EMC Team Member Abroad - A workshop with Anna Mazon

 

It was an excited group of students that gathered in the beautiful North Yorkshire Moors in early May to attend a workshop with Anna Mazon who had come over to the UK from Poland to teach.

 

Anna makes wonderful intricate work, and you can see examples on her website and in her Etsy shop Drakonaria.  

 

The workshop was organised by Lynne Glazzard and was held in her lovely studio in Glaisdale, not too far from Whitby. The view from outside the workshop across the dale (above) was just beautiful!

 

Anna was going to teach us how to make her Herbarium Pendants, and had made some workshop samples for us to pick up, study, coo about, and aspire to!

 

 

Over the two days Anna gave us frequent demonstrations of all the techniques she uses to make the pendants.

 

 

Her English was excellent, which was just as well because our Polish was non existent!! Throughout the weekend there was much laughter and hilarity, including about how we pronounce some particular words!! There are many peculiarities in our English language!

 

 

This another piece of Anna's and you can see the detail and precision she achieves.

 

When she demonstrated the leaves and flowers apparently these were large ones so we could see them! You can see the pencil beside them for size comparison.

 

Anna works in such a small scale that in between the laughter, at times there was total silence in the room, we were all concentrating so hard.

 

  It was enough just to remember to breathe when creating the tiny embellishments!

 

 Some of Anna's ways of working were not for all us of though! I know I would not be able to get my knee up to this position, below, for stone setting!! I just went with putting my piece on the table for that bit!!!

 

By lunchtime on day 2 our pieces were ready for the kiln.

 This was my piece below, I was delighted with all I had learnt and what I managed to achieve. Of course I had to add a little Critter into my piece for my Weekly Critter Challenge. Can you spot the birdie?

 

 

Here are some of the partially finished pieces.

 

I took this photo of my finished piece later at home once I had patinated it.

 

On the Saturday evening Lynne had arranged for us all to go into Whitby for a fish and chip supper down by the harbour. The weather was kind and it was a beautiful evening...

 

 

... followed by a walk all the way to the end of the pier for some of us afterwards!

 

 

 

 

It was a wonderful workshop. I certainly learnt a host of new skills. My thanks to Lynne and to Anna.

 

If you get a chance to take a workshop with Anna Mazon I highly recommend it. I'm sure she will be doing more travelling abroad to teach in the future so do keep a look out for her.

 

Joy Funnell

 

Finally... as part of my Weekly Critter Challenge I always write a poem to go with each piece. This is my poem inspired by the workshop with Anna.

 

From Poland she came to the North Yorkshire Moors
Excited we gathered to learn from her lore
With great skill and patience her secrets she told
And exquisite examples were there to behold
We learnt how to work in a manner so small
Techniques so absorbing you could hear a pin fall
Our final results we will all proudly wear
Thanks to Anna Mazon -
Artist Extraordinaire