windy ridge pottery

Into 2012

2012-01-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

It's a New Year!

Still no snow to play in, though.

Joe and I had a glass of wine and brainstormed our plans for 2012 earlier this week. Be prepared for more craft fairs, a revived Etsy site, new glazes, a new direction in materials and shapes for me, and more local materials experimentation from both of us! Although Joe didn't have any specific non-pottery 2012 plans, I am going to run (or shuffle, if you are a stickler for the truth) three marathons this year, and want to cultivate a dedicated clientele at Revolution Salon and Spa in Middleton.

Joe putting the finishing touches on the chimney=warm studio!
He will share stove building stories with you soon.

It turns out that I am too wimpy to make pots outside of a narrow, extremely comfortable temperature range. Probably because I like to don cotton dresses (I never really got over my childhood "Little House in the Prairie" obsession) which are not exactly Wisconsin Winter Wear, in spite of what you may have read in the fictionalized tales of a particular(ly awesome) pioneer woman. But now that Joe has finished our wood stove, I am getting back to work in the studio!

earthenware candleholder still life with safety glasses

I mixed lots of earthenware test glazes and a few clay tests this weekend. Because I'm still struggling to get a reliable local earthenware clay body--I have watched pots break neatly in half while they are drying!--and because it is a challenge to process/mix/dry local materials when it is 10 degrees with 50 mph winds outside (while wearing a poplin dress), I have ordered brick clay from Nebraska to use over the winter. I feel like I am making real progress on my earthenware clay project, though. I hope to have enough tests to do a firing in our test kiln in early February.

Happy 2012!

**c

Winter Warmth

2011-11-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

Joe spent lots of time this autumn at land north of Dodgeville cutting wood where our friends had cleared massive trees from a hillside to improve their view. After Joe, Aaron, and Alex at Red Beard Woodworks finished milling the largest pieces for lumber, we took truckloads back to the pottery for the kiln and house. We are rich in wood right now!
Unfortunately, we are not rich in SPLIT wood. We rented a splitter yesterday and got to work remedying that problem, but not before 5 inches of snow fell. Better late than never!

**c

Fall Art Tour Photos

2011-11-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

Our friend Eli from Capture Media took some great photos for us during the Fall Art Tour.

Joe

Pots in the Windy Ridge Gallery

I was a little slow getting the garlic inside this year. It was swinging in the wind all weekend!

Yours truly chatting it up with visitors.

The view south of the kiln shed.

Joe giving a kiln tour

My earthenware experiments were on display.

My dad Ray, who is a wood turner, was our guest artist.

Dad giving a demonstration.

Wooden bowls

Thanks to my mom, Patti, for bringing flowers and lots of food!

**christy

The Earthen Bag Walkway

2011-10-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

A big thanks for everyone who came out and visited us during the 'Fall Art Tour'. A quick update on our walkway for those of you did have a chance to visit us you may have noticed that our walkway was not entirely complete, looking something like this:

our partially completed walkway as seen from the gallery

While not being entirely pottery related, I thought many of you might be interested in the process. We stacked up the earthen bags to extend the parking lot, placing barbed wire between each bag to act as mortar.

After the wall was built we covered the wall with metal lathe. The lathe was attached to the wall with wire which was wrapped around barbed wire as the wall was stacked.

On the top bag, we stapled the lathe down using landscaping staples. We also drove re-bar through the wall to help hold it all together.

Here you can see the wall 'post' stuccoing, back filled with gravel .

And a view of the completed walkways as seen from our parking lot.

We'll see how this holds up. None of the walls have anything resembling a foundation, so I'm sure we will experience some cracking of the stucco due to heaving over the winter. I'm assuming the cracks won't be too big and will be easily patched.... time will tell.

Joe

Fall Art Tour Weekend!

2011-10-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

We are looking forward to a wonderful Fall Art Tour weekend.
Come out and visit if you can.
As always, there will be juice cups for the early birds each day!

Getting Ready for the Fall Art Tour

2011-10-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

I've worked the last couple of weeks sawmilling and installing hardwood flooring for my friend.

I have to say sawmilling is a great job for me: beautiful settings, good low stress physical work, and at the end of the day you get as many slabs as you can haul. What more could you ask for?

I've taken this week off to prepare for the the Fall Art Tour. We've got a lot of cleaning up to do to make our studio and barn presentable. We're also taking on a fairly serious landscaping project.... Nothing like the last minute.

We put in our walk way right after our house was finished. Over time all the new dirt continued to settle and our brick border slowly disappeared. So we went back and rescued all the red bricks.

Lots of bricks! At some point the first bricks settled down out of view and instead of redoing the walk way we simply placed another layer of red bricks down on top of the old ones.

So I've been looking into various ways to build retaining walls as our kiln could really use some good retaining walls. We've became interested in earthen bag construction during our research. Eathen bag construction is just what it sounds like. Bags (woven polypropylene bags: sandbags, feedbags, etc ...) filled with earth stacked up and then covered with a stucco to keep them from deteriorating in the sun. Barbed wire is used between the bags to keep them from shifting.

They probably aren't the most practical choice for edging a walkway, as they are quite a bit of work. They are cheap though. We're using them for our walkway as these will tie into a retaining wall around our parking lot which we hope to expand before this weekend.

Still have a ways to go.

In other earthen/clay related news I'm testing out different clay mixtures for making bricks.

We might fill our kiln with handmade bricks at some point in the near future. More on that latter though.

It's raining right now which doesn't help my chances of completing all the landscaping I'm hoping to do before Friday, but we'll see what we can get done. I'll post again in the near future with some more pots from our most recent firing, along with a photo or two of Ray Hamilton who will be joining us this weekend as our guest artist.
take care
Joe

firing #11 pots and the Driftless Art Festival

2011-09-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

The 11th firing is unloaded, cleaned up and sold... well, not all sold, but we were quite pleased with our first year at the 'Driftless Art Festival'. First the pots:

I was quite pleased wit the covered bowls this firing, this little guy came out of the third chamber.

We have been experimenting with gradually lowering our top temperature in the second and third chamber. A little bit each firing... This is for many reasons: We like our glazes fairly thick and when they get too hot they run, and we end up doing a lot of grinding, both of pots and of the kiln shelves. Also while we love shiny glazes, we enjoy contrast just as much, and really enjoy the contrast of some matte as well as some glassy glaze all on the same pot. This firing was all about finding out our limits though as we finally found out what was too cool for our glazes. For the record, cone 9 need to be down for our glazes to really look their best. That's part of what we love about pottery though, the continued exploration of firing, glaze, slips, clays they all interact the learning never stops....
We occasionally have trouble with our ash glaze when it gets too much fly ash from our kiln. Which is why I was regretting putting this bowl in the first chamber immediately after closing up the first chamber. It came out much better than expected though, the very light dusting of fly ash gives it the yellow highlights.
I had mentioned in a previous post about our changing of the grate system. The above jar came from the front of the kiln, and I really like the contrast of the grey charring from the ember pile and the green from the melting wood ash.
A large jar.

We unloaded the kiln Tuesday and spent the rest of the week cleaning, pricing, and packing up pots for the Driftless Art Festival.

Our "new to us" truck filled with pots, shelves and everything needed for a successful show.

A big thanks to everybody who stopped by and saw us this weekend. Also to the organizers of the show. It really was one of the best run shows we've ever been to, thanks. Next up for us, the Fall Art Tour!

Joe

Firing #11 report and stokers gallery

2011-09-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

Firing number 11....

We were quite lucky with the weather this go around... it was beautiful.

Maggie and Charley kept themselves occupied during the firing inspecting our wood supply...

We started the firing off with scrap wood we got from a local wood worker.

Unusable table legs? Not bad...

Brazilian wood scraps?

Amazing! This stuff was like rocket fuel in solid form. I've never seen wood burn so hot. We didn't have much of it, and what we had were tiny pieces, but it carried us cleanly up to 1200 degrees. With our commitment to local materials, we felt a little strange burning wood imported from South America, but the scraps were destined for a burn pile behind the furniture shop before we hauled them away. It's probably not a material we will ever have access to again, but it was an interesting experience.

We made some changes to the firebox for this firing. We adjusted it so the grate system and pots are now on the same level. We also further closed down the spacing in the grate system.

We finally reached our limit with our grate system. Between cone 08 and cone 7 we ended up having to open up some secondary air above the grates to help burn off the embers. However once we were above cone 7 we could close down the secondary air, and the new grate system worked perfectly. We easily kept a fairly large amount of embers piled up on the pots in the front of the chamber. We peeked in this morning... The pots look great!

So onto our stokers gallery:

Aaron Weaver came out Saturday morning when I was feeling somewhat exhausted and trying to deal with all the embers that I wasn't used to... completely saved me. Thanks Aaron.

Chuck helped out for a while earlier this cycle mixing glazes, and processing clay. He also came out to help finish off the firing Sunday afternoon.

And of course Christy! Christy tired of all the "butt" shots that the stoker gallery has provided in the past and decided to go for more of a "senior picture" feel for this stokers gallery.

I was there as well... running the camera... poorly at times.

Keith and Ryan helped to reduce the second chamber during our firing party, but we didn't have the camera out. Next time, guys!

Everything seemed to go smoothly. The firings seem to go a little smoother every time, as we make small adjustment each time. Still exhausting though..

And on a more somber note, our good friend and firer extraordinaire Don was on the way out to help us fire when he got into a car accident. His car was totaled and he spent the evening in the hospital. We would just like to take a moment to wish him all the best, and a speedy recovery.

Don at a previous firing

We'll post unloading pictures soon!
Joe

We're back

2011-09-08T05:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since our last post. Instead of apologizing, I've got a list of excuses:

- It was summer time and no body really wants to spend all their time on the computer in the middle of summer

- Our digital camera broke down

- There really wasn't that much to talk about this summer... Christy's still in school, and I spent most of my time installing hardwood floors and painting houses.

-Um... writers block?

Well the days are getting shorter now, we finally broke down and bought a new camera, and we hope to finish loading the kiln tonight! It's been a long month trying to get all the pots for the firing together. I was luck enough to find a couple aspiring potters to come out and help me get everything together for the firing. It was incredible to be able to just focus on making pots and not have to worry about all the other tasks that go along with the pottery. A big thanks to Chuck and Colin. Christy helped out quite bit as well helping me finish up all the glazing that needed to be done.

I made some more ewers this cycle.

A lot of mugs, as that seems to be the vast majority of what I sold at the farmers market this summer.

Larger jars

Large and small covered bowls... though not quite as large and not quite as small as this picture might lead you to believe.

So I've crammed a lot of pottery into these last couple of weeks. I'm now cramming a lot of loading into a couple of days. Starting to see a pattern here?

I cut some mini shelves for the third chamber to try and fit in as many pots as possible. The shelves are only 9" x18" so it's only a couple more pots per level, but every little bit helps.

The second chamber is all loaded up and ready to go.

The third chamber is part way loaded. Hopefully we can get everything loaded to day and start candling tonight.

Joe

Summertime update

2011-07-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

It been a while since we've posted to the blog... Summer time is a hard time to keep up with it all as Christy and I spend most of our free time outdoors. A lot has happened at Windy Ridge since our last post so in no particular order:

I've taken apart and cleaned out the pugmill we purchased earlier this spring.
It's an interesting design, somewhat modular as everything slides onto rails and is held together by a pair of long threaded rods.

The vacuum chamber has this strange cylinder which spins in the opposite direction as the auger does.

The chamber in which you feed clay into also has a cylinder which spins in opposition to the auger as well, although this one does not have any protrusions as the vacuum chamber does. Also there is no plunger to push the clay down with... strange.
Accompanying all of this is the largest vacuum pump you've ever seen.

So, it's all put back together and the both the vacuum pump and the pugmill seem to run fine. I just need to run a hose between the two and then... add clay. It's a design I've never seen in a pugmill, so I'm interested to see how it runs. To be honest I'm a little sceptical, especially the lack of a plunger to help push clay into the hopper. I'ld be curious if anybody out there has experience or insight into this pugmill...

We also got a visit this summer from a man who bought a large shop that used to house a pottery. We ended up buying three pieces of equipment from him:

A Venco pugmill which looks to be in good shape

despite having a mouse nest in the auger.
The Venco cleaned up much easier, than the other pugmill.

Unfortunately it doesn't have the original Venco vacuum pump, instead it came with a fairly small vacuum pump... hopefully it will be able to keep up alright. Like our other pugmill this one is operational along with the vacuum pump the two just need a hose to connect them, then "add clay".

We also got a large clay mixer.
It'll take a bit of elbow grease as it's full of hardened clay and has a decent amount of rust. It will also need a new motor as the one attached right now is a three phase motor.

Lastly we got ourselves a large blunger. We have yet to pick up the blunger, and it will require a lot of work as well as it's bolted to the wall and completely filled with hardened glaze. Hopefully within the next week or two we can start progress on getting it cleaned up.

I know what you are thinking "Wow guys, that's a lot of pottery equipment, what could possibly need all that equipment for?". Well, maybe need is a strong word, but we are starting to get ready for Christy to make the switch making wood fired earthenware. I'll be a lot of work as I think we'll end up needing a second studio. Our current studio is barely big enough to support our three chamber kiln and stoneware clay needs. So a second studio may be in the works, along with another kiln sized for Christy, designed to minimize ash deposits on the pottery.

So this is a slow year due to the fact that Christy is in school full time now, and I've been working part time in addition to keeping the pottery going. We're taking the opportunity to plan and prepare for the future though. Dreaming pottery dreams.

