Empty Bowls, 2009

An activity that the Palouse Studio Potters do almost every year is Empty Bowls, and it is an event I really look forward to. The past two years I held small workshops where I invited friends to paint underglazes on bisqued bowls I made and donate them to the Empty Bowls. This has been a very enjoyable and worthwhile activity. The participants have a good time and have come up with wonderful results:

This bowl is by Rafaella, she is interested in learning more about maiolica. So rather than painting with underglazes directly on the bisqued bowl, I mixed a cone 6 maiolica glaze (Roy & Hesselbreth) for her to paint the glazes on top of to get that thick white background.

The delicate decorations on this bowl were painted by Tammy. She took hours to accomplish this look. She judged distances and sizes just by looking carefully.

The exterior of Daedin's bowl was inspired by Italian Renaissance Drug Jars. It looks great on bowls too. A strong design lasts through the ages.

A bowl painted by my talented son Gavin. He is a painting major in college, but this is his first use of underglazes as a medium.

A different application for me. Empty Bowls donations are a great place to experiment.

Another of my underglaze bowls. This one is also rooted in Middle Eastern ceramic design.

Sagger barrel firing

This was my first sagger firing vase, two out of six came out without breaking. The colors on this are amazing considering there is no glaze used. The colors come from the chemicals placed in the saggar barrel. The black squiggles are from horsehair burns.

More horsehair squiggles show on this pot. It was not wrapped in aluminum foil like the red pot, so the mark of smoke is more apparent.

There is a story to this firing:

On March 1st. some other potters and I went to friend Judith's home and studio to do a sagger/barrel firing. Now, I've done plenty of pit firings, but not this. Saggers are similar to pit firings, low-temperature bisqued pots are used, most of the time terra sigilatta is applied to the bisqued pots, and finally they burn wood as in a campfire so they don't get very hot. Some of the differences, however are the other materials added to the sagger which render them non-functional, but with great and unusual surface color.

This is the vase shown in the first photo before firing.
It has been painted with ferric chloride, sprinkled with sea salt, and had a few horse hairs placed on it. It will be loosely wrapped with the aluminum foil it is sitting on and placed in the barrel.



Pots are carefully placed in the "high-tech kiln". One of the guild members is adding dried banana peels to the mix. The blue substance is Miracle Gro. The amphorae are mine.

Here it is burning. It was a cold, wet day as can be judged by the snow still on the ground.

At this point the coals were glowing, I leaned in to place horsehair on the pots. Horsehair immediately burns leaving interesting carbon squiggles on the pots. These marks are permanent.

Alas, this kind of firing is hard on the pots, here are two that broke. I had great hopes for the amphora.

Some pottery for March

I've been working on pottery that I will have at AnTir's Kingdom Arts and Sciences event, March 7-8th, 2009. I'm going to have a merchant's table there and hope to also have some of the pottery of my friends Gwen the Potter and blown glass pieces by Aelfgu.

The following pottery pieces are some of my most recent work out of the kiln.

I particularly like this jug. The soft colors are unusual and came out very successfully. The herringbone carved design is French in origin.

This pitcher-type is a very different style from the green and yellow baluster jug above. My spouted pouring vessels like this can also be used on direct heat.

I tried a few different things with this saucepan. It's thrown out of earthenware clay rather than stone ware and it's fired to a lower temperature more like period pottery. Unlike period pottery it has a food safe glaze that I formulated, and then again like period pottery for color I sprinkled some copper filings on the wet glaze to get that green speckle you see.

This pot is also intended for cooking in coals.

A simple cooking pot. Well, it should have been simple, but I couldn't resist carving some surface design on the pot. This will help the user hold onto it when it gets wet too.

Two Plates

From my last firing I got these two plates. They are very different in style.

The first plate:

I am still interested in portraying birds on my ceramics. This time rather than underglazes, I have done a brown pelican using the champleve technique. Champleve is like scraffito only it is carved deeper and showing more of the clay under the slip. I particularly like the negative space formed by the head and left wing of this bird.

This plate was based on a bowl from the Umayyads of A;-Andalus from around 936 AD. I like it very much, this may be my favotite Medieval design ever. My design is done in underglazes as was the original. Mine, of course, is fired hotter and does not use lead in the glazes.

It has been cold!

Since my Christmas break began the weather has thrown all kinds of cold stuff at us.

Deep snow, blowing winds, and low temperatures. The 100 feet between my house and studio sometimes has made me feel like Admiral Bird trying to get back and forth. This past week I have been able to spend time throwing pottery in the studio and things went very well. My studio heats with wood so it takes some time every morning to warm it up enough to work in it. But this morning I saw that the mercury dropped considerably the night before, meaning that I came into the studio to be greeted by this:

Frozen pottery. Imbeded with ice crystals. When they thaw they will collapse.

Year of the Rat

More underglaze work.

In particular I made this as a "Secret Santa" gift for a friend who was born in the "Year of the Rat" as determined by Chinese Astrology. So was her infant son. Probably it isn't surprising that it's not all that easy to find rat themed ceramics.

I was quite happy with the way it turned out. Click on the picture for detail.

And here is some ratty detail.

Working With Color

I love modern pottery styles as well as Medieval. The earthyness and simple function of the Medieval ware is so satisfying, but I can't ignore my love of color and the more unusual shapes of contemporary ceramic ideas. This means they often are merged in my work such as with this platter:

The design is a Turkish Phoenix from the Middle Ages. But this Phoenix is done with modern underglazes on a white stoneware platter and fired to cone 6.

In another application, this is the same design I painted on my Medieval Pavilion. It reminds me of the beautiful July day when this photo was taken. A comforting thought on this below zero December evening.

But I was talking about color in pottery not the weather, so here is some of the greens on which I have been concentrating recently:

If you click on the photo to make this big the surface design is also apparent. It's subtle from a distance, but a closer look shows the amount of work that goes into each piece.

And the huckleberry purples! Now these are bright glazes, and so lovely. Yes, these bright colors can be achieved using stoneware glazes and temperatures. This photo was taken at the "Mud and Spirits" show in Coeur d'Alene, ID, sponsored by C.A.G.N.I. the weekend before this one. We were lucky, the bad weather didn't start until this Saturday and the road to and from Coeur d'Alene was great.