July Shop Update

Spent yesterday photographing pottery, then processing the photos & creating the online listings. This is the first shop update since May, due to one damn thing after another interfering with my firing schedule! But it's up now. 🙂

A few listings I was particularly pleased with: 

• This bowl! I didn't love this bowl when I first unloaded it. I thought the gray was too dark & the contrast too harsh. Over the last few days of sanding, sorting, pricing, & packing, I kept coming back to this one. It's not harsh, I decided; it's dramatic. If I put it on a banding wheel & spin it (which I did, lol) it looks like, Sunrise, Sunset; Sunrise, Sunset. 
  
• I made a set of mugs! Not entirely on purpose; I just made a couple dozen of a similar design & 6 of them happened to match surprisingly well. I'm never trying for identical - that's a standard that we've absorbed through out machine-driven culture, & it doesn't interest me. But almost matching? That creates an interesting tension. I almost never make sets, & who knows when I'll be inspired to declare one again, so if you've been looking for a set of my mugs, now's your chance. 
  
  
  
• And, of course, the little sippers! I made so many of these. They were just too fun to stop! 
  
  
  If you are thinking of making a purchase today, you might want to become a paid subscriber to my Patreon - there's a coupon code for 10% off in the most recent post - and paid memberships start at just $1.50 a month. If you're purchasing something, that membership would pay for itself right out of the gate.

Thanks for being here & stay cool today! It's meant to be in the high 80s here in Maine with 74% humidity. It's 10 o'clock in the morning & I'm glowing like a horse! Hope it's cooler where you are. 

A Few Pots Out of the Soda Kiln

 

New pots!

 I unloaded a firing last Sunday! Between packing & delivering the pots to their awaiting outlets, & photographing, then processing the images, I am only just getting around to posting about it. Nice problem to have: a week out, & almost all the pots are sold. I held out a few for the online store. 

Lately I have been producing two bodies of work: Dotopia & Sweet Life. (I find it helps, especially for taking wholesale orders, if I name the lines. Yes, the names are a bit corny! That's marketing for ya.) I'm only posting a few Sweet Life pots, because the Dotopia pots are in stores now. Damn, I really need to fire more often, because I need more inventory. 

Anyway, the pots are here. I'll be posting these in my online shop today! 

I'll be posting the links here as soon as I get these listed. Stay tuned! 

Dot Cottage or Something

I told you I had a good firing, right? But I don't think I mentioned that in that good firing were the first pots of my new line!
UGH A LINE, right? Sounds so...production-y. I'm a studio potter! But I do produce things. I've got this idea that I can straddle the, er, line, and using a simplified design scheme, create a body of work in which the items are more or less reproduceable. Soda firing guarantees that each pot will be one of a kind, anyway. 

I haven't settled on a name for my new line...I'm thinking Dot Cottage, for the pattern & the color scheme, but am open to suggestions!

The Pottery Stairs Are Out!

Come by, local peeps, and grab your bargains!

All the Pretty Cones

They will be prettier once they are all lying down, of course, but it's hard to get a photo of them, then! The pots, too, are never so beautiful as when they are glowing with the heat that creates them. All those little knobs belong to sugar bowls, and all those sugar bowls are coming with me to the Portland Fine Crafts show on Saturday. Come see me in Booth 69!

Transformation

Remember this piece? I posted it a couple of weeks ago when it was leatherhard - I was playing around with some colorants in porcelain slip in class. I don't think of my demo pots as entirely "real;" I mean, I can see that they exist and are not imaginary! But they sort of don't count, as the purpose of them is to teach or explore an idea - the success or failure of the piece itself is incidental. In the case of this particular piece, I thought it was a bit too treacly-sweet for my taste, although I could see that it was the kind of piece that someone would love.

The kiln has done its magic, though, and made an okay pot into an intriguing one! There's no applied glaze on this piece, and no flashing slip either - all that hard shine is soda glass, and the charcoal coloration is all carbon trapping.

Got lots of good pots out of this firing - most will be available for the Maine Pottery Tour.

Ciao, my dears - more later.

The Fattie of the Firing

It's fun to look through the pots after unloading and try to choose a favorite - what I call the "fattie." If I'm lucky, choosing the fattie will be a difficult task! This as such a firing. While photographing pots yesterday I had a chance to mull it over.

This Jaunty Jar is s strong contender! It almost appears to be inhaling.
Click to see more. 

I love the luscious quality of the glaze, edged with the silver/charcoal of trapped carbon.
Click to see more. 

This quiet little pot still managed to grab my attention.
Click to see more. 

I have a weakness for butterdishes - making them and using them - and this one took the soda glass so perfectly.
Click to see more. 

There were tons of great mugs in this load! 

Can a set collectively be The Fattie?
See more at the link. 

