Earth Marks - Beaker people

This year I want to work on marks made by early man on the earth, from the incised simple marks on early pottery and caves to the marks made by early peoples and pilgrims as they carved out trails and routes over the planet.

My first piece is based on the pots made by the Beaker people who lived in and around Europe and North Africa around the time of the Bronze age. I used a reference pot from the Lincoln Museum as a starting point for the shape and copied the incised decoration from around the pot surface. I wanted the images of the decoration to appear to 'float' over the surface of the pots, rather than have a more figurative form of decoration on each pot.

As usual, I started with white calico that I dyed and then used Inktense blocks to shape and colour the pots. (I really enjoy working with these blocks, the colour pigment is so good and they fix well to cotton.)
I used transparent fabric paint to colour the incised blocks after stitching around each shape. There is not a huge amount of stitching on the pieces, only the outlines of the pots and the decorative incised shapes, but wanted to have a more 'painterly'effect on this piece.

Jean