Swift with Gold Lustre Porcelain Hanging Bird Decoration

This Swift decoration has been handmade using porcelain clay and hand painted with gold lustre. I absolutely love spotting the swifts that fly over my garden and listening out for their high pitched calls!

The textured details from the lino cut give these decorations a lovely tactile surface.

After creating a sketch, I carve my design into lino, which I then press into the soft porcelain clay to impress the details and texture. You may recoginise the distinctive printmaking style. I hope to capture a little bit of the bird's beauty through my unique linocut artwork. Each bird is strung with a white organza ribbon. The porcelain is fired to a high temperature (1250 degrees celcius). Then I paint on the gold lustre which is then fired to 750C to melt the gold, which is actually a very thin layer of real 24k gold!

My customers often buy one of my birds as a Christmas decoration to hang on their tree, however when it comes to packing away the ornaments into boxes, my little birds often manage to escape... finding a perfect spot to hang out on a cupboard  door handle or picture hook to be enjoyed all year round!

Once the clay has been rolled out, impressed and cut out, they need to firm up so I can smooth the edges, next they are dried slowly to avoid warping, biscuit fired, I apply the shiny glaze, back in the kiln before painting on the gold lustre, then a final firing before threading on the gold ribbon. Each firing takes around a day and a half, so it’s a slow making process!

Delivery and Packaging: I charge £1.55 for postage. Every order is wrapped in colourful tissue paper and is tied with a ribbon (a gold ribbon at Christmas time). I can also add a short gift message to a tag for you if you're sending it direct to the recipient. Please get in touch if you are on a tight deadline. I usually dispatch these within a few days of your order.

Dimensions (approx):

Length: 14cm (about 22cm including ribbon)

Width: 9cm

Thickness: 3mm