We'll that might be enough for one post. I would like to say though that I've recently been given the opportunity to put together a slide presentation about my experiences in clay. I gave an presentation last week for a workshop put together by local wood fired potter David Smith. Then yesterday I had the opportunity to give the same slide show presentation, along with a day of demonstrations for a week long class taught by Minnesota potter Linda Chistianson. In putting together the slide shows I found that I had hardly any photos of my time in North Carolina. So I just wanted to put out a big thanks to Mark Hewitt, Julie Jones, Takuro Shibata, and Alex Matisse. Thanks so much guys for the wonderful pictures!

Lots more to share, but that will have to do for one post
Joe

Aaron Weaver

2011-06-08T05:41:00.000-07:00

Being good friend with Aaron Weaver and Krista Loomans I did my best to tell all the potters I ran into in NC what great pots they both were making. Of course with no pictures available it's difficult at best to fully convey a piece of pottery to somebody. So the conversations usually went some where along these lines:

Me: excitedly describing the pots...
Fellow potter: sounds nice are there any pictures?

And that's where the conversation ended. So to help wrap up all those unsatisfying conversations I'm putting up a series of pictures of Aaron Weavers pots. For those of you who don't know Aaron, he started his ceramics career getting an undergraduate degree at Alfred, which is considered one of the top ceramic programs in the nation. He then worked at Mark Hewitt's pottery for two years (starting a couple of years after I left). Aaron and Krista ended up moving to Mineral Point shortly after we did. Aaron just having finish up his apprenticeship at Mark's and Krista having finished her apprenticeship at Kevin Crowe's.
Aaron has made the leap to earthenware pottery, and unlike myself he hasn't seemed to struggle at all in finding his own unique voice in pottery. So with out further ado Aaron's pots:

The above photo doesn't really do justice to the work. It's about a 4-5' tall.

Krista promises to get pictures pictures to me soon, and we'll get those posted shortly there after.
Joe

Home again

2011-05-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

I'm back at home today taking a well deserved day off, catching up on sleep, corespondents, and figuring out my schedule for the next several weeks.
It was a whirlwind of a week, and I'm afraid my exit from NC was just as hurried. There were many friends and fellow potters that I didn't get a chance to visit.

The firing itself went well. Although Julie aims to fire for 12-14 hours in the future, for the first firing we took quite a bit longer. The kiln was still quite wet from rebuilding the firebox, so we took our time drying everything out. After we built up some heat and the firebox was more or less dry the kiln seemed to tick along nicely with no real hitches in finishing the first or second chamber.

Julie has a more thorough write up of the whole event which you can check out on her blog here. Julie's friend Stewart Waller spent most of the day at the firing and took many great pictures. The one below being one of my favorites. You can see all the photos here.

you can see the firebox is just starting to dry out

Next up for Windy Ridge Pottery? The Madison farmer's market. It's the largest farmers market in the nation, we'll be there all summer long selling pots every Saturday. So if you are in the area stop on out and pay us a visit.
Joe

A long week recaped in a short post

2011-05-19T18:40:00.000-07:00

Well I made it safely to NC and have been busy helping Julie get ready for the first firing. First order of business was to rebuild the top bit of the firebox. A big thanks to Michael Hunt as he generously took an afternoon to share his experience and knowledge with tatami brick construction. The rebuild went smoothly...

After all the tatami brick were in place I pounded the tatami bricks in with a rubber mallet to tighten the arch up. After that... I did a little jig....

Matt, Bob, and Julie all pitched in to help insulate and stucco...

Yeah, sorry guys I'm a little beat so I'll wrap up the post there. The first chamber is loaded, second chamber tomorrow, firing this Saturday.... should be good.
Joe

Clay in May recap, along with clay of a different kind...

2011-05-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everybody who came out to make our second annual 'Clay in May' event a success. The event keeps growing with more people finding their way out to our little neck of the woods every year. The weather was beautiful despite the forecasts calling for rain.
The party at our place Saturday night was great. We had a good turn out with a really nice mix of pottery lovers, potters, friends, and community members.

A big thanks to Rick Harris as well for the great music.

And of course no outdoor event is complete without s'mores.

Since 'Clay in May' I've been helping with a clay project of a different nature. Helping to build a clay/straw insulated building. It's an interesting alternative to straw bale construction. With the clay/straw insulation being more resistant to moisture/mold, due to the clay's ability to wick moisture out of the wall cavity. The clay is applied as a very thin slip to just coat the outside of the straw in a tumbler, built just for the purpose.

You can see in the above picture slip being sprayed onto the straw as the straw is being tumbled through the pipe by the large tongs you can see in the upper right corner. The whole contraption is on a tilt, so the straw clay mixture then simply drops out the far end into a bin which can then be lifted up to those working on the wall by means of a skid steer.

The straw is then compressed into place between 2' plywood forms, by simply walking on it. The forms are then moved up the wall as more straw in added. The building we worked on was already a preexisting structure. If one were to start from scratch the roof would be added on latter to make stomping the straw into place more comfortable.

Unfortunately there were scattered thunderstorms when I brought my camera, so you can't see the entire building as much of it was covered in tarp to protect it from the pounding rain while it dries out (it will later be plastered to protect it from the elements). It's really quite beautiful though after the forms come off. I'm quite lucky to be able to supplement my pottery income helping out with project such as this. It was a great experience.

Now I'm off to North Carolina to help Julie Jones with the first firing of the entire kiln we built last fall. Should be fun! I'll do my best to keep everybody posted.
Joe

Pots from the spring firing

2011-05-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry not to get these pictures up sooner. We unloaded the kiln Wednesday evening. I took pictures out by the kiln right away, but they didn't come out too well. Since then I've been keeping busy laying hardwood flooring. I'm back in pottery mode now though as we gear up for 'Clay in May' this weekend.
The firing came out well. In general it's one of the better firings we've had, as I feel like we're starting to get a good handle on our glazes, and our kiln. There were of course some disappointments, nothing to terrible though, just room for improvement. We also ran quite a few experiments using local sands in our glazes (the sands being ball milled of course), there are some interesting results worth exploring. I'll devote a post to this later.
We'll stick to the present for now:

Unfortunately Christy has had very little time to make pots this year due to her time at school. She did manage to make it out to decorate several pots though!

I'm starting to have more faith in the red/white slip combo, which I really like. We did have some trouble this firing with what I assume is gases trying to escaping from our red clay after the white slip has sealed over resulting in some unfortunate bloating glazes.... This was mostly in the third chamber though. I think we need to fire a little slower in the third chamber next time. Easier said than done though as everyone is ready to call it a day by the time we reach the third chamber, and it's so easy to fire fast (really fast).

Um... I got nothing here.... mug.

One of the few instances where ash on our ash glazes actually complements the pot. We had some trouble in previous firing with ash building up on our ash glazed pots and causing an unpleasant foaminess. We were more careful in our stacking this time around.

uhhh... another mug....

Large jar... The floor of the first chamber was our biggest problem area this firing... funny because several firings ago we were wondering if we should simply give up on the top of the first chamber for unglazed pots as all the pots up there seemed to be a little dull. We've fixed that problem though, and then some. We'll find the middle ground at some point here.... really though this jar was right in front of the firebox, so my story has no relevance to the above picture.

bottle vase, with "happy" ash deposit

I'm slowly learning what our dark glaze needs to look good... having always fired salt in North Carolina, dark iron glazes are a learning experience for me.

soup bowl

wow, I uploaded a disproportionately large number of mug photos...

covered pitcher in which I couldn't decide if I should take a picture accentuating the decoration or the handle... so I got both, or maybe neither....

Well that's a portion of what we got out of the kiln. Hopefully if you are in the area you can make it out this weekend for Clay in May. Live music and S'mores Saturday evening at Windy Ridge Pottery (that's us)!
Joe

Easter (Bunny) Firing Stoker Gallery

2011-04-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

The Easter Bunny came to fire the kiln!

Everything went smoothly, thanks to all of our bunny friends:

Chuck

Blake and Nolen. Sorry we don't have your picture, Nolen!

Mama Patti

Andy Hatch

Krista "Alotta" Loomans

and, of course, your WRP Home Crew:

Joe "The Cone Slayer" Cole

Maggie "Lil'Pie" Cole

Charley "Zoobie Doobs" Cole

and Christy "Putting the Cool back in Coveralls" Cole.

As always, thanks to our family and friends who came to help and share time with us.
And thanks to the rain, snow, sleet, and hail for finally stopping!

**c

Loading the kiln... a story of good help and bad weather

2011-04-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

Well as has become tradition for our spring firings the weather has been horrible. In what was one of my most bloggerly ( blogger is trying to tell me bloggerly is not a word... hah!) moments ever I took this picture while carrying down pots to load into the first chamber.

That's right driving snow in the middle of April! Don't worry though the snow stopped by mid morning, changing into sleet, changing into hail, and finally changing into rain and lightening! Quite the day. Chuck, who is a potter/sculpture at UW-Platteville helped out all day though and we still managed to get the second chamber loaded despite the weather.

Krista came out the next day by which time everything had melted which left us with this:

A little slippery, though we still managed to get the third chamber loaded. Chuck helped out yesterday and we finished up with loading the first chamber. A full kiln.

Third chamber:

Second chamber:

back of the first chamber:

And the front of the first chamber which as always is impossible to get a picture of everything due to the narrow door:

The kilns been preheating overnight and is currently at 200 degrees. We did have a little bit of a scare this morning as our propane weed burner blew out sometime in the night. We had to open everything up and let it air out. Luckily nothing blew up when we later relight the weed burner, so we are back on track... just a couple of hours behind schedule. Not a big deal. Firing party Saturday night, finishing up Sunday evening. Should be good.
Joe

Last pots of the cycle

2011-04-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

Loading starts monday... tomorrow kiln work, ...and ...maybe ...juice cups, ok I guess these aren't the last pots of the cycle. Penultimate pots of the cycle just doesn't carry quite as much dramatic effect.
Joe

A quick round up of news

2011-04-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

The firing is quickly approaching. I'm in the last week of making pots, loading starts next Monday. A young potter from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville is coming out tomorrow to help with wood prep, and will also be around for the loading/firing. Looks like we will have a full kiln.

Unglazed pots for the first chamber

Glazed work, and work in progress

extra shelf space we made this winter, complete with track lights!

Christy's also been making time on occasion to come out and decorate a pot or two.

Krista Loomans came over the other day with a portable wheel!

How cool is that! You can't see it from the picture, but it has legs underneath that fold out. It's a surprisingly nice wheel, it's owned by Bethel Horizons who Krista works for. Krista and I had an enjoyable day throwing together, and chit chatting. It's was good fun, and we are hoping to make a regular occasion of it.

Last and not least we found ourselves a pugmill!

just about the biggest vacuum pump you've ever seen

the pug mill itself is clogged full of dried clay and hasn't been used in 10 years, but it was working when they last used it, so with a little elbow grease it should be up and going.... best part? $100.

Sorry if the post is a little scattered... lots going on.... and past time for me to go to bed....
Joe

pictures, pictures and more pictures....

2011-04-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

Well I haven't been doing that great of a job of updating you on all the pots I've been making over the last couple of weeks. The pottery is quite full though, and it's getting difficult to find room for all the pots. It must be about time to fire!

In the mean time though we just got back some photos from our friend Ris Fleming-Allen. She does professional object photography and was kind enough to let us bring a box or two of pots down to her studio. I'm thinking we've probably posted pictures of most of these pots before, but Ris did a great job with these shots so we figured we might as well post them again!

Thanks so much Ris!
Joe

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

2011-03-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

Life keeps moving here at Windy Ridge. I found myself a job outside of the pottery to help make ends meet. I started working last week for my friend Alex Green. He has a portable sawmill and does hardwood flooring, and timber framing from local hardwoods. Along with building houses from scratch using various green building methods. You can find his web page here: Red Beard Lumber. With Christy in school full time now I knew I needed to find at least some part time work outside of the pottery. I have to admit I was wasn't looking forward to finding a "real" job. I think I really lucked out though. As far as work outside of the pottery goes, I think this will be pretty good.

In pottery related news I've almost finished up our portable shelving for displaying our work at the Madison Market, along with any other shows we might do in the future. We set up the shelving for a quick picture that we needed for a show application.

My father-in-law helped me put together the oak uprights. The shelves are pine. I still need to biscuit/glue together the pine shelving, do some sanding, and basic finishing. I'm pleased with how they look so far though. Does anyone have any insight into the best 10x10 tent to purchase for taking to craft fairs and shows?

In less concrete news I feel like I'm finally starting to become comfortable with my pots. After leaving my apprenticeship at Mark Hewitt's I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of pots I wanted to make, making some good pots and many bad pots in the process. I arrived at Mark's with a deep appreciation of the pots of Warren Mackenzie, Will Ruggles and Douglass Rankin, and Claire Illian. Mark's approach to clay was very different from what I had known. Leaving Hewitts after the two year apprenticeship I didn't really know where to begin. I certainly didn't want to continue on making Hewitt replicas as I had made when working for Mark. However, I couldn't go back to making the Will and Douglass style pots that I had aspired to after spending the last two years of my life focusing on throwing Mark Hewitt style pots with strong curves, clean lines, and very thin walls. I spent a good amount of time floundering around trying to figure out where I was going.

I feel like I'm finally headed in a good direction. No longer feeling self-conscious about "borrowing" visual cues from Mark, but also moving slowly and surely in a direction of my own. Only took me eight years....

