Old Bowls, Old Friends

This porcelain bowl was made back when I was an undergraduate at UMASS/Amherst, and working on a series of copper red experiments. After struggling with firing copper red glazes in an old Alpine updraft kiln, I was invited to fire some pots in Michael Cohen's kiln. Some of my tests also were fired in Tom White's kiln. The hardest part was trying to get reproducible results. The Alpine updraft, while not a bad kiln, is certainly not what most people think of as a go-to kiln for great reduction glazes. Getting even reduction, and even temperature was a constant struggle. The upside to this was that is enabled me to visualize how things melted at different times, and how that contributed to the finished reduction surface. After graphing out 5 complete firings, every single pot in the kiln, where the glaze turned red, or blushed red, whether it was oxidized... all of that information was graphed out... I finally realized that early body reduction was critical for getting good reds. This bowl was fired in Mike Cohen's kiln (and dripped on one of his kiln shelves too). I love the long slow cooling that allowed the blue and red to separate and form delicate textures all over the bowl.

This old bowl was made about a year earlier, in Miami, when I was home for the summer. My friend Marc and I were trying to make pots together in a studio in Miami Shores. It was interesting seeing what we both liked and pushing each other to grow. When I look critically at this little bowl, I see that the glaze is too thin, the rim is sharp and harsh, the decoration on the inside of the bowl is boring. When I made it, I thought it was the bee's knees. I guess that is the nature of learning from our experiences. There is certainly nothing that makes this unusable as a bowl. If anything it informed all of the bowls that would follow it.

Pictures of Pitchers

This was one of the first salt glazed pitchers I made in grad school. The handle attachment was so weak, so tentative... it is hard to look at now. It was sprayed with a wollastonite slip, then poured the inside with a tenmoku glaze, and then once fired in the salt kiln. I had high hopes that it would turn out this luscious buff yellow. Didnt quite work out.

This pitcher was made for me by Dave Funk. I love the thick salted surface! Rich and melty. Almost like flowing chocolate! Dave's handle attachment was so much more confident than mine, it inspired me to take bigger risks and to really seek out a way of creating handles that were uniquely mine. Took a long while to get there, but I think in the end, they definitely felt very different. I'll have to dig up some of those pitchers from Cold Springs Studio sometime.

More Pots From Our Collection

These two woodfired pots are from Steven Godfrey, who teaches at the University of Alaska at Anchorage.
What I love is how different his current body of work is from this old woodfired stuff. His sensibilities towards the form are still very similar (probably from the KCAI influence)... but the new work speaks volumes of time, practice and stability.

Talking About Body Parts and Clay Bodies

This handbuilt mug was made as a demo for John Neely's beginning handbuilding class. During my third year at Utah State, I began teaching the beginner's handbuilding class. Having spent the bulk of 15 years as a strictly wheel throwing potter, this was quite a change for me. As a way of kick starting my teaching process, I had watched John Neely and Jason Hess as they taught their respective handbuilding classes for nearly two years.

This mug turned out nicely ovoid, with a very nice softened lip. The handle fits sweetly into the hand. The texture and the edge finishing was all done through a bed sheet laid on the soft slab. It is a perfect example of knowing what can be done to the clay at the early soft stages. The seam was beveled while the clay was still wet, allowing the whole form to be completed in one session. For students just beginning to work in soft slabs, this was eye opening. For me... it was the start of me thinking about clay very differently.

One of the most interesting aspects of being in a large graduate program was the exposure to so many different style of working, including many MANY different claybodies. John Neely had been working on a couple different woodfired claybodies that had wondefully bizarre names like Pioneer Day. Usually there was some play on words (or holidays as the case may be), and usually referred to some component of the claybody. Many of these claybodies were designed for a specific type of work or firing style: ie, reduction cool, woodfiring in the Train Kiln, or the salt kiln. 

