Spring is on the way

Spring is on the way! It rained all morning and maybe I'm just imagining it, but the grass looks greener already. It think living in Wisconsin with it's long hard winters, you can't help but appreciate spring and summer that much more. In thinking about spring and the fast approaching summer I decided to make some planters.

I made quite a few planters while working at Mark's, all sizes from one pound planters on up to ten pound planters. Since I started making pots for myself my planter production has really dropped off. I didn't make a single planter for our first firing. It was nice to go back today and make a couple planters today in preparation for spring.
Joe

Back in the saddle (a little off topic)

Last year after our move our lives were pretty much dedicated to getting the pottery up and going, seven days a week, dawn till dusk. Obviously there are a lot of things that fall though the cracks when you spend all day everyday working.
This is one thing I really missed last year while we were building the kiln shed, kiln, and getting through our first firing:


In North Carolina I rode my bike on a daily basis. After a one year hiatus, it feels great to be back riding. I'm going to try to make time for biking this year. There is still plenty of work that needs to be done, but I'm hoping to take an hour or so every evening for a ride. I'm always so much happier when I get in some regular exercise. I enjoy getting the competitive juices flowing as well (there look to be a couple good bike races around here this summer).
Anyway, I'm pleased to be back biking, the roads around here are great. Hardly any traffic, with plenty of rolling hills. It was a beautiful day today, and I took my camera with me on one of my favorite routes, 25 miles of rolling hills, pastures, and fields. I hope you enjoy your virtual tour of my favorite bike ride.


I just thought this would make for a good picture, with the dead tree, and the rolling hills and trees. This is pretty representative of why this area is so great for biking:


The camera doesn't do this hill justice. It's pretty steep, and keep going past what you can see, all be it not quite as steep. Good times.


Starting to see the pattern? lots of hills, and some nice views, and plenty of open road, I hope you enjoyed your virtual ride.

Joe

side stoking covers revisited

Well as the firing gets closer we need to take a second look at our stoke hole covers. For those of you just joining us here is the first round of stoke hole covers. The first version worked alright. They were very easy to handle, and sealed up the hole fairly well. Here they are now:


Unfortunately two things happened. Firstly the large handle slightly warped the circular cover, making them a little oblong. Because of this the covers did not seal up quite as well as we would have liked.
However here is the major problem:


All of the covers cracked from thermal shock. We were still able to use them to finish the first firing, however it's certainly something that needs to be addressed. The first round was made from an equal mix of EPK and kyanite. This time we are going to make them out of a mixture of something around 50 EPK, 30 kyanite, 20 large grog, all this measured by weight. We are then hoping to add some kind of burn out material (sawdust, cornmeal, chicken food, ect...) which we haven't decided on yet. Hopefully this mixture with the more open body from the larger grog and burnout material will be more resistant to thermal shock.

We are still trying to figure out what shape to make the stoke hole covers. The shape from the first round seemed perfect. Certainly they were pleasant to use. I'm not sure how to keep them from warping though. As always suggestions are welcome on this one. One idea is to throw them in one piece with a door knob like piece in the middle. Like an apple baker with a knob in the center. This would certainly be easy to make, though I'm not convinced that they would be as pleasant to use as the originals. I have other ideas bouncing around in my head, but they all seem overly complex. As always I like to wait until the last minute. We should start loading the kiln in a couple of weeks. I guess now would be a good time to mix up the new stoke hole cover clay!
Joe

Tea Boxes

I have been working quite a bit at my off-pottery jobs, so I haven't had a chance to make much lately. However, I did have today off, and took advantage of the pouring rain and gray skies to get some tea boxes made.


Eagle eyes may notice that I am doing the feet differently. Last cycle's tea boxes had the feet built into the pattern, and I thought they looked a bit stiff. This time, I added the feet on separately in hopes of making them a little more lively. I meant for the feet to follow the angles of the box a little more closely, but they're getting there. Fortunately I have tomorrow free to make a few more! Yay for days off!