Joe

Decorating

2011-02-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

Just a couple quick pictures I took today while decorating:

This one fell victim to green glazing and cracked around the handle shortly after I glazed it... nice while it lasted.

Some more finger wipes with the red/white slip combo:

that will be it for today. Enjoy your weekend.
Joe

getting back in the groove

2011-02-16T15:51:00.000-08:00

After a winter's worth of doing non-pottery related tasks, and a much deserved vacation visiting family, I'm starting to get back into the groove of making pots. We are aiming to have our spring firing late in April in preparation for 'Clay in May'. Along with 'Clay in May' we have signed up to sell pots on Saturdays at the Madison Market. We've heard good reviews from other local artists selling work at the Madison Market so we are feeling fairly optimistic about our prospects for the summer.

I made quite a few extra bats this winter as I always seemed to run low on bats these last couple of years. So I started off testing the new bats out making some plates.

dinner plates and small square plates all stacked up and ready for the kiln

I've also made some vases with trimmed feet, which is not something I've ever done before. I have a book of pots from the Korean Yi dynasty. I've spent many nights admiring the footed, pear shaped vases in the book. Those of you who follow this blog religiously (Mom--I'm looking at you) may remember that we managed to pick ourselves up a beautiful footed vase imported from China.... you can see it here if you don't remember it.

I've always balked at trimming anything that didn't absolutely have to be trimmed. I think I had always been taught that trimming vertical pieces was something one did when you didn't have enough skill to throw it right the first time. Well, I went ahead and did it anyway:

I'm quite pleased with them. I threw a chuck for placing the vases in while I trimmed them. The trimming itself was actually quite enjoyable.

I took this ever- so- artsy shot today while making bottles:

That's all for now, but I'm sure blogging will become more and more regular as the pots progress.

Joe

Snowed In

2011-02-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

We have been making the most of being snowed in at Windy Ridge.
The blowing snow is quite intense today (even for us!),
and we are expecting another 12 inches tonight.

But we have gotten a few things done:

Our website is up:
http://www.windyridgepottery.com

Joe got the new test kiln (which I have tentatively named Marge Simpson)
loaded with over 60 local-materials glaze tests and pre-heated.

Look at the steam pouring off of Marge's beehive!

Unfortunately there is a small leak in the gas line and
we can't get enough pressure to get it up to temperature
until we get our hands on some Pipe Wrap.

It's a good day to have a fire going in the woodstove,
an entertaining book or two,
and a few poodles for company.
**c

Winter time kiln work

2010-12-19T15:01:00.000-08:00

Winter has fully set in, and as our large kiln lay dormant under the snow, we've put together our little test kiln.

It's a bit of a Frankstien-esque kiln, built around bricks that were collecting dust around here. I think it should work well though. Certainly it will cool slower.

All of the grate bricks that were used for the walls were filled with equal parts clay, sand, and wheat bran (we didn't have any saw dust handy, and wheat bran can be had for cheap from feed stores).

Here you can see the start of the kiln, the floor of which is a kiln shelf with holes cut into it for the burners. I also added a small area for an external wood firebox, just in case. I'm not 100 percent sure that I will use the firebox, as I'm not sure about our ability to keep the kiln even temperature and reduction wise when using the firebox. I'm sure it will take a little experimentation to figure that one out.... or maybe we'll never use it.... it's there if we ever want it though.

Here you can see the front door for loading.

Looking in the front door. Unfortunately the shelf wasn't quite wide enough to cover the whole interior space while using full size grate bricks. I've filled the voids in with shelf scraps. Before the first firing I'll seal it up with a clay/sand mixture. Not an ideal situation... I imagine this will be a maintenance intensive area.

We'll cob it during the first firing to keep the cob from freezing as it's being applied to the kiln. I kept the burners going while I put together the kiln itself, and still had issues with freezing mortar.... cold work to say the least.

We've ball milled up some sands from local quarries and hopefully will start glaze testing soon.
Joe

Two lids in two weeks

2010-12-14T04:42:00.000-08:00

Bad luck has fallen on Windy Ridge. Both of the lids to the jars that I use most often have been broken in the last couple of weeks.

Brown Sugar:

and Raisins:

I count myself lucky I haven't broken the lid to our rolled oats jar yet.... I guess we may be in the market for some new jars for our kitchen.
Joe

The story of the firebox

2010-12-04T04:46:00.000-08:00

Sorry to keep you all waiting on the firebox story/pictures.
Things got a little crazy in NC as I was pushing hard to get everything done by Thanksgiving. We unloaded the tatami bricks and started working toward finishing the firebox right away. I went a little higher with standard firebrick than necessary as I was concerned about running out of tatami brick. Also I wanted to make sure there were enough tatamis left at the end that I could pick and choose the exact shape of tatami brick that I wanted.
So the day before Thanksgiving I started laying the tatami brick. And I have to say laying the tatami brick was a blast in comparison to laying straight brick to fit the dome shape. You can see from the picture below that the mortar joints were getting pretty huge and the brick slivers that I was using before were getting pretty substantial. Not really a problem, just seems to slow everything down. So I was having a lot of fun laying the tatami brick and things seemed to be moving along well.

As things progressed and it started to close in I realized with horror that I had created the "ANTI-KEY". A kiln builders worst nightmare..... and a term which I happily just made up.

So I ended up spending the evening before Thanksgiving tearing down the firebox. I then spent Thanksgiving rebuilding the top of the firebox. This time I built it using a combination of firebrick and tatami brick. Ana Howard was kind enough to come out and help me Thanksgiving morning. The work seemed a little rushed specially considering this is the first dome I've ever built without an arch form. Definitely a learning experience.
I'm headed down in spring to help with the first firing.... It may seem a little crazy, but I may head down a couple of days early and redo the top of the dome. Julie and Steve are good friends, and I would like to leave them with a kiln I'm proud of. I don't want to leave them with a "learning experience". Either way here's where it stands now.

I think it actually looks pretty nice in these small pictures that Julie emailed me.... 'The devil is in the details' though.... that's what they say at least....

In other news we plan on building our little test kiln this weekend. After that we have a lot of glaze testing to do this winter. More on that latter.

Joe

A new test kiln, and looking for some serious kiln washing advice.

2010-11-29T05:43:00.000-08:00

Well I'm back from my time in North Carolina. I don't have any pictures of the firebox right now, but I'll get some soon, and put up a post then. I had a great time in NC, and really enjoyed building the kiln for Julie. Julie and Steve were great hosts as well. It looks like I'll be headed back down in the spring to put a few finishing touches on the kiln and join in the first firing. Should be good.

Now that I'm home though the first order of business is to put together a proper test kiln. I took the scenic route home through the mountains of North Carolina (I ended up spending the evening at Alex Matisse's home, and got to see his new kiln/kiln shed/studio, if you haven't seen it all yet I recommend a gander: Alex's blog). I stopped by Bandana Pottery (Michael Hunt and Naomi Dalglish) and Shawn Irelands and was very impressed (not for the first time mind you) by the depth and quality of their glazes. Christy and I made the decision to stop salt glazing when we left North Carolina to give ourselves more glaze options to explore. It's been a slow learning process, and seeing Shawn/Michael/Naomi's glazes reminds me how much more there is to learn. Don't get me wrong I like the glazes we have, but they comprise a very narrow section of all the possibilities.
So first step? Rebuild our test kiln.

It's served us well for quite some time now, it's very efficient, and easy to fire. However it cools very, very quickly. This has caused more than a few unpleasant surprises while unloading new glazes from the wood kiln which tends to cool rather slowly.
My first thought was just to put a thick layer of cob up around the outside of the kiln. However this still leaves us with a lid that is heavy to lift on and off the kiln and cools just as quickly.

And I also imagine that putting up insulation outside the stainless steel exterior of our kiln would cause the steel to deteriorate pretty quickly.
So I think we will keep the burners, and build up a new kiln around them. I'll have to invest in a little bit of metal to hold it all together, but I'm hoping to keep other expenses to a minimum. The thinking now is to build it up so it looks something like a little square bottle kiln. Something that can be loaded from the side, and then bricked up.

So I don't want to use the best bricks as I would like to save those for building Christy a earthenware kiln sometime down the road. Here's what I would like to use:

They are grate brick we got from our trips to Iowa. We got them the first couple of trips simply to act as a border to keep the small brick from tumbling out of my Father-in-laws trailer. Later on we built sides on to the trailer. They are obviously in rough shape. My thoughts now are to grind the interior side clean, and pack the hollow section with clay and sand. I then want to put up some kind of kiln wash to protect the bricks. The grate bricks have had a hard life, and I don't expect them to last forever, but I think with a little TLC they should last at least a little while longer.
So I am interested in peoples experience with different kiln washes. I want to keep any kind of atmosphere from reaching the bricks (I may want to add a small amount of wood or wood ash during the firing to see how our glazes react... an idea I got from talking to Micheal Hunt about their test kiln). I don't want to spend too much money, so no ITC coatings or something of the like. Lastly I don't want to put anything on our kiln that is going to later flake off, both getting on our test pots and making it necessary to rewash the kiln.
Any ideas? I've heard of people glazing their kilns with a high alumina shino glaze. This has a serious appeal to me, but I don't have any experience with it. I feel as though put on too thinly the standard EPK/Alumina mix won't protect the brick as fully as I would like, and put on thickly it tends to flake off after a matter of time.... If I thought I could cob the inside of the kiln and not have it flake off later I would... but I don't see how it wouldn't end up on our pots eventually.
Any thoughts?
Joe

Rock walls, and tatami bricks

2010-11-23T15:31:00.000-08:00

I've spent my time while we were preheating, firing, and cooling the kiln building some rock walls. I was inspired by Alex Matisse's rock wall, along with the huge pile of rocks on Julie and Steve's land. I imagine it must have been an old foundation that got pushed in, as some of the rocks still had mortar on them.
I believe the firebox wouldn't have needed buttressing. The kiln certainly needed some landscaping though, as the ground was ripe for ankle breaking before the rock walls. We also put in some small rock walls to keep the land flat around the second chamber while also being able to comfortably stoke the secondary firebox.

With that wrapped up it's on to finish the firebox, as the tatami bricks are all ready to go.

Some of the bricks seemed to pick up some residual salt, though I doubt that will effect their function as firebricks.

It doesn't look like as many bricks as I had previously thought, so we'll have to go a couple more layers of firebrick before we switch to the tatami bricks. Hopefully we can finish up the firebox tomorrow and start stuccoing the kiln. It's time to start wrapping this thing up and get back home.
Joe

Firing number 2

2010-11-19T15:41:00.000-08:00

The tatami brick are all loaded up and ready to go. Matt Haliburton came out and helped us make the last of the tatami bricks this last Tuesday. Making the tatami bricks has been a learning experience. I think I've got the hang of it now that we've got them all finished up. For those of you who are curious the most concrete information about tatami bricks can be found in Will and Douglass' comprehensive article that they wrote for 'Studio Potter' back in 1994. This is the information (clay recipe, making techniques, firing temp, ect...) that we used to make our tatami bricks. Other info can be found in 'The Potters book' by Bernard Leach, and 'The Kiln Book' by Fred Olsen. Here's a picture of me rolling one out:

They are all loaded up and we started preheating them. They aren't completely dry and they are fairly thick so we are planning on preheating for several days.
Julie just finished up the first chamber sidewall this evening.

I've spent the last couple of days getting the firebox to the point where we will start using the tatami bricks. I think I have a couple of layers to go...

The upper arch is for stoking, while the lower arch is for preheating, removing ash after the firing, and for crawling inside.... in case one of the grate bricks needs to be replaced.

The shape of the firebox requires very different brick laying techniques from the rest of the kiln. It uses very large mortar joints with slivers of bricks jammed in to tighten everything up, and prevent shrinking of the joints latter on.

The firebox bricks are notched around the stoking arch, and the preheating/ash removal arch to prevent the smaller arches from walking/being pushed forward.

Here's a shot from above.

So here's where we are now:

We'll keep you updated as things progress.
Joe

Firing results

2010-11-18T05:22:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all. We've unloaded the kiln from the first firing. I didn't have any pots in it, but was quite excited to see the results none the less. Everything came out better than we expected. You can see the results on Julies blog.
Joe

From the Homefront

2010-11-15T11:43:00.000-08:00

My favorite November sight!

Hi Everyone,

I am back in wintry Wisconsin after a whirlwind trip to autumn-y NC. I spent a day helping Joe and Julie work on the kiln and a day (not long enough!) catching up with a few NC friends. I am really looking forward to having Joe back home, but my circle of wonderful friends has made sure I haven't been lonely here during his absence.

I did receive a few special requests for our blog while on the trip. Seems that some of you non-potters feel that we are a little too heavy on the pottery and a little too light on sharing what goes on outside of the studio. Because we aim to please, here a few pics of of early winter at Windy Ridge:

All of the lovely autumn leaves have blown away.
If you look closely, you can see the shrubs my mom found at a
nursery that was going out of business.
Not the best time for planting, but with a lot of mulch, I think they'll survive.

A few members of our roving de-mulching and egg production team
checking to see what's tasty today in the mulch around the fruit trees.

This picture was taken two weeks ago.
If you want to see these birdies, you'll have to come over for dinner!
One of the advantages of raising our broilers late in the year is that there
is an abundance of post-Halloween pumpkins available for them to eat.
I finished them on alfalfa, too, and I'm now waiting for a tasting report from our favorite foodies.

Charley is as sweet, loyal, and hungry (for whatever you are eating) as always.

Maggie is a joy. Her behavior and listening skills are much improved,
and she is turning into quite the trail running companion
when I can find enough time in these short winter days to run at Governor Dodge.

