And then there were pots

Tangerine carved vase. Approx 6" tall.

(sorry, this one has been scooped up... gone... ZOOM!)

Both of these small serving platters are 14-16" diam. And, when they aren't in use, they can hang on the wall. Wire hangers are built into them... so they can go from the dishwasher back into the living room.

One of my last teabowls. Lime with some slip-trailed and combed decoration. The lime glaze has a very fine crackle pattern too. Sweet little teabowl.

These are the first pots we have gotten back from our consignment galleries. More images coming tomorrow (or maybe tonight!).

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.

So what's cookin' ?

We had an awesome firing this week. Took a lot longer to clean things up than it used to, but it added lots more pots to already full shelves. So, rather than bore you with more words, let's SEE SOME POTS!

New Pots just keep on coming

©2010 Cold Springs Studio Pottery - Alex Solla

©2010 Cold Springs Studio Pottery - Alex Solla

I haven't blogged much about making pots lately. By and large, it's because it has been very difficult to make work since the surgery. Each firing brings with it though, a sense of what is to come. No matter how great a firing turns out, the next BEST pot is always in the next firing. This week the firing was nearly all Cranberry. Unfortunately, Cranberry never photographs well. I have some ideas I would like to try the next time we set up to shoot... but for now you'll have to settle for everything except Cranberry.

©2010 Cold Springs Studio Pottery - Alex Solla

©2010 Cold Springs Studio Pottery - Alex Solla

©2010 Cold Springs Studio Pottery - Alex Solla

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.

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!

CONTEST WINNER

Our new colors: Robin's Egg and Pear

Leave it to an MFA poet from Cornell to come up with the most awesome names.

Dana Koster is our winner for both names!

There was an amazing array of names suggested, and some of them were as off-the-wall as the folks who suggested them. And yes, Joe, that means you.

The hardest part of choosing names for these glazes was trying to ensure that they worked with the names we already have in use, but more importantly were memorable enough that gallery owners and patrons would REMEMBER these names when ordering more pots!

I think Dana's names of Robin's Egg and Pear definitely fill that tall order.

Thank you Dana.

And thank you to everyone else who made suggestions! We will have another naming event when I finish the next two glazes Nancy has asked for.... WATCH for them!

Done shooting pics for a few weeks

This new Cranberry glaze is just amazing! I want to do some more testing with it, then we may make up a HUGE batch of it so we can add it to our mainstays for a few years. Anyone disagree?

Our current range of standard colors:
Sunset, Tangerine, Lime, New Turquoise/Seafoam color,
Blue, New Forest/Moss/Lichen color.

HURRY UP with those names folks! WE NEED NEW NAMES for these two new glazes!

It was that time again... time to shoot new images for Etsy, for our blog and for the website. Our website needs some major revisions... might even qualify for a real overhaul from Web1.0 to Web 2.0... just have to find the time to make that happen.

In the midst of all this fun, we started our Name That NEW Glaze Contest. So far we have had more than 30 entries! Keep em coming!!

We'll keep this contest open for another week and a half and then we'll name the winner/s.
Click HERE to enter this contest. Winner gets a pot of their choice in one of the new colors!

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!!!

Firings

We are firing almost non-stop this week. I spent the weekend glazing. I would guess that there are probably still 2 more kiln loads to fire, and that is having fired off 2 this week already. LOTS of pots. I am hoping to get together with Mary Ellen Salmon to take pictures of pots sometime next week. My greatest frustration yesterday, while unloading an awesome kiln, was that most of the pots weren't for us. They were orders from galleries, from patrons, and orders from our website.
Tomorrow I will be unloading a blue and tangerine firing.... LOTS of footed mugs and most of them spoken for! Wow!

Ready, Sets, Go

Another week passes and we are up to our eyeballs in pots. This week was spent making oval forms. We had an order for some casseroles (which I no longer keep in stock as part of our line..)
which needed to be much larger than our normal old-style baking dishes... think 14"x10" ... which means throwing the form at 16'x12". That's a mighty BIG casserole. Looks more like a battleship compared to our little pots.

One of the things Nancy and I have been playing with is the idea of sets. In the past, everything we made was sold piecemeal. Now we're hoping that by combining pots into sets of forms, they'll sell as a unit. We shall see. I think the tumblers on the tray above is a good place to start. More to come.

I also had a chance this week to make oval vases again. My hope was to have a few days in a row to really make an extensive series, but our cat Ferro has been in and out of the hospital with urinary tract issues. No fun! With only a few more days to be in the studio before a week's hiatus (kid and I are heading to FL for some snorkeling and some exploring in the Everglades) there isnt much time to get hip deep in more work.

We are definitely getting closer to that end of March deadline as we get ready for Craft Boston.

Getting Caught Up

This weekend was incredibly productive in the studio. Nancy went to town making plates. Board after board of oval platters, dinner plates, salad plates and dessert plates... they just kept coming all weekend. She took Friday off work for a snowday. Ended up spending most of the morning trying to get our cat Ferro to the hospital. Add a wicked ice storm to the mix, and it made for a very exciting and tense morning.

We unloaded another kiln this weekend. Some pretty amazing pots came out. More oval pitchers and oval platters. The gallery is started to look fully stocked again. It's ABOUT TIME!!!
Our goal at this point is to be really overstocked by the time we leave for Boston at the end of next month. We're getting there.

Nancy spent a huge chunk of time over the past week stripping, sanding and priming the new booth parts. Still a lot more to go. After trying out some chemical stripper on some of the big hollow doors we use for shelves, we decided that strippers just arent meant for us. Talk about GOOEY! What a mess!! To save time and frustration we went to Home Depot and bought NEW hollow core doors. Done. Tonight they'll be primed and tomorrow they can be painted. Easy.

Sometimes the hassle just isnt worth it. We try very hard to be as eco-conscious as possible in this family.... but there's definitely a point of diminishing returns!

Oval forms

After getting the first three oval platters out of the kiln this week, I am anxious to see the next 10 or so being made! They are a wonderful form. Lends itself to handles or lugs. Also would work nicely with a set of mugs on it, or a oil and vinegar cruet set.... tons of ideas to play with. I would love to have a larger oval too. Something closer to 12-15" long would be sweet. So, maybe if the weather clears tomorrow and I can get outside to make some sawdust it will happen. In the meantime here is what the final image will look like on our 2008 pricelist.

Holiday Pots so far

Well, here we are... 20 days away from Christmas. I have been getting a lot of emails and phone calls from folks asking "WHERE ARE THE POTTERY PICTURES????"

To that end, here they are!

Nancy and I will do our best to fill orders, pull pots and to update the site as pots sell.

click here and enjoy.


Open Daily 10am-5pm (even later if you call and let us know you need us open!)


Cold Springs Studio Pottery
4088 Cold Springs Road
Trumansburg, NY 14886

607-387-4042 voice/fax
info@coldspringsstudi.com
www.coldspringsstudio.com

Where things are at

Two weekends ago, Nancy and I BOTH threw our backs out. Nancy is already feeling much better but I am still feeling down. The real issue right now is whether or not pots will be ready for the holiday season. At this time, I dont see it happening! So, that adds to the stress.

In any event, I did have a chance to take some nice pics of some new pots.

Enjoy