Long Time, No Blog

It’s been a while since the last post. During the day I’ve been teaching little kids a little bit about pottery and sculpture at a local small town museum. Given that I do not have that much time to make anything new I don’t have much to blog about (hence the lack of blogging). We have finally been able to bisque-fire the work from the last two posts (although with a little difficulty). We first loaded in a car kiln (Elvira… two weeks ago) only to find out that one set of the pilot lights didn’t work. Irritated at this, we then unloaded it all a week later and reloaded it into the only other kiln that would hold that much work (we call this kiln Jezebel). This one is a front loading gas kiln (very nice, we hope to build a kiln similar to this one when we move). This past weekend I was finally able to babysit and fire the kiln, which we unloaded today, and stashed everything in my studio. Here is a picture of all the work we pulled out of the kiln, thankfully nothing broke.



Also, we finally got the original driveshaft for the treadle wheel finished. Unfortunately we realized the whole thing needs to be a couple of inches shorter for it to be comfortable. This means that the driveshaft will have to be cut down as well as all the posts on the treadle wheel.



Another project that has been in the works is getting close. This is a Baha’i Greatest Name the wife has been working on for her sister. It has a maple burl base and shell cast bronze calligraphy. It needs a bit of drilling on before it can be patina’d and attached. Almost done in time for her birthday!



After the both of us graduated this past May we’ve finally decided that we will move back to Oklahoma (where we lived before moving to Texas for graduate school) at the end of August to work towards our dream of being studio artists. Wish us luck!
…Well back to trying to relax before another day full of teaching the little ones about the arts.

A Berry, An Acorn, and a Goblet walk into a Bar...

We’ve been working on some more stuff for our Etsy shop. The first picture is of some berry bowls (they’re upside down in this photo), these are basically small colanders made to wash berry’s and the like. These are about four to five inches tall and roughly five to six inches wide.



The next photo is of some goblets (they are upside down as well, I had just finished throwing the stem so they were still wet and could not support the weight of the cup). I have always enjoyed making goblets, I don’t really know why they are just fun. Anyway they are about six to eight inches tall.



Condiment Bowls are what we are calling these little fellows. Basically they’re two small prep bowls attached to each other with a loop handle added. They are maybe two inches tall and two to three inches wide (combined to be about six inches wide). You can see some other handles in the background, which shows that the handle isn’t perfectly straight (they have a slight twist to them (I enjoy them being slightly off like that)).



Also, here are two of the butter bells from the last post. These have been finished with a handle/foot ring added to the top of the butter part, and feet added to the part that holds the water. These little guys look like acorns to us.



Here is a group shot of the berry bowls and condiment bowls along with some plates that I have been working on (which will be slightly square(ish) when I am finished).



And last but not least is the new drive shaft for the treadle wheel. As you can see I switched to pipe instead of solid steel (this is so I don’t have to weld anything, just screw them all together). You can see where the other driveshaft broke, the upper middle on the left side.



Thanks for reading, and feel free to let us know what you think and any suggestions on what you would like to see us make, we always look forward to your comments.

Throw It and They Will Come

We’ve been busy making some pottery (not on the treadle wheel, it’s still broken at the moment). I thought I would show some pictures of the work we have been making, all of the photos are of green work. This means that nothing has been fired in the kiln yet, so it can still be manipulated or broken very easily. This first photo is of some mixing bowls with spouts and a handle on the sides to make it easier to pour from. Also, there are some small condiment bowls with spouts on them as well (I usually use these to put salsa in or mix a couple of eggs for scrambling). Let us know what you think of the handles, we still aren’t quite sure that they are what we want (some of them have handles on the left side of the spout while others have the handle on the right side).



Next is a jumbled stack of what we are calling Milton Mugs (because a man named Milton asked me to make some for him, and I had never made them before. He’s bought like thirty of them from us, so we’ve dubbed them Milton Mugs in his honor). These mugs are pretty small, only holding about a cup of liquid. Milton likes them because he doesn’t drink that much coffee and these hold the perfect amount for him.




I am also working on making a couple of different butter containers. The first are called butter bells, with these you pack a stick or more of butter in to the part that is closest to you in the photo. Then you place water in the cup in the back, turn the butter part upside down and place it in the water. This allows you to keep your butter on the table so that it can stay soft all the time. The butter doesn’t go rancid because the water keeps the air from touching the butter (the air is what makes butter go rancid).



The next type of butter container is the classic butter dish. Here you can see about six butter dishes, this is a new way of making them. I throw them on the wheel (sans tops and bottoms, those come later), cut them off and alter the shape to more of an oval with flat(ish) sides. Once they are leather hard or cheese hard (dry enough to handle with out distorting them) I add a bottom and feet to the bottom part, and a top and handle to the top part. I really like these; I would like to know what everyone else thinks as well (so please let us know what you think).



In this photo are some large bowls that I have made. These are designed so that they can sit on a table as a center piece, fruit bowl, or whatever, but they also can be hung on the wall as a decorative piece when they are not in use. These bowls are made by rolling out a slab of clay (a flat thin piece of clay almost like rolling out biscuit dough), then laying the slab on to a upside down bowl shape to give it a curved form (bowls don’t do very well when they are flat). After they are leather hard I throw the foot (what the bowl sits on), you can see the foot in the bowls toward the back of the photo. When the foot dries to leather hard I then flip the bowl over and throw the rim of the bow, which you can see on the bowls in the foreground. Once again please let us know what you think of these as well (I believe these are roughly twelve to fourteen inches across).



My wife has also been working on some pottery. She throws mainly in porcelain, while I throw mostly in stoneware (more on this in a later post). Here are some of the pots she has been working on. The pieces in the front have been pierced and carved on so that they can now be used as orchid planters. The vase shapes scattered around the photo will be crystalline glaze, which is a glazing technique that actually grows crystals in the kiln (it’s a pretty cool process I think, I will post more on that later as well).



Thanks for making this far in to the post, I apologize for the length. Anyway, let us know what you think, and look for the finished pieces in our Etsy shop.