Charley and Maggie have been in full-on mouse hunting mode.
Our fire pit is one of their favorite stake-out spots.
Their persistence in the face of constant failure is...impressive!

The garden is pretty much done for the year.
I picked the remaining beets and chard yesterday as the winter's first snow started to fall.
The garlic is tucked in under a thick layer of straw, waiting for spring.

Just can't get through a post without a little clay news, right?

I am still testing my earthenware blends.

I am struggling to get what I want (a truly local clay with rich color and earthy texture)
and have the clay work adequately for functional pieces (not crack!)
My clay body uses a very high percentage of local clay, which has a very fine particle size.
I think I need to add more mid-sized particles to deal with the cracking,
but I'm not sure what to use that will keep my clay in line with my goals.

My newest plan is to beg a bucket or two of raw Yellow Banks (Indiana) clay
off of Mark Skudlarek and to see if our favorite What Cheer Potters might have a bit of central Iowa clay I could have for testing. I'll keep you updated as I continue to work through all of this.

I did have fun last week making Minoan-inspired earthenware coffee cups.

I'm off for a run-I"m going to have to fly to get 4 miles in before dark!
**c

Firing number 1

2010-11-15T06:33:00.000-08:00

Sorry for all the lack of blogging everyone... We've been pretty busy here. I did actually write a nice blog post last week, but blogger somehow lost it. I was too tired and annoyed to rewrite it, so..... last week in review, Christy came out for a short visit, we made tatami bricks, and finished the back half of the kiln.
So, here we are. Ready to fire.

The kiln all ready to go. We used soft brick dipped in a zircopax solution to protect them from the salt. We used hard brick around the spy holes.

Here we are part way into the firing. You can really see how much better of an insulator the soft brick are in this picture. The mudding around the spy holes dried out in no time flat.

Here I am stoking the secondary firebox.
You can also see in the background that we braced the first chamber arch. I was worried about the arch "walking" during the firing. After the kiln is complete the first chamber arch will be buttressed by the main firebox.
The arch is braced with two 2x4s strapped together with tie-down straps. I the front 2x4 wanted to creep up the arch as I tightened the straps, so I ended up keeping it down with more bricks.

Overall the firing seemed to go really well. The kiln seemed very responsive and gaining temperature wasn't ever an issue this firing. We fired for 16 hours which is a little slower than Julie will usually fire, but we thought it best to fire a little slower with the wet castable.
We ended up with very even temperature distribution with the hottest spot in the kiln being cone 10 and the coldest spot at cone 10 one quarter down. Due to poor planning, a tight time line, and short winter days, we ended up entering reduction after dark. None the less the moon was fairly bright and we could judge the amount of smoke decently. We think we got decent reduction, we'll see after we unload.
So with out further ado. Your stoker gallery:

Luke came out late morning and gave us a much needed break.
Bob also came out late morning and ended up staying quite a while.
And of course Julie.
We'll post pictures as soon as we unload. Up next we need to complete the tatami bricks and fire those before finishing up the main firebox.
Joe

First firing completed

2010-11-14T20:48:00.000-08:00

Julie and I just finished firing the second chamber! Everything went well, even temperatures, and what seemed like good reduction. I would give a full report, but my head is feeling about as sharp and in focus as this picture.

A full report after I get myself some sleep.
Joe

progress update

2010-11-07T04:54:00.000-08:00

Things seem to be moving along nicely.

We borrowed some scaffolding from a friend of Julie's, unfortunately we didn't have all the parts to make it quite high enough. We didn't discover this until it was already set up though, so we used it for a while. I set up a string forum which isn't completely necessary but always makes me feel better.

The next day we went into town and rented some scaffolding. Local potter, Bob stopped by just in time to help us set up the new scaffolding.

We've had quite a bit of help these last couple of days. Stewart came out for Friday and helped Julie work on the first chamber arch, before spending the last couple hours lifting bricks up to me on the scaffolding.

Elizabeth came out for the morning Saturday.
Wendy helped cut and shape bricks for Julie.
Spence spent an afternoon lifting bricks and mortar up to me.
Steve as well helped carrying bricks up to me. Its a nice shot of Steve, though for some reason the chimney looks like it's about to tip over. You'll have to take my word for it that the chimney is straight.

And of course Julie, who is putting in long hours getting her kiln together, and also getting pretty good at laying bricks.So that's where we are now.
The chimney is all done, though I think we will stucco the outside of it before we take down the scaffolding. We should be able to finish up the sidewalls to the second chamber and secondary firebox today. Monday we need to order a couple more arch brick before we can finish the first chamber arch, along with the arch brick we need some fiber before we fire the second chamber. Overall though things are looking to be on schedule to fire this coming weekend.
Joe

2010-11-03T18:26:00.000-07:00

Things seem to be moving on at the kiln... the chimney is coming along slowly between other tasks. Pretty soon though we will have to bite the bullet and rent ourselves some scaffolding, at which point we'll need to finish up pronto as we'll be on the clock so to speak.
The kiln has been a little more tricky than expected as none of the bricks are the exact same size. We've ended up laying all the bricks down with a thick mortar joint, and then hammering them all level with a 2x4. A trick I learned from Andres Allik who might just be one of the best kiln builders I've met.

For those of you with an eye for details, it's obviously not perfectly level across the top of the chimney... however the chimney is perfectly plumb, and when you are dealing with bricks of varying sizes, that's all you can ask for.

So here's where we're at now:

The second chamber arch is all done, along with the secondary firebox arch. The castable should be set by tomorrow. We should be able to remove the arch form from the second chamber and if everything goes according to plan the form should fit right into the first chamber and we'll get right the first chamber arch. The original plan was to build the whole kiln except the first firebox and then fire the tatami brick in the second chamber. However we are now considering firing a batch of mugs that Julie has made for a special order in the second chamber. So we would fire her mugs first and then move on to the tatami bricks afterword.
The timeline is a little tight. Luckily we've had some good help from a couple young potters in the area. Gaines whose picture you can see above, and Matt who came out after work to help us on the second chamber.

Either way things seem to be moving along well, and we hope to be firing later next week....

Update from NC

2010-10-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

I'm just about through with my first week here. Things seems to be moving along well. We should have all the footers and flues done by this weekend. Which means we will get to start on the arches next week, which I always find more rewarding than leveling bricks in the sand. Gotta start somewhere though.
Here's what we've got so far:

The main firebox is all ready for it's arch. The arch will be started with regular high duty firebrick and then finished with handmade tatami brick, which are a hollow conical shaped brick. Julie and I mixed the clay to make them first thing after I got here, and we are now waiting for the clay to dry to start making the brick. We are planning on finishing the main firebox last. After everything else is finished we will fire the tatami bricks in the second chamber before stacking them up to make the main firebox.
Here's the first chamber. All ready for it's arch.
This is what we'll refer to as the "secondary firebox" which will most likely only be used when firing the second chamber on it's own. It's almost done with just a couple of bricks to notch around the grates before the flues are finished. I've never used a secondary firebox before, and it's ended up being a complex little guy. You can see below the main air inlet, right above which is the preheat stoking area. In the bottom left is an air inlet which leads most of the way toward the center of the kiln. The plan is to seal off the flues from the first chamber if the second chamber is ever to be fired on it's own. It seemed more pleasant to be able to control the air inlet with out having to run in and out of the first chamber. There is also I understand a slight chance of carbon monoxide poisoning if one spends too much time in a chamber while an adjacent chamber is being fired.

The most complex part of the secondary firebox was making sure the grates were replaceable in case one broke sometime down the road. A lot of cutting/notching was required to make it possible to remove the grates at a later date.
Here's what it looks like with the brick removed... for full effect.
Not to wish ill upon my good friend Julie, but after all the work we put into making sure the grates were removable I'm going to be a little disappointed if the grates never break.

Here's where Julie spend the good portion of her day:
Notching, and cutting..... notching, and cutting..... notching, and cutting

Well there you have it. We'll update you again as things progress.
Joe

A Visit from Marcia Tani Paul

2010-10-24T20:37:00.000-07:00

Marcia Tani Paul, a fellow potter and blogger from Minnesota, stopped by for a visit to Windy Ridge during the Fall Art Tour. She posted a nice review of some Fall Art Tour highlights (and some great pictures!) on her blog.

**c

A Post of Changes

2010-10-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

We had a great Fall Art Tour. We had wonderful, interesting customers, and got a chance to catch up with many folks who visited us last year. As functional potters, we think it's a high compliment to have someone take home and enjoy our work and come back for more! My dad, Ray Hamilton, was our guest artist, and his wood-turning demonstrations were a highlight of the tour for many of our customers. His finished bowls and vases looked beautiful in the afternoon sun, as well:

Now that the pottery will be slowing down for us over the winter, we have time to focus on other things. I'll let Joe tell you about his next venture first:

Hey, y'all, I'm off to North Carolina for the next month or so... I was scheduled to leave town about four hours ago so I'm going to keep this fairly short. I'm headed down to help our good friend/potter/blogger Julie Jones build her kiln outside of Durham. I'm planning on being there somewhere around four weeks, most of which I imagine I'll have to have my nose to the grindstone. However I certainly hope to take a little time to visit some friends while I'm there.

Julie and I have been discussing this for some time and mulling over kiln options. Here are the plans as I have them drawn now:

Two chambers, one for reduction, one for salt. The first main firebox is stoked from the front. There is also a small secondary firebox between the two chambers. This will make life easier and more efficient if Julie ever wants to just fire the salt chamber. The kiln has fairly large flues for it's size, with a decent size firebox-- Julie would like to fire it in one day (12-14 hours) so keeping those proportions is important. What else to say... oh... we dropped the smoke duct/round chimney in favor of a simpler square chimney coming off of the back of the second chamber....

That's all I've got for now, I'm looking forward to starting construction. We'll keep you all updated either though this blog or on Julies, or both.

Joe

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? I'm a little jealous that Joe gets to spend so much time with our NC friends, but I'm hoping to make it down for a few days myself...since I am FINISHED with my day job in two weeks! I have decided to go back to school for cosmetology. My good friend Kristy Church planted the seed in my head long ago, and I have finally decided to go for it as an enjoyable, creative supplement to our pottery income.

I know my choice is probably shocking to those of you who always imagined my next degree would involve a Ph and a close reading of some obscure, highly interpretable novel, but after lots of waffling, I'm feeling good about my choice. Rest assured, though, friends, I will always be there for you if you want to dork-out over Jane Austin, Eyre, or Hamilton. And I get to take two weeks off between the end of my unfortunate day job and the start of classes to work in the studio and (hopefully) get to NC.

Until then, we'll keep you posted!

**c

Fall Art Tour Time!

2010-10-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone! Happy Fall Art Tour Eve!
We are ready this year with lots of lovely pots.
And the first 25 folks each day get a free juice cup.
Filled with apple cider, if you like.
And my mom is bringing the snacks.
If seeing pottery doesn't get you out of the house,
her caramel brownies will!

The Tour is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10-6 daily.
Hope you can join us!

**c

Pots!

2010-10-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

All the pots are cleaned and sorted and ready for the Fall Art Tour. The firing came out well. The pots in the first chamber last firing were a little disappointing. This was in part to our new clay body. Our old clay body responded very well to a neutral atmosphere, with beautiful peachy/salmon colors. The new clay body came out of the last firing some what pale and dry.
So we added more time to this firing to allow the clay body to mature (maybe mature is the wrong term... not sure what the word I'm looking for is....), and also upped the level of reduction in the first chamber. We are quite pleased with everything out of the first chamber:

A lot more ash than we've ever gotten before which I really like. Of course it does come at a cost. We burnt quite a bit of wood holding the kiln at cone 10 for an extra 24 hours. Was it worth it? I think so, Christy's not quite as convinced. Though she's not quite convinced that she wants to continue with high fired pots at all. Hopefully she'll find more time this winter to keep testing her earthen ware clay, and start pulling together some glazes. I doubt we will have a full line up of earthenware pots next year... but maybe 2012?
In cone 10 news, I made some changes to the two glazes that use our local red clay in them. I added 10% more silica to the dark glaze, and I'm really happy with the results. The crystallization has disappeared for the most part and the glaze now looks like the tests we got out of our little gas kiln.

Maybe not quite as happy with my photography skills, but the glaze is nice

I also added 5% EPK to the amber ash glaze which kept the glaze from running off of pots onto the shelves and also from pooling in the center of serving bowls:

Christy didn't get as much time to make pots as she would have liked, she did get some nice boxes made though:

As well as decorating several of my larger platters and serving bowls:

All in all the firing was quite good. I feel as though we are finally starting to get all the little idiosyncrasies of our kiln figured out. We are ending up with more and more nice pots out of each firing, and less and less pots that get tossed out into the shard pile.
The only real issue we ran into with this longer firing was the amount of ash that made it into the second chamber. Our celedon ash glaze doesn't do to well with large amount of ash on it. It tends to foam up. This can be interesting in small quantities, but in large amount you end up with this:

All of the yellow is quite rough to the touch, and the foaminess around the knob can be chipped off easily with a finger nail... Something to work on for next firing...
We'll post more pictures as we work toward getting our place all ready for the Fall Art Tour. This was a really good event last year for us, and we are looking forward to seeing everybody again this year.
Joe

#9 Stoker's Gallery

2010-10-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

We're tired, but really happy with the firing.
We'll give a full report later.
And maybe even share a video!
For now, though, here is your Stoker's Gallery:

Jim Cole

Krista Loomans

Joe

Aaron Weaver

Christy (Yes, I am firing our kiln in a skirt. Firing skirts are all the rage this fall, ladies!)

