Glaze Craze

It’s Glaze week! Portland Pottery students are glazing all the work from this session in preparation for the Holiday Show and Sale, and then the year-end break. Adam, Kelly, Wil, and Karen are working like Santa’s Elves to squeeze through two glaze firings before the show opens on December 11th. Here’s Adam, loading. 
I look forward to the holiday break every year, although I miss my students, especially long-timers like Holly and my book-buddy Gail. Every year I swear I will devote the extra time to the studio…with mixed success. 
It’s glaze week here at Fine Mess Pottery, too, as Doug and I prepare to fire the soda kiln on Friday. Our work styles are so different: I plod along steadily, spending a couple hours in the studio everyday, until I have enough for a load. Doug starts working the week before the firing, and makes dozens of slab-built pots in several six or eight hour stretches. Lately he’s been working on square drinking tumblers, a simple, functional shape dressed up with a decorative medallion on the front. 
We’ll have the pots from this weekend’s firing at the PP show.