Well…. actually…. not yet. Sorry!! I couldn’t resist the joke based on this photo. It’s the lake by my house, and this time of year we Coloradoans are heard saying that our state looks “like Ireland”. In just a few short months all the grass will turn brown when the spring rains are gone. So we love May and June for the green!

I’ve got 10 days to go! A teensy little voice in the back of my head has been screaming, “OMG OMG OMG OMG!” for a few weeks now. Like, are we crazy to just pick up and move like this?? Well this close to going, the voice in the front of my head still answers a resounding “NO!”. But right now it’s like the day before going on a vacation: thinking what have I forgotten… only multiplied a hundredfold!

All joking aside, I really am ready to GO! All the last details are just about taken care of. The dogs are booked on my British Airways flight (pretty much the last thing to obsess about because they wouldn’t let us book dogs onto flights until 2 weeks before). Paul’s nephew is set to move in on the day we leave next week.

All my work is done. The studio is packed up and cleaned up. Fido the Kiln has been unplugged (sob!). I will miss him for sure! I still hold out hope for getting a tiny kiln (which I must name Lil’ Yapper) while in the UK. But after the last year of nothing but glazing china, I honestly don’t care if I pick up the airbrush for a loooong time. I’m ready to run my fingers through raw clay and china slip instead. Native British slip at that! Wooo!

I probably won’t write again until next week when I log in from my new “studio” (aka the reception room) in our house in Maidenhead, Berkshire, United Kingdom. The Boyz and I could use your best wishes for a smooth, uneventful flight across the Atlantic.

(Should I rename my studio “Easterly Design” temporarily? I’ll certainly be east of the USA…!)

Cheers,
Karen

Well, the days are ticking down and now I’ve get exactly a month to go until we fly to our new temporary home in England!

Here’s an update on everything.

Above is the finished “Halfling Boreas” bone china, the 100% donation to the Breakables at the Breyerfest Birthday Bash all-china model horse show in July. I have put a few more photos on this web page. This is the only Halfling Boreas to be glazed in matte finish. Hard to believe it is only 4.75″ tall!

Next is a sneak-peek photo of my awards for the Westerly Design custom glaze challenge class at the Breakables show. The first and 2nd places will receive these custom glazed porcelain tiles, mounted in wood frames. Hmmm, I wonder what color the horses will be…? (Each will be diffferent.) You’ll have to attend the show to find out!

Below is the very last china horse I’m finishing before the move. Remember the Can This China Be Saved Hagen-Renaker Roan Lady from this post? Well here it is at present:

The body now is darker overall, and has some subtle dappling and pinto markings. I just finished getting the white fired on, and now I will glaze the tail to flaxen and do the other detailing.

Speaking of Hagen-Renakers, I just received a gorgeous new-release Hagen-Renaker Roan Lady in white with dark mane and tail from The Little-Shop. You can now order any of the H-R molds in any of the new colors. This is exciting for me because you can order them in the white color, which means that I can custom overglaze them to any new color. (The dark mane and tail is easy to cover with white as needed.) The one I got has fabulous crisp mold detail. And you can order them without the liner on the mouth! I also have a Large Zara in white coming. There’s no telling how long you’ll be able to custom order these from H-R, so if you had any ideas of getting one of these for custom overglazing, just to be safe I would order them this year. I can’t glaze them while in England but I’d be happy to glaze your H-R when I get back! I charge $400-$700 for the work depending on the color.

The moving company is coming either tomorrow or Tuesday to pack all my stuff and take it away to the UK! I am looking forward to this because I need to stop adding little things to the pile that I don’t really need to send all that badly!! The good news is that my snowboard does fit in the crate so I am bringing it! I ride with a not-as-common “hard” boot and binding system and a specialty carving board, which would be almost impossible to find in a rental shop. One of our big goals is to Ride The Alps and I am glad I’ll be able to do that in my own equipment.

I also decided at the last minute to bring my two in-progress clay sculptures to England after all. Clarity and the little walking Morgan. I’ve unscrewed them from their wood armature bases and packed them into a foam-lined case. Neither of them were far enough along that it wouldn’t be a disaster to restore them if they get a little bumped around etc. The J-Mac Classic Clay that I use is pretty forgiving. I just thought that with 2 years over there I will want to stay busy and productive, with a variety of things to do. Glazing has been almost my entire focus the last 2 years and I am looking forward to NOT doing that now for a good while! By bringing these sculptures I’ll have more work options in addition to learning slip-casting (on all those rainy UK days, ha ha)!