There is also a rumor going around that Rebecca Claypool tossed some wood on during the night shift on Monday. We don't have photographic evidence, but we do know for sure that she made some delicious soup and cookies to keep all of us going!

**c

Loading

2010-10-01T19:12:00.001-07:00

Autumn has arrived with this loading. Warm sunny days followed by crisp evenings. Combines in the fields and geese in the air. Our forest consists of walnuts, which unceremoniously drop their leaves, lindens, and lots of soon-to-be vibrantly lovely maples. One of the early birds in the background of this pic is turning yellow already.

Joe with a board of lil' maple syrup pitchers

Krista is joining us for this firing.

Chuckles and Magpie are, as always, on the entertainment team.

We will finish loading tomorrow evening, and, after a night of candling, we are planning a three-day firing. Stay tuned for all of the excitement!

**christy

Earthenware, Round 2

2010-09-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

Joe and I spent a little time this afternoon looking over the second round of my earthenware tests. Once again, I was really happy with the results-- the vivid purple-reds and rough texture give the clay a unique look and a lot of depth.

When I was finished making my tiles and test pots, I mashed all of my remaining test scraps together and made a bowl. I covered it with sig left over from my class at Arrowmont with Joe Pintz, and...taa daaaaa--my first official (usable) earthenware pot!

The bottom even got a wee bit of flashing around the wads!

The winning recipe (so far...but I've only done 31 blends...) consists of:

83% Ivey Red (named for Ivey Construction, the local company that digs it for us)
5% Silica
7% Fine Grog
5% Wollastonite

Running a close second is:

68% Ivey Red
10% Yellow Banks 401
5% Silica
3.5% Each Fine and Coarse Grog
10% Wollastonite

I'm going to mix up a few more tests based on these two. For my previous tests, I had kept the grog at the level of our current stoneware clay, but since Joe isn't interested in earthenware, I'll probably increase it for my handbuilding. I did have some problems with my clays cracking while drying, and I hope increasing the grog will reduce that issue. Now if we could just get that jaw crusher of our dreams, I would toss in some of the red bricks we salvaged from the former "walkway" on our property and make myself some red grog...

We are going to fire next weekend, but the entire kiln will be taken up with stoneware so I won't be able to do any tests this time. I need to get started on the inevitable hundreds of glaze tests I have in mind, though, and fortunately a friend has promised me space in an electric or gas kiln this winter.

Speaking of winter...

We're ready! The wood is cut, and we cleaned the chimney last weekend. We have a little fire going tonight even though it's only in the 50's. Sweet.

**c

Living up to our Name

2010-09-24T14:26:00.001-07:00

This is the way to get laundry dry! (With a nod to you, Ron Philbeck)

More Pots

2010-09-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

We enjoyed the reception at the Viva Gallery. The gallery is run as an artist's cooperative, with 17 artist sharing labor and rent to keep it running. It's a really nice idea, and we enjoyed meeting all the artists that make the gallery tick.
We snapped a couple more photos of the pots as we were packing them up for the show. Enjoy.
Joe

A Few Fresh Pots

2010-09-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

Joe got all of the pots cleaned up today while I was in the kitchen up to my ears processing tomatoes. He took a few snapshots to share with all of you before we whisk pots away to VIVA Gallery for our opening tomorrow evening. If you're in the area, feel free to join us on Thursday from 5-7 pm for the reception.

The Front Chamber

Pitcher with Light Iron Ash Glaze

Handbuilt Vase with Red and White Slips

Fruit Bowl

A Lovely Jar from the Front Chamber

Jug from the Front Chamber

Jug with White Slip and Ash Glaze

Cereal Bowl with Iron Ash Glaze

Maggie and Charley had a long day, too, looking for mice in the wood pile.
It's a pretty hard life for a dog here at Windy Ridge!

**c

stoker gallery #8

2010-08-31T19:11:00.000-07:00

We've started unloading and things are looking good. However, before we get to far ahead of ourselves, we need to put up the Stokers Gallery for firing number 8.

Our first night party was as enjoyable as ever. It's a nice time to get together with friends and share what we do. By the second day we are usually too tired and involved in the firing to be very sociable. The first night, though, Christy and I are still caught up on sleep and the firing is slow enough paced that there is still plenty of room for brats, along with a beer or two.

John Hamilton, Myself, and Jen Kerr triple teamed the kiln the first night, and making easy work of things.

We were lucky enough to have a lot of good help the second day of the firing.

Krista came out in the afternoon to help us finish off the second and third chamber.

Our good friend Tyler Carter happened to be passing though town and stopped by to get a little stoking in.

Our friend Paul Elgin came out to help us transition out of the first chamber.

I was there as well....

And of course the star of the firing Christy "peace out" Cole.

We'll get pictures of the pots up soon.
Joe

A week in review

2010-08-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Christy's giving me a break from the stoking, so I can rest up before we finish the first chamber and transition into the second chamber. I thought I would use this time to update everyone on our week.

Before loading we undertook a little kiln work. First I cut out the cob around the spy holes and inserted new spy hole openings/plugs. The spy hole opening/plugs have been sitting around a while. It's nice to finally get them installed.

We've also had some bricks shifting around our first chamber door. Nothing serious, I imagine it's something we could have ignored for many years to come. However, since we would rather not rebuild the first chamber any sooner than we have to, we decided to address the issue before it progressed any more.

All of the lower brick from the main arch are cut to "lock into the first chamber entrance arch.
However, the top of the main arch simply rests on top of the first chamber entrance. This has slowly pushed the entrance forward bit by bit.
First things first. I cut the cob off of the offending juncture then knocked several of the bricks out from the inside.

Set up a makeshift arch form.

Then packed in castable, which I've decided is the equivalent of duct tape the for kiln builders. The stuff is simply irreplaceable.

The castable now sits in a solid block both behind the entrance and on top of it. I believe this should hold everything pretty stable.

Then with only two days left we got the kiln loaded:

More earthenware tests in the third chamber:

A full second chamber with some re fires. Due to the "incident" in the second chamber last firing, most of the pots on the top of the stack were under fired, so they are getting a second chance.
We only ended up with half a chambers worth of pots remaining for the first chamber.
We had initially considered simply firing the first chamber. However we really enjoy the variety of effects we can get from the two different chambers, so we went ahead with stacking pots in both chambers. We would have loved to push back the firing long enough to have a full first chamber, but the need for pots for our upcoming show at the VIVA Gallery took priority. If anybody is in the Viroqua area please feel free to come on out this Thursday to see the new pots hot out of the kiln.
We should be finished firing this evening, and have the pots out Tuesday just in time to get them to the opening. Nothing like the last minute!
Stokers gallery coming soon.
Joe

Not-Quite Loading

2010-08-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

We were supposed to start loading yesterday.

But we didn't quite have all of our pots ready...

So instead we spent the day finishing up glazing and decorating.

It's a lovely late summer day today, though, and we are (almost) ready to go!

**c

Mixin' the Red Clay

2010-08-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

I spent the day preparing what I hope will be enough Ivey Red clay

to get me through a winter of earthenware experimentation.

Looks like "weed the clay pile" needs a higher spot on my to-do list...

My system is low-tech.
I mix shovelfuls of clay with water in garbage can and let the mixture sit for about 20 minutes. Another quick mix, then through my homemade hardware cloth sieve
(don't want to find worms or limestone chunks or plants in my pots--at this point, anyway!)
and out to dry in our chicken wire/scrap wood drying racks.
This took me all day. And it got hot.

But my mind tumbled with every scoop.
The rich colors of my clay tests have me excited to see what will happen this firing.
Although I like our stoneware clay and glazes,
I have a fuzzy vision of what I really want my pots to be.
Maybe more of a feeling than a vision.

Gershwin meets Gillian Welsh.
The Fields meet the Sky in the Snow.
Arm Candy meets Glasses and a Russian Novel.

And I got a tiny, quiet glimpse of that with my clay tests. Very tiny. Very quiet.
I could hum the melody but don't have the words yet.
And that's a lot to expect from a pile of clay!

Joe just said it looked like I was making a giant batch of tomato soup.

Because I want this lightly-processed clay for winter
experimentation, I will dry it thoroughly and store it in empty feed sacks,
waiting 'til the snow falls
and I don't feel pressure to make stoneware to keep our gallery full.

Those of you in the pottery blogging community know there has been some recent controversy/discussion about who should blog and what they should blog about.
Joe and I, as potters who value both functional work rooted in folk art traditions
and the "collective yippie" of sharing the joys and disappointments
of the pottery creation process with friends,
have some thoughts on that topic that we'll save for a later post.
In the meantime, though, I think it's time for a glass of wine and a load of laundry.

**c

lessons learned

2010-08-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

The Kiln Shed after a Summer Storm

I'm starting to get my hands back into the clay. Sales at Windy Ridge have been slow, so similarly (is that a word... probably not) to fellow potter/blogger Brandon Phillips, I've been doing some construction work. But we need more pots for a show that starts September 1st, so I'm back to the pottery for a short stint.

Nothing new to report as today is my first day back at the wheel, so I thought I would post on various things that we learned from our last firing:

Glazes

I was pretty disappointed when I unloaded our "oil spot/tenmoku" glaze from the kiln. This is what I was hoping for:
and this is what we ended up getting:

The glaze, although quite different from our goals, has slowly started to grow on me. It's another lesson on how little we can trust the results out of our quick- firing, quick- cooling test kiln. Obviously the glaze is going through some serious crystallization in the wood kiln. I'll mix up another batch of tests for the next wood firing. Last time I added 20 percent EPK hoping the extra alumina would stop the crystallization. This time I'll try two different approaches: one with a blend of progressively more silica, and one with a blend of progressively more alumina (maybe in the form of EPK, maybe in the form of pure alumina hydrate... still undecided on this one). Both of these materials are useful for retarding the crystallization process, albeit different types of crystals if my understanding is correct.

Clay

Our new clay turned out well--slightly less sheen and flashing than our old clay, but still quite nice. Best part? No cracking! I might try slightly lowering the fire clay from 20% to 10-15% on the next batch, but over all I'm quite happy with the changes. The only cracking we got was on serving bowls such as this one:

I am quite sure this cracking is my fault. Maybe to thin at the corner? This is a new shape for me so I can't say for sure. Any ideas out there?

Kiln

Finally our kiln. The closer spacing on the grates was just what we were hoping for. The only thing I'll change for next time is to raise the stoking door. I had kept it pretty low in the past thinking that would give us better control of the embers if they needed to be moved around.

Don Hammond and I study the ember situation

With the new grate spacing, though, all the low stoking door did was to make it impossible to really build up the ember pile. Stacking the stoking door another 10-12 inches higher should be just right.

One issue I have yet to really wrap my head around is the top of the first chamber. It never gets the same amount of ash and reduction as the lower half of the first chamber:

I assume it's simply from having such a tall first chamber with a relatively short firebox. The simple solution would be to put glazed pots on the top several shelves, although I think I will be stubborn for at least a couple more firing and see if we can't get at least some more reduction from the pots on the top shelf. Again, any suggestions here are more than welcome. Our next firing will be a small load, but in early October we are hoping to fire all three chambers and fire for 72 hours instead of our usual 48-50. If we still can't get anything going on on the top shelf after that.... then we'll switch to putting glazed ware up there.

The Third Chamber Earthenware Tests:

Christy was very pleased with her first round of earthenware tests from the third chamber. It seems as though, until we have time to build her a separate small kiln, the third chamber will work well.

Final lesson:

This one's pretty obvious... we need some new posts:

I'd rather not have to unloaded anything like this again.

Joe

edit:
sorry y'all- blogger's getting all crazy with the text size... not sure why

Today's Favorite Platter

2010-07-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

I have started taking Wednesdays off from my non-pottery day job.
I'm celebrating by decorating platters!

**c

Driftless Appetite Covers Windy Ridge!

2010-07-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

Our friend Leslie wrote a post about our last firing on her Driftless Appetite blog. She is a wonderful photographer, writer, and cook, and we are happy to have befriended both Leslie and her partner Keith. Be warned, though--hitting the archives of Driftless Appetite might make you very hungry and give you an irrepressible urge to move to our little corner of the world!

Walk In The Woods--This Friday!

2010-07-20T06:36:00.001-07:00

Join us on Friday night at Kaleidoscope Gallery in Mount Horeb, WI for the opening reception for "Walk in the Woods." We'll be showing our new pots along with some lovely photography, paintings, jewelry, and wood art. If you have never attended one of Kathleen's openings before, I know you will be impressed by the caliber of art, the lovely space, and the amazing spread of delicious food. And we will definitely be hitting the Grumpy Troll for drinks afterwords! Hope to see you there.

**c

Earthenware Tests

2010-07-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

As you loyal readers know, my earthenware tests have been a long time coming! During our last firing, I finally was able to fire my preliminary clay tests in the third chamber of our kiln:

I built the world's tiniest bagwall to keep ash off of the pots.

I had 13 tests with varying amounts of local Ivey Red clay mixed with Hawthorne Bond fire clay, silica, corn ash, wood ash, grog, and feldspar. I was hoping for a clay body that was a deep, rich red to purple, and I am thrilled with the colors that came out of the firing:

The deeper red/purples were either a higher percentage of Ivey Red or corn ash.

Although the results of the shrinkage and absorption tests I did on each clay were well within normal ranges, I did have some problems with cracking and warping:

I was thinking of a certain dear friend when I made my little 3-footed test pots!

