Mary Parker
LightNews LightNews
banner
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
Mary Parker
@dailawyrprints.bsky.social
340 followers 160 following 34 posts
Artist-printmaker, born in Wales & living in Stoke-on-Trent, the home of the Pottery Throwdown https://www.dailawyrprints.com/
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Mary Parker
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
More: www.tom-cox.com/nothing-cold...
It’s Fireworks Fortnight in our village. It used to be just Fireworks Week, but then someone decided that wasn’t quite enough to cover the entire period from Halloween to Bonfire Night with a few extra days either side so the fireworks who weren’t free on weeknights didn’t feel sad and left out. Me? I don’t quite understand - particularly considering the current state of the planet - why the archetypal sound now widely accepted as representative of autumnal celebration is “full-scale industrial warfare unexpectedly breaks out in semi-rural garden”. The cats are scared. The most positive way I can look at it is that at least they’re not as quiveringly hide-under-the-bed terrified as other cats I’ve lived with in the past, and, soon, the firework people might finally take a break, until, of course, they begin to worry that, if they don't mark both occasions with a shitload of fake bomb sounds, New Year and Christmas might not officially exist. Like a lot of extraordinarily annoying things these days, including advertising and technology, fireworks are louder and more aggressive than they used to be and when I say that I’m aware of a temptation not to say it, because of how tediously middle-aged it makes me sound, but I’m simultaneously no less aware that fear of sounding tediously middle-aged is a frequent barrier to telling the truth. Yep, kids often like them. But some other kids are scared of them. What would we truly lose if they were banned? Anxious pets and wildlife... yet more pointless plastic released into the environment... antisocial moronic noise. Call me far-out and crazy but I reckon we can just about continue to cope, as a species, after that kind of bereavement.
November 9, 2025 at 5:46 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
A quick sketch from the car while my daughter was at an appointment #UrbanSketch
A drawing with different colour biros of a car park and view beyond. The view is mainly dominated by a telegraph pole with many wires stretching across and down the street, there are green shrubs and trees in the middle distance. There are the bonnets of two cars coming in from the left of the drawing.
November 4, 2025 at 2:30 AM
Reposted by Mary Parker
gatocielo.bsky.social
#watercolor
October 11, 2025 at 11:56 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
I’ve finished this #linocut - it’s the former Price Kensington teapot factory in Stoke-on-Trent. It was going to have a lot more detail, but I kind of fell for the orange roofline silhouette #printmaking #StokeOnTrent #pottery #TeaPotFactory
A historic roofline including a bottle shaped pottery kiln, and a tall slim chimney. On the left is the side of a white building with dark green-framed windows. The roofline is in layers, at the back is mid-orange which has the roofline itself, the next layer is a darker orangey brown, and delineates a wall, just below the centre line. The last layer, just below that, is a darker warm brown and represents the road.
October 11, 2025 at 11:20 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
My current #wip - a reduction #linocut of the old Price Kensington Teapot Factoty in Longport, #StokeOnTrent I think it’s just needing one more layer, maybe two. #BottleOven #BottleKiln
A colour linocut of an old pottery factory, looking up at it in silhouette. The sky is light peach pink, the factory buildings include a bottle-shaped kiln chimney to the left and a tall narrow chimney just to its left, these are in burnt orange. A wall curbing from near bottom left to half way up on the right is in chestnut brown, with two receding lamp-posts top right. All the way down the left of the image is the edge of a white building, with dark green shapes for windows (these will change with the next layer) This is the grey lino with the design from picture one carved in mirror image, the structure (composition) is the same, but the sky is carved away. Here, the part described as chestnut brown is inked in ready to be transferred to the print.
September 18, 2025 at 10:31 AM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
Aaand it’s landed @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social Looking forward to reading it!
A hardback copy of a book sitting in its packaging- the book is Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox, the cover has an illustration of cliffs, sea and beach, with a figure on the beach, bare trees in the bottom right corner, a cottage near the foot of the cliffs, and curling marks in the sky to suggest gales. A black bird, maybe a raven, is flying inland.
