Handmade Silliness!
Welcome to the whimsical world of Richard Moonstreet Ceramics!
My name is Tex and I'm from London, UK. I started my fowl pottery brand back in 2019 when I randomly put a beak on a vase I was making. I still don't know why I thought to do this, but I painted the beak orange, dabbed some eyes above it and put it in the kiln. I snapped some pictures of it, put it on a Facebook group I was in for people who like ducks (because ducks are great), and woke up the next morning to an inbox full of messages asking me to make more of them. Maybe it wasn't so silly after all! People really like ducks, huh!
That was six years ago and I'm still making them now, along with a multitude of other cute creations and ornaments. Perhaps you've seen 'Ed with the Bread' - my little ceramic duck holding a baguette. Or 'Val with the Pal', she has her own yellow bath duck friend with her all times. Maybe you've seen my 'Silly Goose with Bread Expansion Pack', a long neck companion with slices of bread necklaces that you can also use as napkin rings - there truly is a lot of oddness you can make with clay. You don't need a rubber duck when you have a ceramic one!
Everything I mark with the "Richard Moonstreet" stamp is entirely handmade by me from start to finish at the studio in London. I throw everything on a potters wheel, add ducky extras like beaks and feet, put them in the kilns and then share them all with you!
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Handmade Friends
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Haus of Honk
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So... why Richard?
This is a bit of a weird one too...
When I start something new I don't like to name it after myself in case it later goes horribly wrong and it becomes my legacy forever. I don't want to go to my grave as "that guy that once tried to make a vase 60 years ago and it was so crap everyone laughed at him for the rest of his life".
So I had a look around me and tried to think of a name I could brand my pottery enterprise and settled on Richard Moonstreet. We have a smart speaker at home and he randomly woke us up with driving directions at 2am, unprovoked, to a road in Crewe called Richard Moon Street. This little avenue was actually named after a real person called Richard Moon, who did a lot of jazzy things with the railways in the Industrial Revolution, but it's a name that seemed to fit - and more importantly nobody had nabbed the Instagram handle yet. So an identity was born! Take that, Tex!
...and now ducks!
I've always loved wildlife and animals. I remember sketching cartoon Robins in junior school, adding hats and various characteristics and exaggerating them into fat little birds. I even tried to offer the artwork to greeting card companies but nobody really expressed interest (perhaps because I was 9). Maybe in my heart I always wanted to make round happy birds that looked cozy and cute and rotund.
But most of all I've always had a desire to make people smile, and I really hope that sometimes it works!
And besides, everyone loves ducks! There's even a movie about them in 2024 called Migration - they have universal appeal for being lovely!
What actually is 'ceramic'?
It isn't a silly question, don't worry!
It starts with clay. In the raw form something that is literally dug out the ground. After being processed a little to make life easier, clay is formed or 'thrown' into the desired shape with the help of water. It is very flexible in this form, but as it dries out it eventually becomes 'bone dry' and solid in the shape you made. This process so far is 'pottery', the art and skill of potting. Named after literally making a pot in the traditional form, but these days you can make anything you imagine.
That piece of pottery you've just made isn't yet 'ceramic', that comes with a lot of heat. The particles of your clay are still loose and fluid, so if you add water to it again, it will eventually break down back to how it started. If you put your pottery in a kiln however, a process starts where things get more permanent. The particles fuse together and become their final shape. The point of no return is 498'c. Once you get this hot, your pot is now 'ceramic' and no amount of water will get it back to clay.
clay + water + heat = ducks?
Pretty much! But it is a very long, arduous and often tiring process. From start to finish a duck takes about 3 weeks to be ready to go to their new home.
Once I've thrown the initial shape, or form, of the body, it's then just a case of making them into the characters we love. I'll roll out little clay balls and squash them down into feet and beaks. I'll shape out arms and any additional items my new friend will be holding on to. Using a method of scoring and slipping, these will be stuck on to the body and then dried out ready for decoration.
The colour details come from 'underglaze', basically a very strong paint that will not become diluted or faded in the kilns. Brush it on, dab it in places you want and then hope for the best (as it can sometimes still run, burn or bubble in the kilns).
But keep going! After making them, the first kiln firing goes to 900'c to 'biscuit' fire them, which allows you to have a very absorbent surface for the next step or glazing. I then apply a transparent glossy sheen glaze over the top and fire it again to 1240'c. If it doesn't crack, pinhole, burst, explode, run, fade, drip, crawl or stick - your ceramic creation is ready!
Did you know that only about 7 in 10 of my makes are a total success? The process is a tricky one and doesn't always work!
