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Cleaning. And Sneezing

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Trying to get the studio and showroom all tidied up for this weekend.

Swept the studio yesterday without my respirator on and paid for it dearly last night with fits of sneezing and runny nose. Sarah finally had enough of me blowing my nose like an elephant and made me take a pill.

Some pottery pics coming later....

A Few New Pots

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I am working towards getting the studio and showroom clean and all the pots set out for my upcoming Home Sale which is this Saturday and Sunday. I unloaded my kiln this morning and was happy to find some good pots in there. I'll have some seconds at this sale, mostly plates that have minor glaze issues but all in all I have a really nice selection of pots.

The dish above is 16" in diameter. I have 3 or 4 nice sized bowls like this one, they can be wired to hang.

I liked the deco on this cereal bowl...

I'll put up some more images later as I get the showroom in order.

More Trailing

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I had all these soap dishes waiting under plastic from last week needing decoration. So I took the opportunity to play around more with the trailer that Hannah send me. I'm not sure I'm holding it properly, it's a bit awkward so maybe I'll give Hannah a call for a lesson.

Off to teach at Clayworks tonight. We are going to be making some cut handle pots that I saw Alan Gaff making on his blog back in August. I've been meaning to try them out for a while now, it will be a good opportunity to pass along that information. Alan is still teaching me and I can share that with my students.

Obamaware!!!!

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I will participating in a fund raising show for the Obama/Biden campaign in a few weeks. This show will feature limited edition Obama/Biden ceramics.

Click Here to for more information and to sign up for notification of when the show goes online.

I'll also be posting more information as the time gets closer.

Alan Gaff

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Alan Gaff from Argyll Pottery in Scotland died tragically yesterday from an accident on his motorbike. I had gotten to know Alan over the past few months from his blog and an occasional email. Alan made really delightful pots and I was astounded by many of his forms and designs. Hannah McAndrew knew him much better than I and here is what she had to say today on her blog:

"I don't want to write this because I don't want to believe it. Nicola who works with Alan sent me an email today with the horrible news that Alan had an accident last night on his motorbike and has passed away. I know there were people reading the blogs who were starting to think of Alan as a friend since he started joining in with comments on our blogs and with his own. This is not much of a tribute as as you can imagine I am not really comprehending it. Nicola asked me to let people know and this I think is the way to reach as many people as I can. I can only say that my heart goes out to Alan's family and to Hugh and Nicola who he worked and laughed with. I will certainly miss his general mickey taking and the friendly rivalry of my low fired earthenware pots to his high fired stoneware. "

Still Having Problems

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I got up early this morning to unload a glaze kiln and reload a bisque. I had about 14 pots out of this load that had crawling problems. Still, most of the pots were fine and I'll try to refire these after I dab on some more glaze. This is it for this glaze....I'll be finding some thing else.

Thoughts on Monday

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This cup is from yesterday's firing. It was sort of a test piece too as I had put these colored dots on there. I used Mason stains to color my clear glaze. I'm not sure where this will lead, but I do want to keep trying to get some color on my pots. I have a green I like and I use it in an Oribe-ish sort of way.

All weekend I felt pretty regretful that I didn't go to the Utilitarian Clay Conference. It's been good to see some posts from folks who did and I heard there may be some podcasts at some point. I did hear that my blog got mentioned on Saturday morning during Ayumi Horie's presentation. That was a big surprise! Thanks Ayumi.

In the midst of feeling regretful, I've also been feeling energized and hopeful that I can turn my focus to making some good pots. I really want to get this slipware rocking. I can see in my mind part of what I want to do and where I want to take it. Getting there in reality will take some time (and more clay, glaze and slip tests).

I am also wanting to move forward on the internet marketing side of things. My Etsy site is a good start but I really want to continue to pursue the internet as a marketing and selling tool.

Having said that, I also want to analyze where I put my energy and how I can get things accomplished. I'm going to talk about this a little more later, so stay tuned.

Fired another glaze load last night. More pots out tomorrow.

I wish the postman would get here, I'm expecting some new books!!!

Pots

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I unloaded this morning and there was no screaming and yelling. The glaze did fine, I did have a couple small areas of crawling on some plates, but they can be refired. I glazed another load today and will fire again tonight. I'll try and get up a few more pics of individual pots tomorrow.

Glaze. Again. And a Big Bowl.

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Hey, thanks to you guys who all wrote in regarding my glaze problems (again). Really it wasn't so bad this morning, just a glitch (I hope). My test of the old G.B. glaze with 2% iron came out full of iron spots. Agggggghhhh.... I know I sieved it, but it was some new black iron that I'd bought so maybe it's different. So I sieved it again (twice), dipped a test, made two more quick tests with red iron and popped them all into the test kiln. Hopefully tomorrow there will be no screaming and I'll be glazing a kiln load of pots.

Finishing up teapots today and the large bowls. Decorated this big guy from last week finally. After shooting that first image I felt like it could use one more line so I drew that in and I do think that's better. Sorry you all have been looking at greenware for weeks, I promise glazed pots soon.

For the record, I did try some LG10 commercial glaze and it did great over a new white slip I mixed up but it crazed like..... well like crazy.... on my regular white slip. It's a no go. Too expensive anyhow.

I had my first class of the session at Clayworks on Tuesday. I 've got a good group again. Tonight I'm subbing for Julie as she's at the Utiliatrian Clay Conference (I sure hope she's taking good notes for me). So I'll be off to Charlotte again in a few hours.

That's it for today.

Big Bowls

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These bowls are made from 18 lbs of clay. I like the clay to be soft but it was a bit too soft yesterday so I had to throw these to this point and then let them stiffen up for a few hours.



I then ribbed them out without adding more water. This one has a flared rim and the one at the bottom doesn't. I am partial to the latter.


I'll cut away the excess clay from the bottoms of these and add a foot tomorrow. I have found that I have much better luck making these in this manner.