--c

hummidity watch '09

Looks to be a good day to make pots. 67 degrees, and 61 percent humidity. We got this nifty little device at the beginning of the year. It's kind of fun to watch the humidity. We put a dirt floor in our shop to help keep the humidity high.
I really enjoy the slower pace that the higher humidity affords. The window of time to handle and trim pots is much larger. Also as we slip and glaze everything leather hard the higher humidity offers a larger window of time for that as well. The humidity seems to do away with the need for constantly covering and uncovering pots in plastic as well. Which I really appriciate.
The only real drawback is that when you really get going and are making pots full time you can really end up with a backlog of pots that need finishing. Multi-tasking isn't my strongest suite and this does catch up with me on occasion. For now though I'm still not really making pots full time and seem to be bouncing back and forth from the gallery to the studio so it suites me quite well for now.
For the record. if anybody is curious 61 percent humidity is a little high even for me. Might be time to kick on the dehumidifier. At 60 percent humidity if you make mugs and then stick them in a corner somewhere you can easily wait 3-4 days before you can handle them.
Joe

Looking for Spring

There must be green grass around here somewhere!

A little brush work

I have to admit that decorating pots isn't exactly my forte. Often I would be happy to just leave a board or two of pots undecorated. I've always regretted the times I've followed through with that notion though.
A well executed decoration can certainly make a good pot even better, however it seems like it's quite a bit easier to wreck a good pot with a poor decoration. I've certainly wrecked quite a few pots with poorly thought out decoration.
Often I just stick with safe tried and true decorations on pots that I like. Or leave the best pots without decoration and let them stand on their own.
The above I guess is all just in explanation as to why I celebrate when I succeed, in at least not spoiling a good pot with a decoration:
Joe

Covered pitchers

I finished up a run of covered pitchers this afternoon:


Covered pitchers are kind of a funny thing. In general they seem to give up a little bit in terms of aesthetics in favor of pure functionality. How many people actually use them though? Probably not too many. Yet I still make them..... hmmm. I guess as long as I enjoy making them and they sell....

The next picture is for my good friend, and potter Julie Jones. Don't know if this helps or not, but here are what my lids look like before trimming and adding a knob.

Joe

Gallery update

Well, work on the gallery seems to be winding down. I'm hoping to be done with the mudding by the end of the week. I've hung drywall elsewhere in the house, but this is the first time getting drywall ready to paint. It's kind of fun. It reminds me of a class in high school that I took where we got to do body work on our cars. Sanding and filling and... repeat. I imagine the novelty will wear out pretty quick though as we get the rest of the house ready later this year. Here are a couple of pictures of the gallery:




This room was a spare bedroom in our house. It seemed like the most obvious choice for our gallery as we can't afford to build a new structure for a gallery. Hopefully we won't lose to much privacy by having our gallery attached to our house. We are certainly planning on drawing some definitive lines between public gallery space and private living space.
The door was just added last week. We're pretty pleased with the door. We figured we would only be able to afford a cheap steel door, but we found this door with side lights at Habitat for Humanity for only $125. It make the entrance so much more welcoming, and adds quite a bit of natural light to the gallery.
After this week I'm hoping to go back to making pots full time until our firing in mid-April. After that we need to put in a porch with steps to the gallery door, and build shelves for the display. Opening the gallery up early May. One thing at a time though.
Joe

Clay trouble

Well the title says it all. We are planning on mixing all of our own clay, but last year just got a little too crazy and we didn't have time to mix enough clay up to last us over the winter. We fired our little test kiln last week. Quite a few of the pots had large bloats on them, between an inch and two inches in diameter. Here is a picture of a pot we broke, kind of a cut away view of one of the bloats:



Here is a piece from one of the bloated pots:


I'm guessing our clay supplier is have pieces of metal (iron) falling off of his clay mixing equipment into the clay body. Does anybody else out there have any experience with this, or any advice? We do fire the little gas test kiln pretty quickly. We are hoping in the extended firing of the wood kiln we can fire slow enough and keep it in oxidation long enough that the bloating will not be a problem. Still a little worrisome though as all the pots that we have made so far are made with this clay body. As soon as the weather warms up a little more we will be getting back to mixing our own clay!
Joe

Tools

I was inspired by Brandon Phillips to share my throwing tools:



