Furniture! made of clay

The local branch of the Women's Art Caucus issued a challenge for its members. The plan is to do a work of art with the theme of a chair. We will then hold a show this summer called, of course "Madame Chair". There will probably be some wonderfully painted chairs and sculptures using chairs as armatures. Since I love the use of clay, I decided to make clay garden stools.

This stool is about 15 & 1/2 inches tall. It will shrink by the final firing of course. The carving is inspired by a French Medieval Jug. However, the overall shape and design together remind me of African art.

This stool was inspired by my daughter, who eats, drinks, and sleeps dance. It is about 17" tall.
The Orange line was drawn with acrylic paint to give me a guideline when I do the carving. The orange line will burn out in the first firing.

A close up of the carving, I still have some finishing work to do on it or so it appears.

Because they are intended to be used and sat upon I made them thick. They used a lot of clay and it is difficult to move them from place to place. Even moving them off the wheel head was a big production. Lowering them into my big oval kiln will require help. The assistance of more than one person in addition to myself will be required. Drying time will also be a challenge, I am not certain they will be completed by the due date. Clay work takes time.

Not exactly bone china

This bowl set was made for my son, who likes skulls.

I purposefully chose the glaze of this luscious green because using black, or even white would have been too "typical.

It's fun to try some different themes. Quite a few people have expressed interest in this set so I will be making some more.

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.