September 10, 2025 at 10:35 AM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
I’ve just completed this #linocut of Stone Station in Staffordshire - it‘s stretched my drawing and linocutting skills, inking could have been better. I need more small rollers! #StoneStaffs #printmaking #ReductionPrintmaking
A linocut print of the frontage of Stone Railway station, which is in fact a red brick building. It is two storeys high, in three vertical sections with high decorative gables on each. The windows and doors have cream- coloured stone surrounds, all of the windows are coloured black, and the doors on each section of the building are deep mid-red. To the left there is the end of the station canopy, in a lighter red, and to the right there is an engine shed with a black arched door. This photo shows the palette that I used, which is clear plastic in a white desk, viewed from directly above. Just above the palette are some of the tubes of ink, lying parallel to it. Along the top edge of the palette, there are blobs of ink: bright red, grey, white, pillar box red, ruby red, burnt umber, black, Prussian blue, and a lighter mix of white and Prussian blue (mixed for the blue commemorative plaque near the station’s front door.) Below this line, to the left is the inked up lino block, with only the fine details left to catch the ink, such as the doors, windows and the plaque. To the right, the mixed inks and their individual narrow rollers: from top to bottom, ruby red, bright red, black-brown and very light grey, each rolled out in a thin line with the roller resting at the extreme right.
June 11, 2025 at 12:44 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
Progress - I’m working on an architectural study-type reduction linocut of Stone railway station in Staffordshire UK. One more layer to go, spot-inking the windows and doors, and the platform porch. Much lino cutting to do! #linocut #printmaking #Stone #Staffordshire #ReductionPrintmaking
Tracing the drawing of the station for transfer to lino. The building has three similar sections, two storeys high with bowed arch tops at the gable ends of the roof. I think it’s Victorian, red brick with stone window frames. This is just a line drawing but the finished print will be in colour. This photo has the part-done tracing with a black and red striped pencil lying across it. This photo shows the lino carved for the first colour with an ombré / graduated light to mid brown rolled across it. Places across it is one of the prints with the building shown in ombré light at the base and darker towards the top. The roller and palette is to the right, again with the ombré ink on both roller and palette, with neutral grey and brown blobs of ink and one bright yellow blob to the left of the mixed colours. This photo shows the second layer, a rich orange-brown, printed over the first ombré layer. The lino block, covered in the orange-brown, is on a yellow patterned tray with card edges and masking tape to the left (this is part of my registration system to make sure the block is in the same place for each print). The paper had been peeled off the block and the ink has transferred to show the detail of the building beginning to appear.
May 29, 2025 at 2:32 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
#UrbanSketching (sort of) at Foxfield Railway just outside #StokeOnTrent on Saturday, at their War Wheels event. Some winged vehicles as well as earthbound ones!
An attempt at drawing a Spitfire propeller aircraft in pencil, from behind it. The tail-plane is in the foreground, a wing behind and the fuselage roughly sketched in-between both. Three of the propeller blades are visible at the front of the plane, and the wheels underneath are half drawn in as the were obscured by the grass that it was placed in. The pencil lines overall are quite faint. A quick line sketch with sepia pen of a railway platform on the right, a train track from left bottom corner into the centre, leading to a steam locomotive which is on the track. To the left of the loco, there is the side of a big engine shed which takes up the side of the image from the centre to the top. There are roughly drawn trees behind it and the train. On the right of the train, there is a suggestion of station buildings, which I couldn’t finish as I ran out of time. Another quick train sketch with sepia pen. On the near right is a boiler which is being repaired. It is a tall rectangular shape which widens as it goes up and is rounded at the top. There are various handles, bars, nuts and bolts attached to the front. This section takes the whole right-hand third of the drawing. The bottom of the right and centre is the ground, with a metal frame, and beyond that are an old wooden train carriage centre left, a small angular diesel engine in the centre, and in the background a large industrial engine shed which takes up the rest of the space.
May 20, 2025 at 3:18 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
Eldest and I visited Etruria Industrial Museum in Stoke-in-Trent yesterday (just outside the city centre). Looking forward to visiting again to do some drawing!
A side view of the Victorian flint mill with stone steps up to the first floor, green railings at the side and a tall, broad chimney rising behind the building. Brick built, with black-grey bricks throughout. There are spring-green shoots in the trees and bushes around it. A view looking towards the tall, triangular-shaped brick chimney that contains the kiln, looking across a footbridge that has red railings either side. A factory building and straighter chimney stand to the left, and spring green shooting trees to the right.
April 26, 2025 at 5:03 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
A quick #UrbanSketch last Saturday from a supermarket car park in #StokeOnTrent
A line drawing of cars in a car park, with a block of flats to the left, and a row of old terraced housing in the background. Black, red and blue pen lines to try to describe the space and boundaries better.
