Thursday Inspiration: Matthew Patton

See lots more of Matthew's amazing glaze work here and here.

Seated Lid Demo

One of my students has been taking video of some of my demos, with her phone. After I got over my two seconds of stress about not wearing makeup, I thought this was a really cool idea. In this video I am making two kinds of seated lids - the sort that sit on a flat ring on the inner rim of a pot. Another student has just asked me how to make a replacement plate for the spinning tray in her microwave, out of stoneware, so the video begins with me trying to field this question.

Slab Building from Templates

Slab Built Butter Dish in progress

As I've said, I find I can't throw enough to fill a kiln in the time frame of my firing cycle without injuring my wrist due to overuse. Ain't no big! I love handbuilding anyway, and even more so now that I am teaching the Monday morning handbuilding class at Portland Pottery. (New session starts October 15th, if you're interested!) The only issue is that handbuilding can be more labor intensive than throwing, meaning I either raise prices or - and I like this better - find more efficinet ways to work.

One way to speed up the making process for forms that I build from slabs is to create templates. Templates in no way render the resultant pieces identical, any more than wheel throwing with calipers does. I've figured out dimensions for 2 templates so far:

• Butter dish lid: 18" x 3"
• Mug: 12' x 4.5"

On my to-do list this weekend: head to AC Moore and get some construction paper, and reify them. 

Mishima in a Sling Mold

Mishima, misleadingly named for a Japanese city from which it did not originate, is a method of inlaying slip, engobe, or soft contrasting clay into carved or impressed texture. As I'm still having fun with my homemade texture roller, I decided to try some mishima decorating with my Monday-funday Handbuilding class. It worked so well I reprised the demo for the Tuesday Afternoon Delights and the Tuesday Awesomeness gang.

It was a sort of two-fold demo: I started by making an ad hoc mold from a rubbermaid bin and an old sheet. This is great if you want to build a larger platter or shallow bowl than you have a mold for; any container can become a sling mold. I just lay the sheet over the top, then tie a rope or bungee cords around the bin to hold it in place.The device looks a bit like a bassinet, when the sheet is secured in place. You can adjust the curve to be deeper or more shallow.

I rolled out a relatively thick slab - 1/4 inch or thereabouts. I then used the handy-dandy hot-glue texture roller that I made a couple of days ago in my home studio to impress a texture, before laying the slab in the mold. I trimmed the edges, and then lightly paddled the edges to compress.

I left it alone for a couple hours, hoping it would firm up some, but it really didn't; it was raining outside and quite cool in the studio, and of course the bin was plastic. I decided to go ahead with the mishima so the class could see the technique, even if it was less than ideal; but actually it worked just fine even on wet clay.


I spread thick slip from the sides of the bucket over the surface of the platter, then used a rubber rib to remove most of the slip, leaving behind whatever had sunk into the texture.
After letting the piece dry for a few more hours, I added a rim, made of flattened and stretched coils. Once it was leatherhard enough to move without distortion, I threw a foot - basically just a cylinder with no bottom, which I altered to be a loose rectangle - and attached it by laying the platter on top of it, while the foot ring was still quite wet. 
I ended up altering the foot much more than it appears at the top of this post, because the foot seemed so...static - in contrast to the loose, dynamic rim. (This is a constant issue when combining thrown and handbuilt elements.)


This piece will not be dry enough for the next bisque, but will make it into the one after that; I expect it to be finished around the end of this month.If it comes out especially well, I'll list it in the Pottery Shop!

The Headwaters of Inspiration

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

 Marcel Proust 

I have an on-again, off again project at my other blog, for which I try to take a photo every day, usually while I am out on my morning walk. I try not to fuss over whether it is a good photo or not: the idea is to see. It's so easy to look but not to see. So I try to take photos of things, interesting or beautiful or ugly or curious. Those are my favorites, the curiosities, the ones that make you tell yourself a little story in your head.

Today I took a photo just a block from my house, of this  - what? exhaust duct? Vent of some kind? I've lived here for seven years, and I have never noticed this thing before, although it's not small - it's maybe ten feet high. It is at the back of a building, but still perfectly visible from the road.

This shape would make a great teapot body. I could interpret it somewhat literally, out of slabs, preserving the industrial character of it; or less literally, as a thrown piece, and focus on preserving the proportions. 

Inspiration comes from seeing what is really there.

Goodwill Find

When I am throwing enough pottery to fill the kiln on the schedule I need to keep, I sometimes find myself nursing a repetitive stress injury. It's a quandary, because - obviously - I have to stop throwing long enough for my wrist to heal. Answer? Why, handbuilding, of course!

Using an existing piece, glass or metal, as a mold has never been my favorite way to work. It seems too...what?...derivative, I suppose. So often all of the details are just impressions of a surface some other designer created. Why should somebody else have all the fun? When I found this silverplate oval platter with no texture or detail at Augusta's new Goodwill store, I saw a solution to both my problems. Because it is a featureless piece, I can go to town on it.

