Living With Pots

This soup mug was made by Ashley Kim. Not sure if you can make out the detail, but there is a line of red stitching around the waistline of this soup mug. Amazing feel in the hand. The recurved handle fits so incredibly well.  Ashley is having her holiday studio sale right now, so grab some pots before they are gone!

This next mug was made by Lynne Hobaica. My friend Sabra bought it for Aurora when she and I visited the Genessee Pottery in Rochester back at the end of Summer. Fantastic show! Just wish we had been there opening night so we could get more pots!

This last pot is one of my earliest bowls. Probably hadn't made two dozen bowls at this time. I thought of this as a BIG bowl when I made it. I had my daily lunch of ramen noodles in this through my second year of college. It travelled with me across the country so many times. It made the trip to WA state, to Florida, back to MA. Eventually out to UT for a long time. Finally it made it's home back here. The strangest thing about this bowl is its boring color. Honey Clear was a glaze I picked up from Vince Pitelka when I was at UMASS/amherst. It is a very VERY matte magnesium based glaze, but by adding 15% manganese dioxide to the glaze, it becomes a wonderful satin matte, with a gorgeous honey color. It feels almost like silk. Unfortunately the anemic color really killed sales. Nancy says it is quite possibly her least favorite glaze she has ever seen me use.

The other novel thing about this bowl is that is has red slate powder wedged into the claybody. A friend dug some up from the running track at Smith College... in hopes of making an oil spot glaze based on recipes from Nigel Wood. His glazes never worked out, but I used some of his red slate powder in my claybody. Shredded my fingers while trying to throw the stuff. Imagine glass in your claybody... slate is sharper! ouch.