24 Days of Ornaments – 16

Welcome to day sixteen of my advent calendar of ornaments. This year, rather than a Cheesy Christmas (as we did in 2020 & 2021) I’m giving you a tour of our hodge-podge of a Christmas tree – one ornament at a time until Christmas Day.

Today’s ornament is handmade, but it’s unlike any other handmade ornaments you’ve seen to date…

Anniversary Pottery…

In 2021, Liz & I did something a little different for our anniversary.

Of course there’s the usual dinner out & flowers, but things had been busy in the lead-up and of course we’d just all come through various degrees of covid lockdowns, so we wanted to do something where we’d be out of the house for more than just an hour or three.

There’s a lovely little town, just under an hour away – Montmorillon – with a long history of book-making, calligraphy & illumination and other art forms. Liz & I headed out there for the day and we did two 1/2-day workshops… the first in pottery and the second in calligraphy… split up by a nice dinner in the middle.

In our pottery workshop, we had time to make a couple of things… a few “vide poche” bowls and a mug. There was time left over and we had a bit of free reign… Liz opted to make a little wall hanging, depicting Joshua’s statement “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” and I was working with Christmas in mind.

I made the little ornament on the left purely out of reminiscence, but then I made a series of ornaments like the one on the right… each one bearing an initial – T (for Timo), L (for Liz), S (for Sophie), D (for Dominic) and finally an M for myself… along with the year.

We started out rolling the clay flat, but covering it with a lace doily to get the texture (I love lace). Then we used a number of stamps for either the image, the letters or the numbers. Too easy! (When you have an experienced hand to show you the ropes.)

So not only was it a nice day together for Liz & I, but it gave us all a couple extra little momentos for the tree.

… and that’s today’s Christmas ornament.