When one clay ends another begins

Like I said in the last post I had last week off and was able to spend a lot more time in the studio.  This being said here are the results of that week in the studio.  I successfully came out of the week with 100 pots of various types, vases, bowls, mugs, stands, and enclosed forms.  I also threw 39 test pieces for testing really runny glazes; these have a bowl attached to them to catch the running glaze.  They look a lot like the candle stands when they are thrown.  This was done with 300 pounds of a porcelain clay call Domestic from a company up near Tulsa, OK.  So the average size I threw with was just over two pounds, and I would say the average size was about 7-8 inches tall. 

 So now I’ve used all the porcelain clay that I bought, and now I’m going to move on to a clay called Rod’s Bod which is a stoneware clay.  I’ve thrown with Rod’s Bod since I was an undergrad at USAO, I really enjoy it.  It allows me to throw much larger objects and to push the clay farther than I could with porcelain.  Hopefully you will start to see some photos and videos of me coil building, assembling sectionals, and who knows what else.  I have about two hundred pounds of this clay so let’s see what I can make with it.  Thanks for coming by.

I have a cunning plan...

So I was off work last week, well Tuesday through Friday, and was able to spend a lot more time in the studio.  That’s why there were so many blog posts so quickly, but now I’m back at work and back to spending only about an hour or so a night in the studio.  So these posts will also slow down, just because I won’t be able to do as much.  Which is okay I’ll just have to make the time spent there count a little more, try to plan what I’m going to do in advance so I don’t spend my hour trying to figure out what to throw or build.  That’s what happened tonight, I went out there without a plan and nothing I tried to throw worked out.  Everything was off center, too heavy, or just collapsed under the guidance of hands that didn’t quite know what they wanted to do.  So now I’m going to spend a little time each day figuring out what I want to do in the studio that night, and what I want to accomplish for the week.  So I’m off to make some kind of plan for tomorrow night so I don’t repeat what happened tonight. Thanks for visiting.

A gaggle, a murder, a herd...whatever a bunch of vases.

  Here’s the first and second batch of smallish vases that I’ve thrown.  They range from one and a half to three pounds.  I had to Frankenstein the photo together, so if it looks a little funny that’s why.  I’m going to attempt to get some more variation in my shapes and heights in the next week or so.  I’m also going to start throwing some in sections and assembling them.  That will make it easier to get some decent height with this porcelain, also some shapes that I cannot seem to pull off any other way.  Well back to the studio I go, I have some trimming to do before I go to bed.  Thanks for visiting.

Once more in to the Studio

I’m finally back in the studio after almost two years (seems like a lot longer).  I’m trying to get into a schedule that works with Ewan, which means I can only fit in about an hour to an hour and a half during the week, and a little more on the weekends.  I tend to go out to the studio when he goes in for his bath, after that its bed time for him so I can stay out as long as I want, but I have to get up at 3:30am to get ready for work so I’m usually in bed by 8:30pm.  It’s not much time but it’s enough to get back in the rhythm of the studio.  Well I need to get back to wedging some clay and getting ready to throw.  Thanks for visiting.

A Horse with no Mane

Keturah convinced me to throw some pots so we could do a horse hair firing.  So I threw a few 1 and 2 pound forms, it ended up being about 50 or so pots, 25 of each weight. 

Here are a few of the 2 pounders.

 

After I trimmed them I allowed them to get bone dry, and then rubbed them down with some steel wool to smooth out the rough edges.  I then rubbed them down one at a time with vegetable oil, and then burnished them with the back end of a spoon.  Here are a couple of pictures of the burnishing one static and one action shot.

 

Here’s a group shot of the first batch freshly burnished, you can see our kitchen light reflecting off of the surface of the pots.

 

Here’s a close up of one of the vases.

I then loaded the kiln to the brim with the pots, and fired the kiln up to around cone 010 (1657 f, 902 c), and then let it cool down to about 1100 f.  We then set up a station on the other kiln with a lazy susan, some kiln shelves, and a piece of fire blanket.  After the kiln reached 1100 f we began to take the pots out one by one and lay the horse hair on them, and allowed the hair burn and sizzle on the surface.

  

Here are a few photos of the hair being burned on the surface of the pots.

  

A group shot soon after we finished the last one.

  

A group shot of the pots after we washed them off.

  

After the pots dried we took some wax and polished the burnished surface to bring back some of the shine lost during the firing.  It ended up being about 23 pots that we finished this time around.

Here are a few shots of individual pots, look for these on our Etsy site in a couple of weeks.

Work II: The Return of WIP…

I thought I’d keep the artistic ball rolling this week so I headed back into the studio to make some new work.  I made some vessels that I have been thinking about for a while; here is a picture of what I threw last weekend. 

I also threw some large bowls last October that have been hanging around the studio so I thought I would put them to use.  I decided to make them into wall plates, so last weekend I threw a foot ring on a few of them.  Here is a picture of one after the foot ring was added, you cannot see it very well but trust me it’s there.

When I went out to the studio today I threw a rim onto the same bowls to give them a little more presence.  Here’s one of them with the rim freshly thrown.

I threw all of the new work (and the bowls) out of Rod’s Bod, a stoneware clay that I love.  It has a lot of iron in it, which caused some beautiful iron spotting with most glazes.  But since I want to add this work to the work I showed you last week I needed a white(ish) surface to draw on.  Since Rod’s Bod turns a nutty light brown when left unglazed I needed to add a slip to turn it white.  I used a slip made from B-Mix (cone 10, another clay I use a lot), which is what I used to make the set of pots that you saw in the last post.  It turns a really nice white, but without all the technical difficulties of a Porcelain clay body.  So I gave these new vessels a coat of B-Mix, let them dry and then gave them another coat.  By the looks of them I will have to let them dry overnight and give them another coat or two tomorrow when I get off of work.  Here is a picture of them after they were slipped, you can see they look whiter, but what you cannot see are the thin spots left from the brush strokes which will be resolved tomorrow (the bowls haven't been slipped yet the rims were still wet). 

I’m hoping that they will be dry enough for Keturah to add handles to them on Sunday.  That way they can start the long, slow drying process so they won’t crack or fall apart on me.