In my second year, I spent the bulk of the year experimenting with glazed surfaces in the salt and soda kilns. I had been trying to find a white stoneware body which would give me some clay body color other than grey in the salt kiln. I wanted a dense white tight clay body which would allow my glazes to show up bright and strong. John made many suggestions and eventually I created this particular body, which used Helmer Kaolin as one of the primary clay components. It was buttery smooth when throwing, took handles well, was very dense when fired. All in all, it was a nice claybody. When I showed my students the claybody, with the forms all flipped over so they could see the wadding marks and flashing on the bottoms of the pots, one student made a comment about the flesh colored quality of the claybody... saying that the bowl looked very flesh, almost breast-like. I chuckled and named the claybody: Neely's Nipple. Mind you, I didn't advertise the claybody this way. But when I saw other students mixing up the claybody later on, I had to laugh just a little.

Gnarly CRUNCH!

Just posting a few more images of the pots I uncovered after unpacking those crates that had been buried on my front porch for the past decade.  Considering that this first image is of a whiskey cup (or sake if you prefer) from John Neely, and is quite small, you can tell that the clay is groggy beyond words! It is more like stone or asphalt. Rough and gnarly! This one was fired in a reduction cooling kiln.

This is a woodfired mug, by Jason Hess, woodfirer extraordinaire. This mug came out of a firing where Jason was testing out new wood for the woodkiln. He'd been firing with cottonwood for a while, but the firing crew was seeing weird blue drips on the underside of the kiln shelves post-firing... so they switched to firing scrap wood from this building site... so suddenly there was oak and pine aplenty, which completely changed the color response from the claybody.

Three Pots from Chris Baskin

Chris Baskin was a grad student at Alfred while I was there as a "special student". Chris had apprenticed with Byron Temple, which in my mind, enabled him to walk on water. Having used only a few of Byron's pots, the sensibilities shared are immense.

Whenever I asked Chris if I could sit and watch him pull handles, he always made it seem like "no big deal, handles are easy, no problem"... and I struggled for another five years before I began to find my own handles. Looking back now, I see so many things in Chris' pots that I borrowed or stole outright. I doubt he has any idea of what an inspiration he was to me during that seminal period at Alfred.

Chris Baskin's website has his current work available as well as his thoughts on various firing methods, etc.
Definitely worth a read! http://chrisbaskin.com

Sake Set from Shigaraki, Japan

I just figured I would share a few more images from pots in our collection that we re-discovered a few weeks ago.

This sake set was given to me as a gift (and no, they are not looking for a new home). They were made in Shigaraki, Japan. I have always wanted to go to Shigaraki. I love the roughness of the clay; the woodfire marks, the ash drips... it was what I hoped to create in my own woodfired work.

More Pottery Looking for a New Home

This carved dinner plate and tumbler are up for grabs  going to a new home. You can either pick it up here at the studio, or arrange for packing and shipping. Yay for local pickup!

You Slow, Slow Bastards

No, I am not being humorous here.

I posted all these cool pots here on my blog, and no one has really said much of anything.

I posted them 2 min ago on FB and they are FLYING off our shelves.

You know what? That'll teach me.

Blogs suck.

No More Mac & Cheese

When I first made this casserole, I had never joined a thrown form to a slab successfully. Most of the time, I could be assured that there would be some cracking; either an S-crack in the middle or a crack along the seam where the thrown cylinder joined the slab. After trying all sorts of solutions, I tried just dropping the freshly thrown cylinder on the wet slab and leaving them to dry together before doing anything.... and lo-and-behold... it worked. These forms would later morph into my oval baking dishes and my oval pitchers and my oval vase forms.

This is a very used casserole. It was woodfired, with only a liner glaze on the inside. It has seen mostly mac and cheese in its day. Now that I no longer consume pasta and cheese with regularity, it is time for this handsome casserole to find a new home. I give no guarantees about it lasting another decade or two, going in and out of an oven and all the temperature extremes. So far, it has been very accommodating of thermal shock. I would imagine, if you continued baking with it, and NOT preheating the oven, it would last quite a long while still.

This casserole is up for grabs. Pay the postage on it, or come pick it up.