I've been throwing with ribs since I first got started making pots. In college we all used rubber ribs. After college I took a workshop with Will Ruggles and Douglas Rankin, I really liked there pots and approach to making pots. I made myself a rib modeled after the ones they use. It's a fairly thick block of solid wood, near an inch thick if I had to guess, the shape was very similar to the third rib from the left (without the hole) in the above picture. After the workshop I ended up getting an apprenticeship with Mark Hewitt. Quite a change in throwing styles as I'm sure you can imagine. At Marks we used square steel ribs (maybe and 1/8" in thick) with a hole in the middle for an easier hold. After leaving Marks I knew I didn't want to keep using the square steel ribs that we had been using. I felt they tended to leave the surface a little too clean, and felt at times a little sharp in the hand. I also missed not having a curved surface anywhere on the rib. However I felt my throwing style had changed too much to go back to using my old rib. I ended up making the ribs you see above. I've worn through quite a few of them over the years: walnut, oak, and ash. They all seemed to work well. They are a little under half an inch thick with a rounded edge (well somewhere between round and sharp edge) all the way around. The two on the left I use for vertical pieces. I enjoy having one curved surface for convex surfaces, and a square edge for lifting all the clay off of the wheel head.
The next two ribs are for making bowls and plates, respectively. I enjoy having the hole in the middle of the ribs. It allows you to get a firm, comfortable grip on the rib. These two are modeled after Will and Douglass's ribs, just a little thinner and with the addition of the hole for grasping.
I guess the other tools are self explanatory. From left to right: A piece of bamboo sanded down for wet trimming pots on the wheel head. A porcupine quill I got from Mark. I use one side for decorating, the other side as a needle tool. A trimming tool with a semi-circular cutting edge. Finally a good old fashion sponge. Oops I forgot to put in my wire tool. Oh well, you'll just have to imagine it: It's a twisted heavy gauge fishing line, tied between two large washers big enough to fit your fingers though (also good for hanging your wire while not in use).
Well that's it, your own virtual tour of my tool box. Hope you found something of interest in amongst it all.
Joe

Covered Bowls

Well, I'm still pretty tickled to be making pots. I finished some lidded bowls today.


Funny I was so pleased with them now that I look at the picture the knob seems a little large on the bowl in front at least. Oh well. I started making bowls like this after seeing something similar that Bernard Leach made. I believe his lid was taller and came to more of a point, but that's what got me started at least.
Unfortunately my run of making pots is probably going to have to stop for a little while again. The door got installed today into the gallery and I should get back to that. I still need to finish the drywall, paint, put in steps up to the door, and build shelves. We'll see how much of that gets done before the firing, but I should do at least some of it now. I know that as the firing gets closer I'll get more and more focused on pottery and then there is no chance of the gallery getting worked on. So back to the dry walling, at least for a little while.
Joe

Merci!

Thanks for your votes, y'all! Mineral Point is now in the Coolest Towns Top Ten.With a few more votes, we can overtake Silverton, Oregon for that coveted sixth place spot!

Wall Boxes

My goals for wall boxes this firing are quite simple. First, remember to put a nail hole in the back of each box, lest it become a floor box, tabletop box, projectile, or a glorified rock to jazz up the garden. Second, be mindful of the location of said hole, so as not to paint on the decoration upside-down. The rest will take care of itself, right? So far, so good!

c

Bunnies

While I was in the jury box I spent a lot of time drawing in our provided notebooks. I did this mainly to calm my nerves while the testimony was taking place. I did however work on some decorations that I thought might be nice. One of the items I kept coming back to was a little bunny. Unfortunately after the trial was done they took our notebooks and shredded them. I tried to draw the bunny today on one of the mugs:

It kind of looks like a cross between a bunny and a turtle... hmmm. I think I like it though. I really like pots with what I would consider a classic beauty. Quiet, serene, and stately. Something like this. This is something I strive for in the majority of my pots. However I also like pots that are both "good pots" and make me laugh. I can't say whether or not this is a good pot, but it defiantly makes me chuckle. I think that's what attracts me so much to Ron Philbeck's pottery: they are well made, they stand up well as functional pots, yet you can't help but smile when you see them.
Joe