April 25, 2025 at 1:42 AM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
My #linocuts for the #ThoughtPressProject are now in their shop, raising funds for two kids’ charities, here’s my blog about the process, link to the shop at the end! open.substack.com/pub/dailawyr...
Printing for the Kids
Art for the benefit of the next generation
open.substack.com
March 17, 2025 at 2:59 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
I’m getting back to this linocut development- I love scaffolding on things, but this one’s been confounding me, and I’d left it for a while. Yesterday I picked it up again and it’s going to get done this time! #linocut #wip #BottleKilns #drawing #printmaking
Four images in a block, top left is a black and white photo of two bottle shaped brick kilns covered in scaffolding, reflected in a canal. Top right is my unfinished pencil drawing from the photo, bottom left is an enlarged photocopy of it, and bottom right is a photocopy that I have drawn on, adding reflected lines on the water.
March 15, 2025 at 4:15 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
I’ve made a start on my #ThoughtPressProject print for this year, the theme is Sound and Vision, so I’m basing it on a @marillion.com concert photo that I took in 2022 here in #StokeOnTrent
February 17, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Mary Parker
vickijordanart.bsky.social
Any UK printmakers on here fancy joining us on this year’s Thought Press Project? It’s a lovely thing to be a part of, with a great community & raising money for charity 😊

Message me if you’d like more info, or go to @thoughtpressproject on IG.
January 24, 2025 at 9:29 AM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
Tiny tetrapak drypoints on an Open Press Project roller press, first tiny steps! #drypoint #intaglio #OpenPressProject #printmaking
Two black and white line prints made from foiled card plates, which are shown side by side. They both show bottle ovens, bottle shaped chimneys which housed pottery kilns, in Stoke-on-Trent, UK. One (a landscape format image) is in the context of surrounding buildings with a road sweeping across the image, downhill from right to left. This one is a real location. The other is a made up, slightly crooked group of three with roughly sketched buildings either side. This one shows the tiny roller press, it has a light blue plastic 3-d printed frame, and is clamped to my desk. The long white press bed has a serrated underside, the teeth run through the mechanism when the handle is turned. On the press bed is the print of the made up group of three bottle kilns and its foil plate, and a white felt blanket is folded back over the top of the press. There are scissors, pens, a plie of various rolls of tape and packets at the back of the image.
January 27, 2025 at 1:53 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
This about sums it up….
January 24, 2025 at 11:28 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
Starting to feel out the shapes and composition for another #BottleOven linocut, this time Roslyn Works, next door to #GladstonePotteryMuseum #PreparatorySketch #UrbanSketch #StokeOnTrent
Quick sketch of a former three-storey pottery factory, with two kiln chimneys sticking up through the roof A photograph of the former pottery, with bright blue sky and varying shades of red brick, and a metal staircase diagonally across the structure.
January 16, 2025 at 2:22 AM
Reposted by Mary Parker
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
Almost certainly the best thing I was ever told about owls was when I met an owl handler and he said that the wild owls near the sanctuary where he worked worried about the tame show owls there and sometimes stopped by to leave them shrews and mice as presents.
December 24, 2024 at 1:44 PM
Reposted by Mary Parker
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
tomcox.substack.com/p/a-newslett...
quote from the piece in the link
December 19, 2024 at 10:28 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
Any #printmakers using Discord? We have a growing community at Printmakers Chat discord.gg/YAJp9x9d
November 21, 2024 at 9:38 AM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
I completed this reduction #linocut of the Italian gardens at #TrenthamGardens in #staffordshire UK earlier this year, I think it was eight stages in the end.
November 19, 2024 at 9:29 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
An #UrbanSketch of the remaining #BottleOven at the former Price Kensington teapot factory in #StokeOnTrent - the site is being gradually restored which is wonderful!
A pen and watercolour sketch of a very large bottle shaped pottery kiln and surrounding derelict brick buildings. There are plants (buddleia) growing out of the sloping sides at the top of the kiln.
November 16, 2024 at 11:51 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
This evening’s sky, imagine tawny owls calling in the field next to the park 😌
November 15, 2024 at 9:07 PM
dailawyrprints.bsky.social
An #UrbanSketch of a roofscape in the town of Cheadle, Staffordshire. I used acrylic markers for the first time on thick black paper, it’s useful to have this as an option now, I like how it worked out!
A bright drawing of a roofscape in Cheadle, Staffordshire using acrylic pens, using the black paper for roofs, bright orange for brick walls, white for highlights and green and blue for trees and sky.
November 14, 2024 at 9:37 AM