How Many Years Ago?

Back in 1993, my parents came up to see me graduate from Hampshire College. I was fortunate enough to be able to time my final thesis exhibit for their visit. Not an easy thing during the spring when everyone needs a place to show off their projects.

Trying to find a suitable gallery space in May in the Happy Valley can be downright impossible. Instead of a traditional gallery space with white walls and track lighting, I held my show in the Hampshire College greenhouse attached to the Cole Science Center. My red glazes never looked better!

So why am I sharing this old photo?

This month, Aurora and I took a drive to Vermont and then MA to the Happy Valley to look at schools. It is getting to be the time for Aurora to apply to schools. She had asked about visiting Hampshire while we were in town looking at Amherst College. After we finished the school tour and the info session, she and I walked the campus together after having lunch in the dining hall. She asked if she could sit in on a class in the science building, and arranged things with the professor so she could. We were about a half hour early for her class so we walked through the building. I figured why not show her what the greenhouse is like on a warm spring day. It must have been over 85F in there. And humid! Quite a shock from the chill 40F outside. As soon as Aurora saw the space she understood what it took to host this show in that space. Certainly not the usual space to host an exhibit.

Seeing that space again after all this time certainly brought back memories. It was quite possibly my most brief exhibition. By far it was the most humid! The attendance was incredible. Potters from all over came to show their support. As my first solo exhibition it marked a new point in my clay career.

Soon to Have Pots Again (seriously limited edition)

I know it sounds like an odd paradox, considering I haven't touched clay in over a year now... but we will actually be getting some pots back in hand soon. Some of the work we have had out on consignment is on its way home. In one instance, the gallery is closing due to poor sales... which given the general state of the national economy is no surprise. It is discouraging though.

Why am I mentioning this?

Because we still get calls and emails from folks wanting to pick up pots from us. I can't begin to tell you the sheer number of people who assume that somewhere out in the studio (which doesn't exist either) are the elves secretly making our work while we sleep. Nope. Isn't happening.

So to suddenly have some of our pots in hand again means we can have some to give away as gifts and some for us... and maybe, just maybe... some for you.

Once the pots are home, I'll take some pictures of them and you can judge for yourself.
Till then, we'll have to guess what pots we'll be bringing home.

Getting Ready To Take It All Down

414981 - Blue Blue Day, 15"diameter

After having our gallery walls hung with our huge Glaze Tectonics platters for the past eight years, the time has finally come to start taking them down and crating them up. They simply have never sold as well as one would hope. As much as I love looking at them and reflecting on them, they have never reached out to the public at large. Most people simply cant imagine paying 2D prices (ie painting, print, photography prices) for a clay disk filled with glaze that happens to hang on the wall. Maybe the lineage is too close to being a mug. Maybe it is the old dirt cheap metaphor. Who knows? Doesn't really matter. The real estate is too precious to leave these beasties hanging around. Time to bring them in from the cold, to wrap them up and call it a night.

Which leaves the next question: What is going up in their place? Ahhh. Prints.

Today FedEx pulled into the driveway and unloaded six BIG boxes full of framed, matted, photographic prints. Nancy and I sat down, went through all of my favorite images, and picked out a dozen. They are now framed in a few different sizes... basically big, bigger and DAMN that's big!

My hope is that Nancy and I will have time to repack all the platters this weekend and start hanging the new prints soon. I already unpacked one box and I haven't recovered yet. Mpix makes amazing prints! The framing job is better than I could have done on my own here. Very high end job! Definitely worth the cost. Next week: Pics of the new photographs on the wall!!

Getting Down to the Wire

As we head into our last three weeks with our studio open, the pots on the shelves are starting to look pretty lonely. We had a bang-up weekend where at times we had people leaving the studio with a bag under each arm, and in some cases they had to make a few trips. This is wonderful for us, but for folks waiting to buy pots on the last day we'll be open... perhaps not so good.

Let me say again for anyone who didn't read the postcard or the Facebook page or my earlier blog posting: August 21st is the LAST day to buy pots. Prices GO UP all day long. We have pots now, and that selection is dwindling fast. If you want to be able to have choices, NOW is the time to be shopping. Okay... 'nuf said.

Made it to Monday

Here are Monday's images of what remains in the gallery. Today is our last installment of functional pottery from the gallery. I will do a few posts this week of the BIG platters from the Glaze Tectonics series which are also available.


