Cologne Henge is inspired by a wedding I attended with an ex years ago. The day before the ceremony, the bakers dropped the cake. Cue justified tears and general panic.

The mother of the bride stepped in, declaring she would bake it herself. When her husband bravely pointed out that baking wasn’t exactly her strong suit, she brushed it aside (he got a bit of a slap, tbf). She would do absolutely anything to stop her daughter crying.

The resulting cake was a sensational, chaotic triumph, thrown together from whatever she had in her cupboards and whatever last-minute ingredients she could scavenge.

While it looked rough AF, to me it was a beautiful testament to the lengths people will go for love.

I reproduced this frantic energy by building, underglazing, and glazing this piece within the same 22-hour window (excluding drying and kiln time) that she had to bake the cake.

The constraint forced a race: make it structurally sound first, then rush everything else. It felt strange deliberately putting myself under that pressure, watching glazing mistakes happen and knowing I didn’t have time to fix them.

Yet it felt as though the mother of the bride (Sue?) was watching over the kiln. The rushed piece emerged beautifully and stands as proof that when you rush something out of love, the results are perfect in their own flawed way.

The overwhelming smell of cheap body spray, aftershave, and perfume at the wedding also unearthed a memory of a psychotic episode in which I found myself the groom in an ancient wedding.

I was Dionysus, blissfully happy, while everyone else was absolutely furious with me—my daily situation tbf 😂

As it turned out, my bride, Ariadne, had been charmed away from Theseus (though it didn’t take much, given he’d essentially binned her off on Naxos). I can only assume the crowd was full of disgruntled Theseus fanboys.

In both cases, love won the day. I’m incredibly happy with this double tribute to the real-life couple and to Ariadne and me. Well done, Sue. Well done, everyone. Well done, me.