Jugs and fountains

After Supper Pots

[It's been a week since I predicted to Stacey that our 7 year old eMac would probably bite the dust, but here we are plugging away, albeit, slower than Christmas, a week later and the hard drive still making a squealing noise that makes the neighborhood hounds howl.]

In the shop tonight:

It was a scholarship night! I've been wanting to do some chicken watering pots for a while now, even before we had chickens, because there are such curious forms. After seeing Tom Turner's show at the Blue Spiral in Asheville, I was also struck by his almost closed forms and how they had a premium on surface. A closed form is all surface! So with the planets aligned and I went for it and failed a few times but hung in there. After a few hours I had a few "poultry fountains". Some of the smaller prototypes are based on some that I saw in the Isaac Button video and in books. I just guessed at how they might be made and went for it with marginal success. Some of the smaller jars are thrown and closed, then the "mouth" is cut and the jar pushed in to make room for the fowl to get their heads in their to drink. The taller forms will be accompanied by a saucer and will have a little hole (about an inch and a half in diameter) cut out at their base.
The water stays in the jar after it has been filled and turned right side up. The ledge of the the mouth or the saucer is slightly higher than the opening in the jar and the majority of the water is held inside the jar by gravity. When the birds drink the water out of the mouth of the jar or the saucer more water is released from the jar to maintain the level of water. I hope this makes sense. More on how this actually works ATF (after the firing), when I actually will be testing my results. Also, I will try to post more images of historical pots like the ones I am mimicking.
Also on the table tonight were some 8 # bowls that I threw earlier in the day and more of the mini-latte bowls.

It's late. More tomorrow.

This Week @ St Earth Pottery with Scott Cooper

a studio shot from "This Week @ St. Earth Pottery"

I wanted to let everybody know that Scott Cooper's blog, "This Week @ St. Earth Pottery" is now available as an RSS feed! This means that you can subscribe to his weekly blog in you reader or link to it through my blog roll whenever he updates it! Yay. Scott never fails to write insightfully about the potters life and always has a great quote to lead the way each week. I've had a link to his blog in my blog roll, but it's way down at the bottom. Now you'll see it pop into the blog roll every week in a more convenient place. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do and will be glad you found it!

Finally, Handles

After a few days under plastic these jugs were liberated and handled. For the record, because I know there is someone out there asking this question to themselves, "Yes, I was wearing my Pointer Brand overalls." Tom, I hope you like the handles!

Ginger/Honey/Pooch

Do you know this dog?

More pictures of the foundling!

Stowaway

Dog Update: Our beagle Sonny G. ran off on Saturday and is AWOL. But today this cute pooch has shown up on the pottery's back porch. Sonny has had the travel bug before and has come back after his 'walkabout'. This puppy is very friendly and is comfortable just jumping in to the Ford, onto the couch, and into Lillian's bed so we assume she's been loved. We'll send a picture to the shelter and local vet's offices in the a.m. in case someone is looking. In the meantime we'll take good care of her. Lillian has already given her several names: Ginger and Honey are the most oft used this evening. Honey/Ginger is keeping me company this evening as I make my 'after supper' pots.

More Bread and Butter

I've been making this pot for a long while. Affectionately know as the "latte bowl", this version is smaller than usual. I seem to use this sized pot a lot in the kitchen. So I decided to make a board full. I'll make more for this firing this week.This coming week will be my last week to make, then out come the brushes for some painting and glazing next week.

Function and Form

These big cups have been a "bread and butter" form for many years. By that I mean these pots more than pay for themselves and allows me to speculate or experiment on other forms. Mark Shapiro describes these speculative pots as made on 'scholarship'. It's great to have a variety of forms and a diversity of interests to keep the creative fires burning. Like these cups fitting together in the kiln, it's great when all of one's ideas have room to 'fit' together.

Plates and Such

Here are some dinner plates with incised birds. These will get some brushwork which may or may not obscure the birds. Since these are dinner plates I may do a white slip, then a regular wax resist pattern, then another layer of the crackle slip. It will be subtle and nice, I hope.

I will handle the jugs and throw pitchers this afternoon.

Night Owls, Jugs, and Sigur Rós

When the clock strikes midnight and I'm deep "in the shed", I turn to Sigur Rós to get me through the late night pottery trance. You can read about this fantastic Icelandic band that my good buddy, Matt turned me onto after we heard an ethereal song in one of our favorite movies, The Life Aquatic w/ Steve Zissou.

Anyway, I'm digressing in this late hour. All I really wanted to share with you was this group of jugs that were made after supper tonight. It was a good evening!

Button Trick

I got this pottery trick at the Isaac Button workshop so many years ago!;-) To lift this jug off the wheel just put a clay 'button' over the mouth and lift. The button makes the jug airtight so it can be lifted without deforming the pot! This is probably one of those tools that goes missing from the historical or archeological record because it just gets chucked when it dries up and is easily replaced by a fresh one. But I'm neither a historian nor an archeologist, but I've got YouTube!

I'll hook you up with a link later when I'm at the computer.

Loadin' and Scrubbin'

B a Pepper

Instead of making all of those jugs, bottles, and pitchers today, I realized all of the shelves were full and there was no place to put the table pots! So I loaded a bisque kiln with a lot of these plates that have to be scrubbed, first! This is what I use to take the burr or edge off of the rim cut plates. It's simply a green scrubbie pad. I got this tip from Shawn Ireland while we were residents together over at Penland back in the salad days, (1998-2001). I do the scrubbing when the pot is bone dry.

In other News
I'm blogging on my pottery page on Facebook. See the link on the upper right side of this screen. Think of it as the "other channel". I hope you don't find all of these options overwhelming, but I have a lot of folks who like to read about the pottery there, too!

More pottery to be made tonight. My clay wasn't quite stiff enough, [refrain from lewd joke that Michael Scott might would blurt out] but it'll be ready after supper. Until then, love the spin you're in!

Hustling Flow

price debate

The evening started out with the NC Clay Club, who met at the Crimson Laurel Gallery in Bakersville. When I got there there was a lively discussion about pricing one's work. When I left there was still a lively discussion about pricing one's work. I guess we'll always debate that one. For an interesting discussion about pricing, see Ron Philbecks blog post, here.

I zipped back to the shop to work on finishing the pots and pugging clay to get clay ready for jugs and bottle and pitchers tomorrow! The clay in the picture below is my red dirt mix. I set it out to dry a little more in this way and will do another pugging in the a.m.

looks like a busy day tomorrow!

I'm feeling good about the clay, the pots, and the flow. It's been a good week and I hope to do some capping tomorrow. I also will try to start back on slab dishes that I have been wanting to make for a long time. Oh, ambition!

All Throw and No Play

It's easy to throw all day long, but it may take more than a day to trim feet and add handles if I'm not careful. But today is working out fine. Tomorrow I'll throw the clay I just pugged. Momentum is building!

One More Sentence B 4 I Go

This is the table before I head out the door to join a roomful of pottery affectionados talking shop and eating good food at the annual gathering of the NC Clay Club.