Today I mixed up 14 more tests--blends of 60-80% Ivey Red (our local red clay from Ivey Construction) with additions of varying amounts of Yellow Banks (since we are out of Hawthorne Bond--I will mix up a few more tests with HB when we get our next batch of dry materials), wood ash (the corn ash gave the clay body a nice color, but the consistency of dry cookie dough), silica, fine and coarse grog, and wollastonite.

Although people have been firing local red clays with wood since pottery began, I have not been able to find many substantial resources on either creating low-fire clay bodies out of local clays or wood-firing earthenware. While initially this left me feeling a little lost (if you can't find it on Google, is it even possible??) I am now seeing the voids in official information as a positive thing. I am free to experiment!

I am starting down this earthenware road as an attempt to root my work in our geographical place--to have my pots come out of the same ground my community walks upon every day-- and because I think the soft, rich colors of the earthenware palate will suit my work. As always, though, making changes in pottery is an exercise in patience. With several upcoming shows and the need to keep our gallery stocked through the summer tourist season, I will be moving forward with my earthenware endeavor verrrrrrrry slooooowly. I'll keep you posted, though, and share what I learn along the way.

Our doggies demonstrating patience--but really hoping to see a raccoon. or kitty. or mouse. or bird. They aren't picky.

**c

Lucky #7

2010-07-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

After a few lovely, long days of cooling the kiln, we unloaded on Saturday. The front chamber looked fabulous:

Toasty browns, more ash than usual (thanks to a slightly longer soak and new grate spacing) and some nice flashing. Our only hitch was that the pyrometer fell in during the firing:

Fortunately Joe fished it out before the wires were totally fried, and, although the cover fell onto the one of the only glazed pots in the entire front stack, we were able to free it without breaking anything.

And the second chamber...

We had shelf issues. Again! Just before getting to temperature in the second chamber, the cones on my side disappeared, replaced with a shelf in front of the spyhole. While the kiln cooled, we hashed over all the things that could have caused the shelf to shift--we were confident that inexperience or loading error weren't factors, because Joe and I loaded the kiln ourselves. We thought that maybe the floor was shifting during the firing, or that we needed more of an expansion joint between the floor blocks. More than anything, we were confused and upset--because, really, who has shelves collapse more than once??

After we unstacked the door and pulled pots off the shelves, the problem was obvious:

One of our heavy-duty firebricks had fallen apart like a crumbly brownie, and this poor little heroic mug was the only thing holding the stack up!

The same thing happened in the center stack:

Only this time, a teabowl held the shelf up:

Check out the brick carnage behind the teabowl! Luckily we only lost a few pots due to the collapse--most of them somehow stayed on the shelves. While the firebricks we use for posts are top-of-the-line, they were used when we purchased them, and somewhere between 40 and 60 years old. A little tired, perhaps. We are planning to get silicon carbide posts before our next firing. If anyone has a good source for these (or just super-duty bricks) please let us know.

And the pots...

We are really happy with the results of the firing! Most of the pots on the table above are for a show in Wisconsin that opens this month, and a few are going to be set aside for the Clay and Blogs Show later this fall.

**christy

Firing Number 7 Stokers Gallery

2010-07-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

We finished up the seventh firing yesterday evening, and it was a bit of a mixed bag. The first chamber was great. With the added stoking holes under the grates, we were easily able to stoke under the grate until around 1200 degrees. Later on the new grate spacing made a much bigger difference than I would have guessed for only being a 1/4" change. Christy and I are both pretty excited to open the first chamber.
The second chamber on the other hand.... We'll see how it turned out after we unload, but it certainly didn't fire perfectly. While the new stack in the back of the chamber allowed us to squeeze quite a few more pots into the kiln, it impacted the draft much more than we could have guessed. The top of the second chamber ended up being fairly cool despite our best efforts. This is something that can be easily solved for the next firing by simply lowering the bag wall. The lower part of the chamber should still be nice, but we may have to refire some of the pots near the top of the stack.

The firing started off Wednesday. The first day is always easy and gives time to rest up and organize for the second day of the firing. We invited friends to join us for some brats and beer to finish off the first day of the firing.

Christy's brother John came out for the party and stoked while Christy and I enjoyed some brats:
Our friend Paul Elgin lent a hand as well:

Christy took the overnight shift and I came out first thing in the morning to start pushing the kiln into reduction.

Don Hammond came out in the afternoon to help us transition into the second chamber. He did some serious ember fluffing--thanks, Don!

Christy stoking the second chamber:

And my mom Pat got her first taste of wood firing:

Thanks to all who helped us with this firing. We're unloading first thing Saturday morning, and we'll post pictures of the pots soon.

Joe

loaded and ready for firing #7

2010-07-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

We switched things up a little this firing and loaded the second chamber first.

We also cut shelves to replace the scraps of shelving that we had used for the very back row before. We were able to get quite a few more pots in the kiln with the new shelves.

After loading the second chamber we took some time to rework the first chamber firebox. We like to stoke under the grates for as long as possible. When we stoke beneath the grate early in the firing, the pots don't experience as many of the temperature fluctuations that come from firing with wood. This is because the grate structure absorbs quite a bit of the heat and flame.
We were a little disappointed in previous firings, as we were only able to get the temperature up to around 700 degrees (Fahrenheit) stoking under the grates. Before this firing we decided to open up two more holes in the front of the kiln to allow for better preheating across the entire firebox, instead of just preheating the center of the firebox as we had it before.

We now have three holes open on either side: one for air at the floor, one for preheating right below the grate, and one right above the grate in case we ever have unevenness side to side in the first chamber.

Here's how the inside of the firebox looks now on the side.

We also added the spacers that I had made before. This shrinks the spacing between the grates about a 1/4" (apparently the "kiln clay" has 0% shrinkage). We hope this little change will keep more embers above the grate and generate more ash on the pots during the latter part of the firing. We didn't end up having time to add the new spy hole covers, though. Hopefully we can do this before the next firing.

not much to say about this picture, I was pretty pleased though how well the kiln shelf broke on the curve.

We loaded the third chamber with various earthen ware tests. We are hoping this chamber will reach between cone 04-02 with out any stoking... we'll see.

And of course the first chamber.

first chamber pots.... almost dry....

We ended up coming a few pots short of a full load. No worries though, the first chamber is actually easier to fire when pots aren't stacked quite all the way to the ceiling. We do need to find more space in our studio for storing pots.... our kiln seems to be bigger than our studio. Something to look into in the future, especially when Christy makes the switch to wood-fired earthenware. She is excited about that possibility.

Joe

Summertime at Windy Ridge

2010-07-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

If you stop by Windy Ridge this week, you might get to take home more than pots!

Time to fire the kiln

2010-06-28T18:56:00.001-07:00

The pottery is really starting to fill up with pots in various stages of completion.

two piece pots awaiting their tops, along with some bowls and a jug

Despite our best efforts to stack bowls and plates vertically, our shelving is starting to get fairly congested as well.

Must be nearing our next firing!

A couple more photos of pots that Christy and I have been working on:

vases with red/white slip combo

A nice tray of Christy's also with red/white slip (sorry about the photo orientation)

A couple jars waiting for handles

I'll end with a quick word of warning. Although flannel sheets are great for the bed, I've recently learned they are less than ideal for drying clay. The sheets seems to get themselves fused to the dried material and after pulling them apart you end up with sheets that look like this:

And clay with added flannel.

Loading starts either Sunday or Monday. Firing will be Wednesday/Thursday.
Joe

Home Again

2010-06-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

I had a great week at Arrowmont--new ideas, techniques, and friends. More on all of that later. But you know it's been a good workshop week when it ends in a clear, cold mountain stream. The fact that most of us did not have actual bathing suits wasn't a problem.

And a cute poodle-love picture to end your day:

**c

Lesson Learned

2010-06-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

We decided to postpone our firing until July, mainly because a large custom order with a June deadline fell through. Although the organization had committed to work with us, seen our pots, our glazes, the custom stamps we made to their specifications, and prototypes of the pots they wanted, after they saw a prototype pot that we fired for them in the gas kiln, they decided they did not want pots from us. While we certainly do not want anyone to be disappointed in pots they get from us, we unfortunately ended up with this:

Fifty unusable stamped pots, twenty bisqued custom stamps, a wasted bisque and glaze test firing, and a week of work for naught. Lessons learned: don't bend over backwards to meet special requests and get a non-refundable deposit. Anyone need a stamp featuring the state of Wisconsin and a cow head?

In other news, Joe's dad Jim and his partner Sue visited us over the past week. Sue took some great photos:

The Panther Dash Bike Race--Joe is in there somewhere.

This picture does not do the climbs justice--they were brutal!

Jim and Joe mixed a batch of clay

Maggie Pie on the back porch

I'm off to Arrowmont today to take a week-long workshop with Joseph Pintz. Joe will be here holding down the fort, though, and making pots for the July "Wisconsin Woodlands" show at Kaleidoscope Gallery. We are excited to be part of that upcoming show, and will let you know more details when we have them!

**christy

Late Night Barn Visitors

2010-06-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

Q: What do you do when you have raccoons prowling around your barn late at night, rooting for dropped morsels of cat food and striking fear into the hearts of nearby chickens and barn kitties?

A: Call in the Dream Team of Coon Hunting Poodles!

Lead Agent Charley B

Assistant Agent Maggie Mae

Chucks and Mags like to start by corralling the coons under the wood pile. This involves running in frantic circles and yelping until...

one coon makes a successful dash out the door and the other...

climbs a barn post. Papa Ray did loan us a gun for our coon problem, but it just doesn't seem like a good idea to point a shotgun towards the roof of one's barn and unload. So Windy Ridge coon "hunts" tend to be a bit anti-climactic--we go inside and have popcorn and read, the coon ambles down after a few hours and heads back to his or her cozy home under our cement silo pad, and the dogs curl up at our feet.

**c

clay and pots

2010-05-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

Well things have finally started to slow since our big 'You Tube' premiere. Back to more mundane chores such as processing clay. For those of you who are curious, it looks like our new clay drying set up is working as predicted. In other words: very slowly. It's been about six weeks since we first set the clay in the racks to dry and I've started pulling it out this week.

Our clay seems to be picking up a little extra iron from the drying racks.

I'm guessing it will be about seven to eight weeks before we have it all up. It does dry very evenly, though, which is nice. Pulling clay as it drys has never been easier. It seems like a good set up as long as we stay well ahead of our clay needs. As a side note, the pug mill is incredible. Clay processing has never been easier.

I'm giving another try with the red slip/ white slip combo. I was really pleased with how it looked last time (pictures here) however we had some cracking in the slip which wasn't so pleasant. We kept two of the nicer plates with the cracked slip for ourselves and have been using them in our kitchen on a regular basis. They are quite nice. Seems like the combo deserves a second chance.

Both of the slips are thinned down quite a bit. I can't imagine they will crack this go around. Hopefully they will still retain the contrast between the two slips even though both the slips are significantly thinner.

Christy's still stuck at her "real" job, though she is finding time during the weekends to make pots.

These plates are a commission from a local gallery. Christy's made some new round molds. She's been making plates on the molds and then adding feet afterwords

They end up with a much softer feel than plates thrown on the wheel. Quite nice.

Well our next firing is just around the corner. They always seem to sneak up on us and catch us by surprise. I'm not sure how that's possible as we are the one who pick the dates. Happens every time though......

Joe

Let's try this again

2010-05-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

So I "stretched" the layout of the blog (thanks ang). I also uploaded the larger version of the video to Youtube, which for whatever reason plays through all the way to the end of the video. This version is quite a bit higher quality video, and might give people with slower conections difficulties. We'll try and get a better small version uploaded at some point as well. Hopefully now everybody will be able to enjoy the video full screen, with the full length.

Please let me know if the new "stretched" layout gives anybody's computer issues.
thanks
Joe

Coles on the Small Screen

2010-05-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

Our friend Eli Wieczorek finished up a short video for us.

He has quite a bit of footage from last fall and hopes to eventually put together a longer video which will be available as a DVD when it comes out. If anybody in the area is interested in getting a video made by Eli you can contact him through his web page capture-media.com (like all good web pages his is still under construction). I hope you enjoy the video. It includes cameo appearances from our good friends Sheridan Ray and Krista Loomans.
Joe

Sorry guys I'm still figuring out how to get the video on there with out having the edge of the video cropped. For now you can see it on youtube here. Any bloggers out there know how to keep it from cropping the edge of the video? Also looks like the video gets cut short at the end? Sorry guys, we'll get all these technical issues straightened out here shortly.

pots, tests, and poodles

2010-05-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason the last three or four cycles I've been putting off making teapots until the very end. Of course teapots aren't the only thing I procrastinate. So I usually only end up with time to make four or five teapots.
This go around I decided to make teapots first thing:

I made a dozen small side handled teapots, and a dozen larger teapots with handles over the top.

We ended up being in short supply of teapots for "Clay in May". We should be all stocked back up after this firing.

Christy's been working full time recently so she hasn't had time to make any pots yet. She has been doing some clay tests though:

These are all earthen ware clays based on the same red clay that we use for our red slip and iron glazes. We're going to give a try at firing earthen ware in our third chamber. In our previous firings the third chamber reaches cone 08 as we are finishing the second chamber. So in theory we should be able to stoke the third chamber for around five minutes to reach cone 04. We'll see how it all works out.

