Flourishing Greece
In May 2023, I went on holiday to the beautiful island of Lefkada in Greece together with my boyfriend and my two sons.
It was my first time to Greece and I was very impressed by the unspoilt nature.
The beautiful flowers, the turquoise sea, the many beautiful old olive trees, the warmth and the sun… Everything was just to my taste. The people were also very friendly, and in the villages I discovered the beautiful, large, handmade plant pots made of the bright orange-coloured clay that is so typical of Greek ceramics.
Back home, I set to work to make my own collection of these beautiful plant pots. Especially for this purpose, I mixed a new type of clay from a large amount of leftover coarse, white stoneware clay and red clay powder.
With the diligent help of my boyfriend, we ended up mixing a total of half a tonne of clay, which after kneading with the pug mill turned out to be very suitable for throwing large pots on the potter’s wheel.
A friend had asked me for some large plant pots for her garden, and since she ran a lovely little hotel, we swapped a week’s holiday there for a number of my handmade plant pots in different shapes and sizes.
The fun part of the whole story is that the little hotel with the three lovely rooms and the cosy trailer in the garden was located on my grandparents’ former estate – the old forester’s lodge in Biebergemünd.
My grandad was a forester at the time and my mum had grown up in the forester’s lodge, and I also had many childhood memories of the house and the estate.
The pretty property with the large house, the old coach house, the barn and the beautiful courtyard and garden had traditionally served as a forestry office and had housed a number of other foresters from the Biebergemünd community before my grandfather.
The fact that my hand thrown plant pots have now found a place there, lovingly planted and cared for by a good friend, and that I have thus been able to leave something beautiful to my grandparents’ former estate, fills me with joy and makes me happy.