Top Row left to right- Blue small serving bowl $48, Forest teabowl $40, Turq dessert plate $24, Matte purple salad plate $30, Blue oval footed vase $70, Large glaze experiment platter $100
BOTTOM row-- pear teabowl $40, Forest teabowl $40, robins egg diner mug $30 ea., dessert plates $24 ea., matte purple sorbet bowl $24



TOP ROW --- Teabowls in matte purple, blue, pear, forest $40 ea., Canisters in blue and matte purple $50 ea., turq footed mug $36

BOTTOM ROW--- Pear small serving bowl $48, HG Butter dish blue (ish) $30, blue tumblers $24 ea., matte purple canister $50, footed mugs in turq and forest $36 ea., small blue teabowl $36




Top row--- small blue serving bowl $48, Pear small serving bowl $48, matte purple small serving bowl $48, forest canister $50, blue dessert plate $24, blue small mixing bowl $60, robins egg dessert plate $24.

Bottom Row--- Turq footed mug $36, blackberry oval footed vase $65, forest sorbet bowls $24 ea., blue canister$50, forest canister $50, forest footed mug $36, turq footed mug $36




Large blue serving bowl $100, med blue serving bowl $70, matte purple sorbet bowl $24, blue sorbet bowl $24, Blackberry tall teabowl $40, matte purple sorbet bowl $24, blue teabowl $40, turquoise sorbet bowl $24, Blue dessert plate $24, med blue serving bowl $70, small serving bowl Pear $48, med turquoise serving bowl $70, small lime serving bowl $48, various plates $24-36 ea., lime soup mug $36, butter sorbet bowl $24, Tangerine small serving bowl $48

Sunday's Pottery Images - Happy Fourth of July!

More pots from the studio. We are starting to see waves of tourists which means that these pots diminish on a daily basis. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Once they're gone... they're gone.

607-387-4042 voice/fax
email: info@coldspringsstudio.com



left to right--- Medium mixer in Pear $80, Large Serving bowl in Turquoise $100, sorbet bowls in pear, Blue, forest $24 ea., blackberry dessert plates $24, small mixer in Robins Egg $60, Med serving bowl in pear $70




TOP ROW---Lime sm serving bowl $48, sorbet bowls in sunset $24 ea., salad plates in lime $30 ea., diner mug in Tangerine $30, oval trays $60 ea.

BOTTOM ROW-- Dinner plates in assorted colors (lots more avail) $36 ea., sm mixer $60, diner mugs in cranberry $30 ea, salad plate $30, Lime sm serving bowl $48, sorbet bowls in sunset $24 ea.






left to right top image -- Lime small serving bowl $48, tangerine dessert plates $24 ea., lime soup mug (the only one!) $36, butter sorbet bowl $24, sm serving bowl tangerine $48, footed mug in Sunset $36, Diner mug in lime $30, sorbet bowl in Butter $24, med serving bowl in Tangerine $70

left to right, second row--- sm serving bowl tangerine $48, sm teabowl in sunset $36, cranberry diner mug $30, tangerine teabowl $40, sunset red footed mug $36, butter sm serving bowl $48, lime sorbet bowls $24 ea., sm serving bowl lime $48, diner mug tangerine $30.

Images from the Gallery

We've had enough folks asking what we have left in the gallery. RIGHT NOW we have quite a few pots filling the gallery. This weekend begins the summer rush. In other words, the pots start flying off the shelf in mass quantities.

So without further ado....


Once again, we have footed mugs. We might have one more batch before we close,... but I wont promise anything. These just came back from a gallery, so for us they are new. We haven't seen them in almost 2 years. We gave them our best pots, they didnt sell, and now they're back!

Footed mugs

Big lime teabowl.

Facetted small serving bowl in lime.

Tall blackberry basket

carved vase in Lime

And yes, I will be posting more pictures later today and tomorrow. (I actually shot every single pot in the gallery this morning)

Why I Left the Pottery Business

Three people walked into our gallery this morning. Two sisters with an accompanying husband. After I said an encouraging hello, the first comment out of their mouths was that they were glad I was open. I explained that I try to be open every day 10-5pm. They explained that NO, I was only open weekends. Hmm. News to me. Sure enough it says 10-5pm on the website, on our brochure, and on the Art Trail website. Hmmm. But the customer is always right...

