‘Seven Peas’ Gravy Boat

The ‘Seven Peas’ Gravy Boat  © Peter Gander

Following on from my recent post & visit to Chessell Pottery in the Isle of Wight, I recently painted this gravy boat (well, it’s a half-litre jug really) as my keen cook wife wanted something handmade for Christmas. I found the excellent Espressions pottery painting & ceramics café in The King’s Mile in nearby Canterbury, Kent. The spelling is intentional and reflects their excellent coffee offering. The place is run by a really friendly couple and they bent over backwards to see that they had the right kind of pot in for me too. Design-wise, I took a leaf out of Edward Lear’s Owl & Pussycat verse and painted a scene to match my theme of ‘sailing the seven peas’. Again, using the sgraffito method, I was advised to paint several layers of white onto the entire raw jug, allowing this to dry and then add a few layers of dense black. Scraping back the black to reveal the white layer underneath proved much easier this time as the softer white layer was more yielding than the white ceramic substrate of my Chessell fishy plate, so thanks for the tip, Espressions!