Designed For Use

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:35:04 -0400

Finished pieces

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:32:03 -0400

Above is an example of the dinner plates for Kerry and Andy. Each dinner plate is 10” in diameter and has a blue flower painted on it.

To the right is the lunch plate. Each one of these is 8”
in diameter. As shown they each have an orange bud
with blue specks.

Below is the cream and sugar set with a small bowl for

sweet ‘n low. All on a tray.

Above and to the right are three of the mugs. They are
all different shapes and sizes with blue or orange
flowers and buds.

And above is the spoon rest. It is about 5 inches in diameter with carving.

Dinner plate.

Photo of the Day

Sat, 8 May 2010 10:41:39 -0400

Above is a picture of the lunch plates. A stack of 4 getting ready to go in the bisque firing. They have come out and are a pristine white now, ready for the glaze coating.

The plates are thrown on the potter’s
wheel on ‘bats’. These are plastic discs fitted
on the wheel head with bat pins. Bats give
me the capability of taking the plate off
the wheel without distorting the form.
The plate then dries to a leather hard stage, still
on the bat.Then I trim the ‘foot’. Each plate, at the final
stage, is to be 8 inches. I throw the plates
to 9 1/2 inches when wet. Over the different
stages of drying the clay shrinks 1 1/2 inches!
This is about 12.5 - 13 percent.

Glaze Making

Mon, 3 May 2010 10:21:31 -0400

This step in the process is one that fascinates and frustrates potters. The glaze is a mixture of dry ingredients which are important to the finished piece. It gives it clothes so to speak. Clothes and glazes can be ill fitting or gorgeous, drab or enhancing and artistic.

At the Chrysler Museum School, where I took classes in potttery while in college, taught wheel throwing, hand building, clay making, clay and glaze calculation as well as firing techniques and handling museum quality pots. Glaze calculation is really chemistry with a very practical application. A potter needs to know what goes into making a glaze, the ‘fit’ of a glaze, the formula in percentages and changing a formula to a recipe. A recipe is measured in grams. This description is very very basic. Potters have devoted a lifetime of work developing glazes. Otto and Gertrude Natzler and Otto Heino are two that come to mind.

Above you can see my triple beam scale. It very precisely measures my materials in grams. I order my materials from a clay supplier in Virginia, Tin Barn Pottery at Manassas Clay.

I measure the materials placing them carefully in a plastic bucket, always wearing a face mask especially designed for dust particles. Inhaling the dust particles from these materials causes lung problems like silicosis. After dry mixing all of the materials I add water and mix again. This mixture needs to ‘slake’ now for 24 hours. All of the dry particles have to absorb water, it takes some time.

The next step is to sieve the mixture through screens with 60 mesh and 80 mesh screens.

To the right is the glaze,
having been sieved. This
picture shows only some
of the glaze. The bucket
holds over 10,000 grams
of glaze.

Below is a photo of my glaze pantry. Some of the dry materials used in glazes are feldspars, ball clay, kaolin, silica, frits, nepheline syenite, dolomite, and then the oxides - cobalt, copper, iron, rutile, nickel, manganese, and others. Kerry and Andy’s dinnerware will be painted with underglazes which provide the colors in her pattern - blue, green and brown.

Progress 2 - trimming, handles and bisque firing

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:47:53 -0400

Welcome back! The pots shown in the last blog entry were thrown on the potter’s wheel. They then had to dry to a ‘leather hard stage’. This means they have moisture remaining in them but can not longer be pushed in with ones fingers. The British call this ‘cheese hard’ because it does feel like maybe cheddar cheese!

The pot to the right is one of the mugs turned upside down. It is leather hard
and the foot is not finished.

The next step for this pot and all my pots is to trim a finished foot. This is a
design element and a functional element. With a finished foot the pot has
lift or a visual lightness to it. The finished foot also makes the pot have a
smooth area on which it will sit on a table and not scratch the table surface.

Directly above is the creamer with a
finished foot. The pot to it’s right is
mug which has been trimmed but does not have it’s handle yet. To the far
right is the creamer with the handle. All of the mugs were given handles.

The handles are attached after the foot is trimmed while the pot is still leather hard. All pottery then has to air dry to a ‘bone dry’ stage. This means there is no atmospheric water left in the clay. If I were to put pots in the kiln with any water still present in the clay they would shatter in the firing. Water expands and blows the clay particles apart.

The next step is to load them in the kiln for the bisque firing. This firing is the first of 2. The temperature reaches 1800 degrees F. There is no glaze applied at this stage. They will be porous when they come out of the kiln and ready for the glaze and flower design to be painted on by hand.