Once inside one woman asks what temperature our glazes are fired to. I reply "cone 6". At which her husband replies, "Oh, earthenware." No... cone six, white stoneware. She then explains that he taught high school ceramics in California. "Oh Really? Do you in fact have an associates degree from VermTech?" (from Over the Hedge)

As we made our way back into the kiln room, I was showing off the big platters that grace the walls. The husband once again authoritatively states that these MUST be Raku. I explain that No... in fact they are fired in oxidation at temps ranging from cone 3 up through cone 12. I start to delve into the firing process (which is interesting, unique and hardly commonplace) when he cuts me off and says, "Are you sure? They look just like raku." Yeah, I'm pretty damned sure seeing as how I FREAKIN' MADE THEM!

From there the conversation improved dramatically when the gentleman asked: "Do you have any brick? Hmmm? You know bricks that have been stamped? " When I explained that I no longer kept my secret stash of hard brick on hand for examination by the public, he let on as how he collected brick.

That's what I expect to buy when I go to a potter's studio. A brick. A stamped brick.

And folks wonder why we're closing down the shop. Oh my. Bricks. We're closing the studio because we don't have any earthenware, raku, bricks.

Finally Getting to Try Stuff

This morning I went out to the studio, and got seriously depressed. What I wanted to do was make pots. I have been wanting to make pots since getting out of the hospital. Despite a quick foray back in January, the studio has been quiet. Every time I try to throw, I am reminded (painfully) about what I can and cannot do. This herniation at the ostomy site wont simple vanish overnight. It needs to be dealt with, and that's the plan now. I miss making pots in the worst way.

I feel very lucky to have had Hannah here through March. She kept me working in the studio most weeks even if I couldn't throw pots. I could be glazing work she had thrown, or helping her get ready to load a kiln, or maybe start working on a new glaze. Now the studio is pretty quiet.

I decided today to take advantage of that quiet. I have wanted to PLAY in the studio since before my surgery. After buying all that flash photography gear, I had mountains of ideas to try. Here's the thing with flash photography... if you're doing it right, no one knows that flash was used. Some of my favorite flash images look like they were shot with daylight peeking through a window. That's what I have been craving. Gentle light, directional... but I think by starting with two lights I was more than confused about how to proceed.

Today, with just one light on a stand, shooting through a white umbrella, I took a few snapshots for a customer far-far-away. After looking at them, I thought, HEY! Why not shoot some samples from around the gallery so people can see what we have on our shelves. Not to boast, but for the first time ever, we have stockpiles of some forms. Mugs we have LOTS of. Plates we have by the bushel. We have more pots on the shelves now than we normally do before July. Not bad considering I can't make more right now! Here's hoping that we learn a lot at the Cleveland Clinic this week!!!

Another long evening of glazing

It really shouldn't take this long. After all these years, you'd think I would have figured out a better, simpler, faster way to get glaze off the bottoms of my pots. Nope. Not sure there is one. So, I wax, I glaze, it dries a while, then I clean all the drips off. That seems like all I have done since about 2pm this afternoon! But... it's done. The kiln is loaded and I am excited. (I'm always a little excited when we fire.)

Tonight is the first batch of lime since last year. We haven't made a lot of pots in Lime because I haven't had many orders calling for it.... till June... and now we have more than a few pots waiting to become LIME. So, tonight that's what we're firing. In fact, we'll be firing Lime again, on Friday, and perhaps again on Tuesday! Lots of pots have accumulated so it's time to get them through the kiln. We're still waiting on some materials for our Sunset glaze, but as soon as they arrive, we can get the pots for those orders glazed up and fired too!

So what's next? Well... I have been hoping to find time this "Spring" to work on our Espresso Brown glaze. It never really happened. Jim Gottuso over at Sofia's Dad's Pots was kind enough to send me a recipe he has been testing that looks like a warm chocolate bar! Hopefully I can get some tests going of that glaze base on our claybodies soon! Also wondering when we'll finally start playing with a creamy white glaze. I want to develop something with some character... some movement, but also still very satin, well behaved.

You know... the perfect glaze. That's all I want.

Those Sleepless Days of July

Hannah's Wall-o-Mugs!

If you think you know the lyrical reference in the title of this posting, and you leave it here via a comment, (and you're correct)... I have a prize for you.

So, what have we been up to this week? Mostly making more pots. I had a good series of footed mugs come through the kiln, and they all sold before we had a chance to get some good images of them.

I finally had a few minutes this morning to catch a few quick glimpses around the showroom. Surprisingly, it has been pretty slow in our gallery this week. Compared to last week, it has been silent... a few folks each day, but nothing like the onslaught we had the last week of June!