In non pottery related news Chirsty found this little poodle at the pound.... and it followed her home.
I guess we'll have to keep her. Her name is Maggie.
Joe

Gearing up for another firing

2010-05-06T06:47:00.001-07:00

First off thanks to everybody who made it out to our gallery during the day, and everyone who made it for the music and s'mores afterwards. We were quite happy that our first annual Clay in May was such a success.
We've decided to have another firing in early June to fully stock up our gallery after Clay in May. The firing is only a month away. Christy is working full time for the next couple of weeks (as she has been for the last couple of months) before she can begin making pots, and I'm working part time helping with the construction of a friends workshop/studio. So needless to say this won't be a full load. I'm figuring we'll just fire the first two chambers at most. Which is good as there will be a lot of new variables for this next firing and it's nice not to have too much invested in it. What are the new variables you ask?
Well new clay for starters:

We've already discussed this one else where, and I'm pretty confident this new batch of clay will be good. We are trying a new clay drying system as well. Before we had all our drying troughs outdoors. We've decided to bring them all in our barn and stack them up to promote slower drying. Before we would have to pull clay up at least twice a day or risk letting the clay getting too dry to work with. This new system is drying quite a bit slower and should dry more evenly as a result.

We're also hoping to make some minor adjustment to the kiln:
The spy holes in the first chamber have never been as tight as we would like. This is due mainly to the fact that such thick mortar joints were used in building the first chamber that a regular 2.5" brick ends up with quite a gap above it when it is cut up for a plug. So we've decided to make our own spy hole plugs and receptacles inspired by Michael Kline's spy holes and our own stoke hole covers. The receptacles will be embedded in the cob surrounding the spy hole, with the hopes that the ring around the receptacle will keep in from pulling out of the cob. We've also had some trouble with kiln junk falling onto the pots below when the top spy hole was opened in the first chamber. Hopefully this will address that problem as well.
The biggest change though to our kiln though will come from those small clay squares. We're going to use those to replace the brick spacers that are in between the grates now. There by tightening up our grate system . I would like to keep more of the embers up on top of the grates where they will be able to contribute more to the ash that lands on the pots and the charring effects that we like so much on the pots in the front stack. I tried to be scientific about how much I could close the grates without effecting the air flow too much. I read an excerpt of Gary Hatcher's article "Chariots of Fire: Principles of a Bourry Box Kiln" (I should really track down the whole article sometime). Gary mentions that at top temperature in a wood kiln gas expands to approximately 13 times it's size. So I figured out from our regular one brick air inlet, the size of opening that would be needed to allow all the air from the main air inlet through the grate system after expansion at cone 11. Long story short: for proper expansion the grates were just right the way they were before. So I just guessed at a good size for spacing. I doubt that it gets that hot below the grates, certainly not cone 11-12. The grates were spaced 1.25" apart. I rolled out the slab for the spacers at .875" (7/8"). I don't think our "kiln" clay which is epk, kyanite, and grog will have much shrinkage. We'll see how it all works out. Certainly we'll have more embers above the grates. Hopefully it will work out well.

Last variable:
Glazes. After our last round of intensive testing we surprised to find out how much different some of our glazes were out of the wood kiln than they were in our little test kiln. What we thought was going to be a nice Tenmoku/oil spot glazes came out like this in cooler areas of our kiln:

and like this in areas that got more ash and heat:

Quite a bit different than we expected. Well I've done some research and it looks like the most likely culprit to the changes is the magnesium crystallizing. Apparently without alumina the magnesium will start to crystallize during slower cooling cycles. A slow cooling cycle is something that is difficult to replicate in our little soft brick test kiln. In the making of this new glaze we used local red clay instead of the ball clay that we would have used otherwise. We'll try adding some kaolin to increase our levels of alumina.
We also tried to achieve a matte yellow glaze with little success. We got a nice yellow color but it would always be to runny. In removing some of the calcium to reduce the runniness we would loose the yellow as the calcium tends to bleach iron glazes from green to yellow. We ran our selves in circles trying to get a glaze that was both matte and yellow to no avail. With a little distance and time to think about it I've come to the conclusion that what we should have done when the glaze was yellow but too runny is to add more calcium and magnesium. As a glaze that is saturated with calcium and magnesium it should become more matte right? Time and testing will tell.
hmm... hopefully people have found my technical pondering/rambling mildly interesting. If anybody has any insights or suggestions I'm all ears.
Joe

Pots for 'Clay in May'

2010-04-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of blogging, we have somehow lost our camera during the extended group firing. Not surprising really considering how tired everyone was by the end. There were a couple cameras at the firing that looked just like ours so we're hoping somebody accidentally picked ours up and took it home. I'm sure it will turn up soon.
Luckily for us we have this camera here that I just found. The camera is my fathers and I had promised to send it back to him about..... hmm six months ago? Sorry Dad, we'll have it in the mail soon.
The firing came out well for our first time with that particular kiln. The firing was really for our friend Krista Loomans so we aimed for a much heavier reduction than we normally do with our kiln here. I believe Krista was pleased with it all. It's taking me a while to adjust to the different palette.

I really enjoy the light flashing orange and salmon color we usually get. We've saved a couple of the pots from the firing for ourselves. We'll put them into daily use and see how they are after we live with them for a while. As a general rule I tend not to trust my judgement of pottery until I've lived with the pot for a while.

There is a great quote from Hamada:
"Taste' and "feeling": the former is a part, the latter is the whole.
If one is observing a pot or any good article, one must be aware that "taste" is only partial viewing, while perceiving the "feeling" of an article is seeing the whole. The person who is preoccupied with good taste will respond to the details and incidentals of the object he is viewing, but is too close to see the whole object properly. The person who is concerned with feeling stands aside and allows the work to make its natural impact on him..... Good taste is a formula, and almost anyone can develop the ability to have good taste or to create good taste. But it is not so with feeling.... Therefore, criticism or appreciation by people who deal essentially in taste is of little real value to the craftsman, whereas any genuine criticism of a work's feeling gives the maker cause for serious thought."

So I'm attributing our reservations with the heavy reduction to taste. We've grown quite accustomed to seeing our pots in a certain light. We'll keep some around the house in daily rotation and see how they grow on us over time.

Back to the present. We've got a gallery full of nice pots, both from our last firing here as well as a handful of pots from our firing with Krista. I hope everybody can make it out to Mineral Point for "Clay in May". All of the local potters are opening their studios up for the day, and we're hosting a party at our place (open to everyone--that means you) afterword with live music, s'mores, cookies, and lemonade. We'll also be giving away juice cups to the first 50 people who come to the party.

Hope to see you all tomorrow.
Joe

Firing with friends

2010-04-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

The firing ended well. Krista and I were starting to wear down a little early so we pushed the firing a little faster toward the end and closed up the kiln Saturday morning. Everything went well in the end with cone 10 down everywhere. Here's a picture of Krista toward the very end of the firing using our version of the "flamethrower" or "wooden lid" or "rifling" (or whatever else you might want to call it) technique--basically stuffing the door with small sticks with each stick resting on the one below it, but still allowing air to flow between them all. This is a good technique to increase temperature while controlling ember build-up.

Of course being a new kiln to Krista and me, we could only guess how much reduction we were getting. I feel fairly good about the amount of reduction in the front of the kiln. We were aiming for a fairly heavy reduction in comparison to what we aim for with our own kiln here at Windy Ridge. The reduction in the middle and the back of the kiln though, is a little more of a question mark.

Krista learned how to fire from the three years she apprenticed with Kevin Crowe. Kevin emphasized making the firing a community event, and Krista wanted preserve that idea in this firing at Bethel. We had a large potluck on Friday evening as we reached top temperature in the front of the kiln.

And friends stopped by through out the firing.

Overall it was a good experience. One lesson that was strongly reinforced during this firing is how untrustworthy pyrometers are. Cone 10 started moving when the pyrometer said 2160 and we started to side stoke the kiln aiming to hold 2160 in the front of the kiln. As we progressed, the temperature started to drop in the front of the kiln. Eventually we stopped side stoking when the temperature in the front dropped below 200o degrees. We struggled to get the temperature back up to 2100 for several hours. When we finally stopped and looked in the kiln, cone 11 was down and 12 was soft... Pyrometers seem like they should be such great devices, and they usually are, but it was good to be reminded not to rely on them too much.

Unloading next weekend. I'm looking forward to see how our pots look in this longer firing. I have to admit I've had a dream of building a small anagama kiln maybe a small candle shape kiln similar to something described in Furutani Michio definitive book "Anagama: Building Kilns and Firing". It's really just a dream though, I do love making our functional glazed pots, and I couldn't ask for a nicer kiln to fire them in than ours. However it might be fun to have a small anagama which we could fire once a year. A great project.... for 2025...
Joe

A few tidbit from the home front

2010-04-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

Well I thought I would share a few tidbits from the going ons around Windy Ridge before we dive into the next firing. First of all a recent shot of our lovely home:

Notice anything missing?
Our friends Tate and Clair are taking our camper for the summer. They've decided to take the plunge and are going to build themselves a home. They unfortunately weren't as lucky as we were and nobody is giving them a free home, so they are starting from scratch. To save a little money and time they going to be living on site. Christy and I are quite glad to see the camper go. It was pretty indispensable while we were building the kiln, and then working on our home. Since we moved into our house though it quickly changed from an indispensable, practical solution, too.... well... an eye sore. All of a sudden we now have a beautiful few from inside our house:

Hmmm.... hard to really capture beautiful views with our point and shoot digital camera. You'll just have to take my word for it. Sunsets are quite a spectator event here at Windy Ridge, with front row seat just having opened up on our couch. Life is good. We've also been doing other organizing and cleaning up on the property trying to get everything looking more presentable for "Clay in May". The place is looking less trashy every day.

In other spring time goings on.... we got our selves some new layers:
Pretty adorable. Hopefully they'll be keeping our fridge stocked with eggs in no time, or at least before it starts snowing this year.
Well evening is quickly approaching and I've got my first shift for the firing 10pm-6am. That can only mean one thing: Nap time!
I'll take some pictures of the firing as it progresses.
Joe

Loading at Bethel Horizons

2010-04-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

Loading at Bethel Horizons is all done. Krista Loomans, Aaron Weaver and I loaded the kiln this week with help from Stephen... whose last name I apparently don't know. Bethel Horizons is a church owned venture holding church related events, along with clay events. I believe in the future they hope to become more of a national destination holding larger ceramic workshops. For now though they have very nice facilities, including a two chamber wood kiln designed and built by David Smith.

David included a small firebox between the first and second chamber allowing the second chamber to be fired by itself. A nice feature for smaller workshops.

And though David does not use a grate system he conveniently left a space for grates to be added into the main firebox of the first chamber. Krista and I took advantage of that and put a grate in for this firing:
Loading is all done now, though I forgot to take a picture at the very end of the loading... here are a couple of pictures of the loading in progress (we're just firing the first chamber):

The plan is to start preheating the kiln Monday morning. Hold the temperature around 200 degrees until Wednesday morning and then start pushing the temperature up. Hopefully reaching top temperature in the front of the kiln Friday morning and finish side stoking the kiln Sunday morning. Quite a bit longer firing than Christy and I are used to. Krista perfers her pots with more ash build up and more reduced than we ussually aim for with firings in our own kiln. I imagine this will be a good learning experience for everybody involved. Personally I'm excited to see how our pots come out of this firing. Though we did leave most of our pots unglazed, as our ash glazes won't react to well to the heavy ash build up and slow cooling of this coming firing. I've been toying with the idea of extending the firing in our first chamber to build up more ash and ember on the pots. This firing should offer us some good insights.
With the pots from this firing we should have a pretty full gallery for "Clay in May". I hope everybody in the area will be able to make it out for the event, which will include all the potters in the Mineral Point area displaying new work, along with opening up their studios to the public. In the evening Windy Ridge Pottery (that's us!) will be hosting a party in the evening to celebrate. This will be the first time this event is being held. We're all pretty excited.
I'll post pictures of the firing as it progresses.
Joe

Our new best friends

2010-04-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

Well let's be honest here Chris and Adream were already pretty good friends. I worked with Chris for two years at Mark Hewitt's in North Carolina. We've stayed pretty close ever since, Chris even officiated our wedding. However after receiving this little beauty:

They've certainly secured themselves a position as our best friends. Of course it's just here on a temporary loan, still.... pretty good. Thanks guys!
For those of you who aren't potters reading this blog what you are looking at is a de-airing pug mill. To put it simply it eliminates the need to wedge clay (though I still do wedge for bigger pots). I'm guessing the pug mill will say me personally at least an hour a day. Not to mention Christy's wrists...
Might just be we'll have to purchase our selves a pug mill when Chris needs his back (no rush Chris), though they are pretty costly. Definitely something worth saving up for though.
As a little aside for those of you who don't know one inch out of a four inch pug mill is one pound of clay:

Yes, that's right folks not only does this machine save you hours by wedging your clay it also eliminates the need to weight you clay after wedging:
Five pound bowls anybody? Well enough of that, needless to say we're pretty excited.

