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.

A visitor in my studio

He didn't enjoy his time in the studio, rather he flung himself at the window repeatedly. After trying to help herd him to the open doors, I finally just left the studio and came back sometime later to find that he had left. He is obviously frightened in this picture, but what a pretty bird!

Ceramic Cookware

Although Pipkins are a favorite, they aren't the only Medieval cooking pot. I make a variety of other Medieval cooking pots for the firepit or brazier too.

A very basic cooking pot is a round bottom piece. Simple ceramic cooking pots are literally found all over the world and all through time for cooking. A few show surface decoration, although it was probably to help the cook get a good grip on a slick piece of pottery. The Ashmolean Museum has some good examples of round-based cooking pots: http://potweb.ashmolean.org/PotChron2a.html

This little brown bowl on tripod feet is about 2 cups in capacity and can be used for various culinary work. I especially picture it for sauces or warming up a small amount of water.

The green pouring bowl is 2 qt. size and is also on three feet to fit on the coals. Of course, these bowls have many, many uses on the kitchen counter as well as on a firepit.

"Pre-industrial Utensils; 1150-1800" published by the Museum Baymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam is an excellent reference and the one I like for these bowls.

This is a good example of a skillet. With an interior of about 5" in diameter, this becomes an excellent size for a pancake or frying a couple of eggs. The handle is hollow for insulation like I make many of my pipkin handles. Although this fry pan is on tripod feet too, I also make them with a flat base. My favorite example of this in history is used in a painting by Pieter Aertsen titled "The Pancake Bakers".

The cauldron can be used for anything a pipkin can be used for. I particularly like them for baking, I just scoot mine to what looks like the optimum coals and keep an eye on the heat to insure the coals don't get too hot or cool down too much. There are many examples of medieval cauldrons, the Museum of London has some of my favorites, for example this "London Ware": http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/pages/subcategory.asp?subcat_id=796&subcat_name=London%2Dtype+ware

You can see a bit of the tripod feet of this Norman spouted jug in this picture. A jug like this can heat water or warm up beverages in the coals. The Ashmolean has a couple of great examples in their "Pot Web" http://potweb.ashmolean.org/PotChron2a.html