Weekly Update

This week has seen a lot of pots fly through the studio... and yet I feel like I haven't had time to do much of anything. Here's a quick look through the studio and the gallery. More when I feel "more caught up"

One of the projects I started this week was adding feet to our oval vase forms. I wish the feet were visible in this image... suffice to say they look like the feet on our footed mugs. I think though, that they need something more. Not sure yet how to integrate it, but we'll see what the next batch offers.


I always enjoy waxing. I love the rhythm of re-centering. I love seeing them lined up, covered in bubblegum colored wax. Some potters ask why I bother adding dye to our wax... I guess I like knowing exactly where I have goofed with the wax, rather than being surprised after the firing. We also add alumina hydrate to our wax to help avoid plucking of our claybody on our kiln shelves.


Hannah finally has her own display of her multi-colored mugs. And they are FLYING off the shelves. Of our last four customers, three of them went home with at least one of Hannah's mugs.

Gutting the gallery

Piles of glazed pots on our throwing shelves? What?

Stacked pell mell, hither and yon?

Last year we changed our booth design to be more "high-end", in light of getting into more prestigious shows like Craft Boston and State College. The major change was moving from an off white shelving idea to a rich dark espresso brown instead. As soon as we did that, we realized we would eventually need to change the way our gallery looked too.

Mind you, for the last 6 years, the gallery has basically comprised of our travelling booth loaded to the gunwales with pots. On the one hand, it made things cheaper to have one object doing double duty, but it also meant if we were at a show, everything had to be torn down for the show, the gallery closed, and then rebuilt at the show, torn down, and then rebuilt upon returning home. After 6 years we'd had enough.

This year we only plan to do a few small shows. I would much rather encourage folks to come and find us HERE anytime of the week. Easier on my back, my wits and my pocketbook.

After talking things over with my designer,decorator and awesome wife, we decided that things needed to change in the gallery too. We needed something more open, more modern, etc. Meanwhile, we're not in the cash-flush season yet (or even IF there will be a cash flush season this year).... so we waited and waited all through the winter.

I got fed up on Wednesday.

With our apprentice Hannah here, and ready to work, we tore into this project. Moved all the pots into the throwing room, broke down all the shelving and basically made the wall completely open.

That accomplished... a clean slate so to speak.... we started measuring things out, laying out how to reorganize the arrangement of shelves etc. Ten hours later, the new shelving was up...sort of. We ran out of shelf brackets and the brand we're using seems to no longer be carried by Lowe's or any of our local hardware stores. I wanted to use super heavy duty shelf brackets and these will carry 150-300# per bracket. I also wanted space below waist level to store backstock BEHIND our bamboo curtain. So far, we're out of shelf brackets BUT we have them on order.

Here's what it looks like in process.

New, bare and unadulterated... till this weekend!

Pots like I promised

When I say we have STACKS of bisqueware.... I mean, STACKS and STACKS and STACKS.
We could glaze eight kiln loads worth of pots... if we only had the time to get it all glazed.
So why so many pots? Well, having an apprentice has allowed me to focus a lot more of my time on throwing pots since she is taking care of making all of our slab built plates and serving trays.
It is also my intention to have enough work to get us through Summer without panic and frustration like we've seen each summer for three years running!

This is the old Turquoise, along with the Lime and Blue and Forest glazes.

We have a new replacement color for our Turquoise. We'd been making turquoise for about 5 years now and it was time to let it go. It never really made me say WOW. It was a decent color, but as a glaze it was lacking. Sort of a flat even color, no depth, always too glossy, and inevitably obscured my texture. So, a week ago, I took the remaining 2 gallons of Turq and mixed it with the remaining 3 gallons of an ancient glaze called Seafoam (from about 7 years ago!) and sent it through the firing. It came out a wonderful color, but still too close to Turquoise. And worse it was even shiny-er!

On Monday I had a chance to play a little bit with the glaze and sat there thinking about what I would change and how to get it to stand up and dance for me. I ended up adding 5% EPK (kaolin) and an extra 1% copper oxide. Fired it up Monday night. Unloaded today and WOW. Now it sings.

All that is left is to name it. We are going to host a competition to name this new turquoise-ish color. (we're gonna do this for some of our other new colors too... just wait!!)

So here are the rules: no name suggestions till we begin the competition. All submissions have to be via the blog.

The prize: Winner gets a pot of their choosing in this new color.

Contest will begin as soon as I post a GREAT new image of this color sometime next week. Just wait!!!