Blue, and soda, and excessive slip trailing, and roses! This vases combines many of my favorite clay qualities.
See more at the link. 

Detail

The Fattie is ultimately a subjective choice, and factors play in that don't come through in photos, like a silky surface or perfect weight: substantial but not clunky. In the end I settled on the butterdish: that is my Fattie of the Firing. All the factors came together, plus one: the lid fits so perfectly: it neither shifts not sticks, and it fits almost the same in either direction! (They almost always fit better one way than the other.)
All of these are currently available in my online store, but I will need inventory for my December shows, so they will probably only there until the beginning of December.

Do you choose a favorite? Do you keep it or sell it? (I always sell my favorites! Sometimes I charge a little more for them, though.)

New Pots, Born on the 4th of July

Today is my favorite day! Not Independence Day - it is, and I like that too - but Unloading Day! As usual I am excited and a tiny bit worried about what I will find. I don't have any reason to believe things didn't go well; the firing itself was uneventful. Most of of the posts in the kiln are for orders, though - someone somewhere is waiting for these pots. The demons that torment potters seem to know that sort of thing, and plague us accordingly. I'm off to find out...

I'm back! Here's how it went:

First peek looks a little pale

That side's better!

Here's me unbricking the door:

So, good news/ bad news: The good news is, everything that I needed for my orders came out exactly as I hoped it would! The area in the kiln where they were loaded got the most soda. The bad news is that there were some dry/ cool areas, so some items will need to be refired. The further good news is, everything - literally everything - was either good or salvageable - no losses. 

If it doesn't sound like I'm dancing around and whooping for joy, well, I'm not. The pieces on order were good - THANK YOU KILN GODS - but of the other pieces, nothing really made me want to whoop for joy.

So which would you rather have: a kiln load of pretty-good, easily salable pots, or a load with some stinkers and some fabulous, whoop-out-loud pots?

I guess I know now which I would choose.

However! I did manage to complete the collection I need for my little side-project: I need 15 good cat dishes for a fundraiser I hope to run. Looks like I have 16 good ones!

Will keep you posted on this.

So, some good some bad, tralalala life goes on! It's Independence Day, so enjoy a video to celebrate the birthday of the USA!

Sweet Hearts Sugar Bowl

New item in the Pottery Shop - this little soda-fired sugar bowl. Best thing about it? THE BOTTOM. (I can say that, because you all are potters, and you understand.)

The rest is nice too. Check it out here.

Rivers of Glaze

Sometimes pots turn out pretty much like I planned. Sometimes, not so much! In this case the kiln seemed to have ideas of its own:

$36 - Click here for purchase information

It's a very nice mug in the hand, too - an intriguing landscape of impressed hearts for fingers to explore.

"Not what I expected" is sometimes better than I expected!

UPDATE: This mug sold within an hour of posting! 😊😊😊

Blue and Russet Vase with Flowers

Click here to purchase this vase!

I while ago I did a step-by-step on a thrown and altered form that has been fascinating me for a little while now, but I think this is the first time I've shared a fired result. Everythign about this one hit the way I hoped it would - the soda distribution, the way the textures caught the glaze, just the joyousness of the thing. It's for sale, here.

As an aside, I have switched - mostly  - to Squaredup from paypal. It's cheaper, and I have the little swipe device, so I can use the same account for in-person sales as for web sales. Squareup also automatically deposits at the end of the business day (their business day, but whatev, they had to choose sometime) instead of making you log on and request your money. Listing items in my Square store is a little...non-intuitive, though. I have to list them in the library, then import them to the store, and only then can I do things like add a second or third photo. And I haven't found a way to just add a "square" button to pay, like paypal offers, to incorporate into my own website. So, not sure if I am done with paypal entirely. I'm interested to know what your experiences have been.

New Pots!

Oh man! It feels like forever since I have had pots to post! I'll have links to purchase these up soon, but for now, have a look! it was a very juicy firing, lots of soda, well distributed. The kind of firing that gives you that happy feeling that keeps you making. Anyway, check 'em out.

↑ This one is posted! ↓ Wanna buy it? Click here. 

New Items in the Pottery Shop!

I actually posted these a while ago but only just getting around to sharing.These were pots from my August firing, which would not be available for purchase from finemesspottery.com were it not for my less-than-stellar art fair. Glass half full, etc.

Click here to purchase.

I love the bottom of this one.

Click here to purchase!

Click here to purchase!

And, in fact, the glass is more than half full. Because I have inventory, I was able to pursue new accounts. This holiday season, Handworks Gallery in Acton, Mass (not to be confused with Handworks Gallery in Blue Hill, Maine) will be carrying my work. More appointments on the docket; will keep you posted.

Thanks for looking. XO