Keeshond tile production is in full swing:

The art-glazed tiles just need to be glued and grouted into the frames. The 5 realistic tiles are still in progress and they will all go either into a trinket box, a jewelry box, or a mirror. I started out with 6 of those but one cracked in the kiln. It had a big air pocket inside which is probably what caused that. These are all intended for the Keeshond National show at the end of May, but if they don’t all go at the show I’ll put the remainder on my Etsy shop. Just for fun I’m also making a few tee shirts and tote bags based on my tile art:

Next weekend I’m flying to my hometown in upstate NY, to meet Paul and visit with his parents and some of his other family members. Then when I get back I’ll finish up all my work and start going down my large list of things to do to get ready to leave. May these last 30 days go fast…! !

Here is another of the “Grand Finale Greys”.

This is the “Giselle” warmblood mare sculpture by Brigitte Eberl. It was released by Breyer in porcelain last fall as a “Connoisseur” limited edition (in matte chestnut). They sent me a bisque to glaze:

This porcelain will be offered to BreyerFest ’09 attendees this coming July in Lexington, KY, in a silent auction. So you must be there to win or have someone to bid for you. I’ve glazed her a lovely soft dappled grey with two socks and a touch of cream in the tail. The dapples are there but don’t show up too great in these photos. It is permanently marked “BreyerFest 2009, Custom Glazed by Karen Gerhardt” with my logo, in metallic gold, on the belly.

The quality of the finish, luminosity of the fine porcelain, and even the sculpture itself reminds me so much of the old European porcelains like Rosenthal and Nymphenburg. This will be a really rare and special piece for china collectors and Breyer fans alike.

They asked me to name the piece so I came up with “Newtown Dawn”. I have attended the BreyerFest event for nearly all of the 20 years they are celebrating this year, and I wanted to choose a name that evoked the feel of the place for me a little. I think of those July early mornings in Lexington in the misty fog—before the heat of the summer day comes on. I was the manager of their Youth/Children’s model horse shows when they were first introduced and ran it for many years, so I had to get up at the crack ‘o dawn each year to run the show. Those peaceful mornings (before the busy, horse-filled day) with fog over the bluegrass pastures are one of the things about BF that I love. (And something we don’t see often in dry Colorado!) And Newtown Pike is where the BreyerFest host hotels are—which attendees spend a lot of time driving back and forth on while there!

I am very sorry to be missing out on the 20th Anniversary of BreyerFest this summer, but I have a really good excuse!

I spent most of last week enjoying springtime in beautiful Tucson, Arizona, where my whole family helped celebrate my birthday. Paul flew in for the first 48 hours—all he could spare from work—and it was quite the emotional reunion after more than 2 months. Email communication is great and made being apart a lot more bearable, but it sure is no replacement for the real in-person contact!

Above is a photo of my family at my birthday lunch. My parents are on the far left, and moving around the table to the right is my older brother Chuck and his wife Stacy, my younger brother Kurt and his wife Terri, my sister Kristin and her husband Craig (they live in Brooklyn, NY), Paul, Me, then in front are my teen nephews Bobby and Zack (Chuck’s kids). The 3 toddler nephews were with a baby sitter. My two brothers live in Tucson, so we’ve all been gathering there once a year.

Here’s what it was like the day after I got back from Arizona:

I am so ready for spring I definitely don’t want to see any more snow. What a shock after wearing summer clothes and sandals in Tucson! This was supposed to be a massive storm all over the front range of the Rockies, but fortunately Boulder got almost 100% rain and we only have about an inch of wet snow on the grass here. The foothills just an hour west of us got 34″ and it’s still coming down up there! ! !

This week I am doing the last of the packing for England. I want to fly with only a small suitcase when I go, so everything I want with me over there has to be ready in a few days. In the studio this week I have just a few china horses to finish up that didn’t get done before Arizona, and I am also starting on all the Keeshond tiles.

Here’s the finished earthenware Optime, another commission for Jeanene Bernardin of California. I just love rose grey Arabians and when I was sculpting Optime was dreaming about painting all the variations of that color. This must be my best one yet.

I gave myself a bad case of tendonitis in my right arm from all the intense detail work on the greys this past month… but it was worth it. Even though it has messed up my tennis game too! I figured since I won’t be glazing in England, I’ll have 2 years to rest and heal it up. (Though I confess I have looked into the cost of buying a tiny tabletop kiln while in England… I am not sure I can go 2+ years without finishing a china, right when I think I getting to the top of my game!)