In other news I picked myself up a fluting tool. I've never used one before so it might take a little while before I really get the hang of it. Still pretty fun:

In less exciting news we picked up materials to mix more clay with. We made the following changes. We removed 16% ball clay and added 16% 50mesh Hawthorne bond (the way our formula ended up one full bag of clay is approximately 8%, thus the 16%). This is the finest mesh they offer. Our thinking being the finer mesh fire clay is least likely to interfere with the flashing that we like so much. Also less likely to contain contaminants that could cause problems. Also after Ron's comment about the neph sy I looked into it a little more and ended up changing the neph sy to G200. According to Jack Troy's wood firing book neph sy does give the clay more sheen, but at the expense of the contrast that often comes from the flame moving through a cross draft kiln. I had noticed when using clay other than our own that the other clays tended to have more distinct dramatic flashing. Less sheen but more variation... we'll see. Either way neph sy certainly melts at a much lower temperature than other feldspars, so it maybe leading to a little bit of the slumping that occurred in our last firing.
Lastly our good friends Jeff and Steph asked about the cracking in our clay body. Which I probably should have posted pictures of earlier:

It usually only occurs in three or four pots a firing, always the pots in the front of the first chamber. It usually does not go all the way through the pot. We bring the temperature up quite slowly. I'm hoping it will be solved with the addition of fire clay. If this batch have the same cracks I'll probably try the larger mesh fire clay. Of course if anybody as other thoughts or idea, I'm all ears.
Well back to making pots. We're joining in a firing with our good friend Krista Loomans at Bethel Horizons where she and Aaron Weaver work. They've got a nice anagama kiln, with a catenary arch on the back. We start loading next week. Should be fun. We'll post pictures of the kiln during loading.
take care
Joe

Pictures

2010-03-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay getting these pictures up. Over all we had a good firing. As always there are things to improve. First thing to improve is probably our clay body. We keep getting small cracks on our pots in the front of the kiln, and this firing a couple of the larger platters slumped slightly. Not much but enough that what used to be a nice platter now looks like it was poorly made. Our clay is a mix of kaolin, and ball clay with about 8% neph sy, silica, and grog. We were aiming for a clay that flashed well.

Faceted box from this last firing.

I am pleased with the way our clay body flashes. However the cracking, and slumping aren't so pleasant. Mind you we didn't lose that many pots from this last firing due to clay issues. Still room for improvement though. We'll probably start by taking out 10-20% of the ball clay and substituting some Hawthorne bond clay (fireclay) hopefully we won't lose too much of the flashing we like so much.

Our new glazes were a bit of a mixed bag as well. The whites came out fairly well. In the front of the kiln they got hot enough to become a little more glossy than they were in our test kiln:

Still pretty nice though.

In other parts of the kiln they were much closer to what we were expecting in from the our testing in the small gas kiln.

The green ash glaze was pretty good, though it did run more than we expected, and pooled blue in the center of a few bowls:

This one is a nice example. However in some cases the blue completely masked a decoration I had inscribed in the dish. All in all though I think this glaze is a keeper, we'll just have to use it a little thinner than we did this time, and be aware of it's tendency to run.

The black glaze on the other hand
not so black. It also turned green where it got hot. We don't hate it, but we'll probably keep working on this glaze to see if we can't come up with something better.
That pretty well covers it for news from our last firing. A couple more pots from this last firing:

Christy's been working on different handles for her boxes:

Another nice example of our white glaze:

A large unglazed jar from the front of the kiln. You can see a color change right where the two pieces of the pot were put together. Not sure why...same clay...
not bad though.

Thanks to everyone for encouraging me to try out curved teapot spouts, they are really starting to grow on me.
Joe

sixth firing stokers gallery

2010-03-20T06:27:00.000-07:00

Our sixth firing is completed. Everything seemed to come out well in the end, although it was a strange day yesterday. It was fairly windy and the wind kept changing directions throughout the first part of the day--blowing with the kiln, against the kiln, across the kiln... really kept us on our toes. We would get in a good rhythm, with healthy reduction levels, good ember bed, etc... then the wind would change and suddenly the kiln would be just ripping along, or seem to stall and exhibit some serious back pressure.

One of the best lessons I learned from my good friend Takuro while firing different wood kilns together is the need for patience and self restraint while firing large wood kilns. Often only minor adjustments are needed to fix issues that come up during a firing. The effects of these minor adjustments, however, often take quite a while to really show themselves.

I was pretty thankful yesterday to have learned the value of self restraint and patience during longer firings. I think the wind could of easily had us running in circles otherwise. Toward the late afternoon, the wind had settled down to a steady breeze blowing against the kiln (blowing from the chimney toward the firebox). This added several hours to the end of the firing, but was at least predictable.

Well, without further ado, the stoker gallery:

Aaron and Krista stopped by Friday afternoon for moral support and a couple of hours of stoking:

thanks guys!

Tate and Claire came out to the firing for the first time.
We really enjoyed their company and help Thursday and Friday. They also brought their dog Nell.

Nell and Charley didn't get off to the best start--Charley doesn't exactly like to share food. Toward the end of the firing, though, Charley was prancing around with a stick trying to get Nell to play, and Nell was following closely trying to herd him. Not exactly a match made in heaven, but they both seemed to be reasonably happy.

Christy's brother John and sister-in-law Michelle also joined us along with Brett, Ashley, and Jeff on Thursday evening, although we forgot to take pictures.

Last (but not least), here are your favorite Windy Ridge potters:

Apparently the weather people weren't lying; we did get some snow towards the end of the firing. Here's the view from inside our toasty house this morning:

Looks cold huh? Don't worry-- we're not planning on leaving the house anytime soon to find out. We're both a little wiped out after our extended firing and are planning on taking it easy today.

Joe

Springtime loading

2010-03-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Spring looks to be arriving...What you're seeing here, folks, is the last remaining piece of snow on our property. Of course the weatherman this morning said there was a chance of snow this weekend. We are going to pretend we didn't hear that.

Loading is going smoothly. The first chamber is all done. We don't have too many pots this firing so we are trying out a different stacking arrangement in the first chamber, with only one real stack of shelves. This allows us twice as much space to place large pots on the floor of the kiln right in front of the firebox. Hopefully building up some good embers and ash on them.

We also rebuilt the bagwall of the second chamber:

It's a fairly tall bagwall and we've been having trouble with it moving toward the firebox each firing. So we are bracing it against the arch this time. Hopefully this will work out well. We did lower the bagwall a few rows to accommodate for the added resistance of the "support" bricks. There is also a row on top of the support bricks to hold it all together as you can see here:

We're just firing the first two chambers this time. Almost done loading... we'll candle tonight and finish up late Friday afternoon/evening.

Joe

the good and the sad news

2010-03-13T16:37:00.000-08:00

First, the good news. Spring is on the way! We thought that we were going to have to slog through the snow while loading the kiln, but most of the white has given way to brown and (possibly imagined) green.

Joe and I are also excited about the pieces we have ready for this firing. What we are missing in quantity in this firing (it will certainly be loosely stacked!) we are making up for in quality. Here is a mini-preview of pots for the March 2010:

large jars

large serving bowl

triangular vases

We have had a bit of a rough week here at Windy Ridge--we lost our sweet kitty Miss Priss on Thursday when she was hit by a car. We miss her shoulder-riding, acrobatics in the barn rafters, and readiness to snuggle. When we brought Winks and Miss Priss home two years ago, I remember telling myself that barn cats sometime have short lives, but it's hard to be consoled by that thought right now.

**christy

new glazes

2010-03-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

We unloaded another test kiln this weekend, after which we have had to cut ourselves off. We have been obsessively testing glazes now for around three weeks now. It's actually been kind of fun. There is so much to explore and learn about glazes, and there is certainly no better way to learn than mixing up a run of glaze tests.

We often dried the tests in our oven before firing, as our little test kiln doesn't do "slow" very well. We still managed to blow up the cone pack in this picture.

So where are we now with glazes? I hate to admit to it but after the 140 or so test that we've run we're in the process of narrowing it down to three glazes (with another one or two on the way... hopefully).

We're working toward a matte white glaze for Christy to decorate over:

Christy is trying to decide between the two on the left. They both have a moderate amount of clay and feldspar, along with a substantial amount of silica. The one on the left also has quite a bit of magnesium in the forms of dolomite and talc which gives it the satin look. The one in the middle has the same amount of clay, feldspar, and silica, but only has 5% ash for the flux leaving it with a more stony look. Christy has mixed up both of these glazes for the next firing to see how they look in the wood kiln. We'll decide after that.
The glaze on the far right is also quite high in silica, and caught my eye. I've always been drawn the the traditional "nuka" glaze in Japanese pottery which is usually somewhere around equal parts feldspar, wood ash, and rice husk ash. I've seen some nice approximations of these glazes substituting silica for the rice husk ash. Unfortunately we need at least some clay in our glazes to help them adhere during the green glazing process. This glaze seems like a good start toward a nuka glaze that will work during the green glazing process. We'll probably do more testing with this one in the future.

We are also reworking our iron based glazes to incorporate our local red clay:

These are two variations on a dark iron glaze that we are working toward. Our previous dark iron glaze was fairly runny and would often turn more amber than black. We're trying to get a nice thick glaze that won't run too much. We'll give both of these a try in the upcoming wood firing. Unfortunately I lost a lot of the detail in these pictures. They both have quite a bit going on and I'm excited to see how they look in the firing.

Lastly a reworking of our iron green celedon.
The color is a little off in this picture. They are really be more olive green and less amber. These are probably the least exciting of the bunch as they look quite similar to our previous iron green glaze. All we really accomplished with this new version is working in our local red clay with which we were able to replace fireclay, bentonite, and iron. So similar outcome but a simpler reciepe and more local ingredients.... not bad.
We are still working on a matte yellow glaze for Christy, and a copper green decorating glaze to use in the third chamber (oxidation). They will both have to wait though. As I mentioned in the beginning of the post we had to cut ourselves off from more glaze testing. Our first "real" firing of the year is scheduled in less than two weeks. As in this is our last week to make pots! We really don't have that many pots made for this firing yet. None the less we are excited to see how all our new glazes look in the wood kiln!
Joe

back in the saddle

2010-02-26T07:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long absence. I've spent the winter working on our house, doing some bits of construction work for friends, and taking some time to relax. The temperatures now are starting to get up into the low 30's during the day and the snow seems to be slowly melting away. Which can only mean one thing, spring is on the way. That, and we need to start making some pots.
It looks like we will have two openings this spring in galleries in the area, as well as taking part in the first annual "Clay in May" festival. The clay in May festival will consist of studio tours of all the potters in the Mineral Point area. We are pretty excited about taking part in the inaugural year of this event.
I've spent the last couple weeks working on glazes.

Testing , testing, testing

We are reworking several of our ash glazes, incorporating our local red clay. The clay has a very high rate of shrinkage, along with some calcium and magnesium. Not so good for making pots with, but a perfect fit for our darker ash glazes. We're also working on a matte glaze for Christy to decorate over. Matte glazes are not something I've ever worked on before so it's been a bit of a learning curve. We're starting to get everything figured out though and hopefully we'll have some glazes we are happy with after this next test firing (test firing number three this spring).
I've also spent some time between testing glazes to make some pots. Trying some new shapes out.

I've never really done much with altered pots before as I like to be able to make pots fairly efficiently in an effort to not charge too much for our "functional" pots. I've always felt like the more you charge for a functional pot the less functional it becomes, as people are less likely to use the $70 dinner plate for fear of breaking it. I had fun making these pots though and they really didn't seem to take to long to make. We'll see.......
Joe

Where have we been??

2010-02-18T17:39:00.000-08:00

Hi Loyal Windy Ridge Readers!

We did not fall off of the planet; we've just been busy with non-pottery things for a bit. Like reading the Twilight books. I wish I was kidding. I know, English majors and Russian lit buffs should be reading more wholesome things, but once we started, we just couldn't stop until we found out if Edward and Bella were going to be together forever!

But as anyone who has spent time with a big bowl of popcorn and 2800 pages of paperback teen vampire novels knows, life does require a little more balance...

So...what, then, have we been up to?

Visiting Joe's family in Washington. His brother helped us put together a website, which will debut...whenever we get it finished.

Spending time with our niece. Never too early to get started with handmade pots, folks.

Doing laundry...here in the mudroom! This (hopefully) completes the plumbing work in our house. We are so thankful to have a warm place to call home, especially as the snow piles up outside. Our woodstove has kept us cozy even on the coldest Wisconsin nights.

Joe has been helping our friends at Greenspirit Farm complete construction on a woodworking studio. With all the practice on our house, my man has become quite the electrician/framer/drywall installer! He has also been building an amp in the basement (now known as "The Man Cave") and starting to build up miles on the bike trainer in anticipation of a summer of road racing.

I have been putting in my time at (with apologies to Dean Bakopoulous) Worlds' Edge Clothing Company. Along with my usual triathlon training activities, I have also started lifting weights in a valiant attempt to not get smoked by elderly men, pregnant women, and obese wiener dogs on the run portions of my races this summer. I have been playing my guitar, too, but I have my eye on a mandolin. Our next few customers can think of their pottery purchases as contributions to the "Christy needs more bluegrass in her life" fund!

We took on a new cat. Tiger was left with few good options due to an unfortunate divorce combined with her unsavory habit of peeing on piles of laundry. We re-named her Peaches (she's not much of a Tiger), and she is slowly adjusting to the life of a barn cat. She gets to eat off of the finest woodfired pots (seconds!) but it's not exactly the indoor/city life anymore.

Winks and Miss Priss aren't thrilled with the new edition to the barn family, but we think they can sort out their differences. Miss Priss is jealous of any attention Peaches gets, so I let her come inside the house one afternoon. She was quite a good help with the taxes.

We are also in the process of getting a new pottery event started here in Mineral Point. Clay in May debuts May 1st! We'll tell you more in a later post, but here is a glimpse of creative minds at work sketching out logo ideas over (possibly more than a few) drinks. If you need graphic design work done, just stop by with a few bottles of wine and we'll be more than happy to help!

Aaron, Krista, and Joe

We are also getting work done in the studio. We'll regale you with some pottery/glaze tests soon!