I made a texture roller using a fat piece of dowel from Home Depot, and a hot glue gun. Advice: if you are purchasing a hot glue gun for this project, get the more expensive one. I got the little $2.99 special, and found that it squirted out so little glue at a time that keeping a steady line was impossible.
Still, I managed a spiral design. I stretched out a slab, about 1/4 inch thick - I hate a flimsy feel to my pottery. Then I rolled the decorative roller over it, in several directions, so the rough quality of the drawing became a non-issue.

 

Then I slathered the mold with Murphy's Oil Soap, as a release agent. Clay will stick to anything nonporous, so don't skip this step. I placed the slab texture side up inside the mold. This particular shape would also work as a hump mold - turning it upside down and laying the slab over the exterior. (That's the next one!)I used to fettling knife to cut a more interesting rim.

Then I picked up the mold, slab and all, and dropped it from a few inches above the tabletop, 3 or 4 times.After that, I used my thumbnail to dig a ridge all around the edge, for a double-rime appearance, and attached textured handles.

Last, I trailed slip in a design loosely mimicking the pattern left by the roller. Voilà! A molded platter that retains sometihing of my aesthetic.

Thursday Inspiration: Mark Knott

See lot more of Mark's Cone 6 soda-fired work here.

Shot From A Cannon

 

Normally an ant, I've had a bit of a grasshopper summer. It was unusually hot in Maine (and everywhere else, I guess?) and way too many times the river called to me in the sweltering afternoons; either that or a nap in the shady bean house, a kind of living gazebo my husband builds every year. Even the laziest week for me still includes at least 30 hours of work, but less work equals less money sure as autumn follows summer. Property taxes and a recent oil delivery have taxed my meager income to the point that at this posting, I am unable to come up with $5 to get a haircut at the beauty school. 

Nay, nay, don't weep for me! My hair may look like the hind end of a blond yak - if said yak had highlights grown out two inches - but I can't say I regret it: life is short. And now I am back in the studio, renewed and refreshed and working like the Energizer Bunny on some special occasion pots: soup tureens (and matching soup cups - thanks, Rob!), gravy boats, platters, and butterdishes.

My husband, observing my energy, described it as "shot from a cannon." To me it speaks to the necessity of leaving time for relaxation, for fun - even if your job is fun. I love my work - that was the whole point of choosing self-employment - but 60 hour work weeks without letup can burn out even the most enthusiastic self-starter.

Already things are looking up. I unloaded a kiln on Sunday, and I've sold most of it already. As soon as those checks clear, I do believe I'll get a haircut.

Tureen One

Here's the first of the soup tureens I've been dying to make. I have four more still too wet to trim; this approaches the feeling that I want but I was looking for something a little more extravagant. Still, it's a good start. :)

Firing First Peek!

Lots of good color in this load! Like all firings, it had its high and low points:

Good news - really nice colors, especially the shinos and yellows. Most of the cobalts turned a lovely violet color.
Bad news - A few pieces from this firing were older bisqueware, made of a claybody that has had some technical trouble. Laguna's 910 body has on and of lately had some problems with cracking for no apparent reason. A pot can be just sitting on a shelf, minding its own business, and all of a sudden just - snap - split in two. According to my friends at Portland Pottery, this problem is now resolved, but I've heard that a couple of times before, and I ain't going near 910 anytime in the near future. The silver lining, such as it is, is that the bad clay is easily identifiable after it comes out of the glazes firing, but its mottled, yellow-orange coloration on the bottom. They don't all break, but since I never know when one might, I really can't sell them.
Good news, and this is a wonder - None of the pieces that I needed for orders were made of the bad batch of clay.
I'll have some photos of individual pieces later. Now it's time for the long process of grinding and buffing, sorting pricing and packing.

The Need to Make

So, here I was, excited to have the house to myself: Doug is away today and I was planning to get So. Much. Done. in the studio. Yeah, well.

I left my clay and most of my tools in the car. Grrr. I have a little clay - about 25 pounds - so I will make what little I can with that, and focus on things like butter dishes that are more labor- than material-intensive.

And, we get a bonus inspiration post this week, because what I am really dying to make is soup tureens.I've been looking a lot at antique silver and silver plate tureens, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries. While clearly functional, they are also almost ceremonial in attitude: special occasion vessels. I want to make something with this feeling: a piece that proclaims the occasion. A potential heirloom, if I may be so grand.

I want to make tureens so badly I could almost make them out of my very will. It's a terrible tickle, like needing to sneeze, with my brain. I just have to preserve this deep inspiration until Doug gets home, with the car and my clay, and I can hole up in hte studio for the rest of the night.

Thursday Inspiration: Catherine Rehbein

See more of Catherine's beautiful oxidation-fired work here.