post #590480 by trutiki on Tue, May 24, 2011 7:01 AM

As a current creator you are part of the new design world-- not a recycler of nostalgia. So you should consider that not all collectors are bamboo/Poly-pop people. We talked about this on Ooga (trudeska), but I'll add one more thing to my personal view which is that the straightforward natural color glazes don't add enough interest and depth when the collection is viewed in total. No offense to anyone else who collects browns and vintage colors but to my eye a shelf full of them, no matter how outstanding the designs themselves, takes on a ceramics class identity. Remember most mugs are approximately the same size and scale. It's not just a bright vs natural stance. When glazes are multilayered with richness and depth implying texture and surface variation, and interiors are considered part of the overall design providing contrast and surprise when viewed at different angles, then a thoughtful grouping of interesting pieces together adds something special to the display environment instead of each mug standing alone in your mind's eye as an individual trophy. Take those wood-like designs a la Gecko and others: The very best among those pieces have colorful contrasting interiors with sometimes more than one color. I have several brown pieces-- even a few humble Tiki Farms-- but each and every one of them have some design element of color or contrast that makes them somehow more than just a painted piece of clay.

These rushed out-of-focus pics of some of my own mug groupings help to illustrate how color and contrast help pieces stand together as a unified whole. I also live in a sunny bright place and my environments are not Polynesian so that's probably why color appeals to me in general, but based on what I've seen since I began collecting, I am not alone out there.

Hope that helps explain the "color" idea a little better.

[ Edited by: trutiki 2011-05-24 07:21 ]