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It is a Hobby or a Business?
As I move into my eleventh year of making pottery, I want to reflect on the things I do well and the things I do poorly and ask myself if I’m where I want to be – commitment level, skill level, etc. But before I can fairly assess my own performance, I have to know what my goals and intent were. I actually teach a class on stream restoration structure risk and failure assessment, and the underlying message is essentially the same – “What was the design purpose?” A structure shouldn’t be marked as a failure at protecting stream banks if it was only designed to create habitat. As it…
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First attempt at pour bowls
I love being asked, “Do you make…”, because chances are good that I don’t, but am about to have fun trying something new. I also appreciate being able to post a question like “Do pour bowls need handles?” on Facebook and get an answer with in a few minutes. This was my first(ish) attempt at pour bowls, and I like the way they turned out. I made one many years ago that was completely ugly and now holds odd bits in the garage. The layered look of the green bowl was created with a black glaze and Millicent’s Curtains. These weren’t intended to be stacking, but the small foot on…
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How to glaze the whole ceramic spoon
There’s one question I keep getting via Etsy, on this blog and through email. “How do you glaze your ceramic spoons and keep them from sticking to the kiln shelf?” Clearly, there is a lot of interest in handmade spoons! So how do you glaze the entire ceramic spoon? I use kiln stilts! Kiln stilts consist of metal rods that prop up a piece off the shelf, and a durable one may be used multiple times. I purchased Roselli stilts from Big Ceramic Store. According to Big Ceramic Store, beyond cone 6, metal rods may begin to deform, and may deform at lower temperatures under…
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Pulling Spoons
A while back I shared how I made spoons from a mold. I still have the plaster molds, but after awhile, I found them to be clumsy and frustrating. I’m not patient enough to wait for the mold to release the wet clay. So over the past few days being cooped up inside do to nasty weather, I’ve started back at spoon making without the molds. Instead of pressing clay into a mold, I roll a wedge-shaped coil, press the thicker end around the bowl of an existing spoon and pull the handle. My process is changing and evolving, but these are my basic steps for pulling ceramic spoons. …
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In Progress
This time last year, I completely set aside making ceramics, but this semester with both boys in elementary school and not having to essentially spend the day carpool hopping, the days are much more flexible and I can get dirty, make some things and have time to clean up after myself. The past few weeks I’ve been revisiting items I haven’t made in awhile: cake plates, utensil holders and spoons. Here are a few pictures of greenware. I have a bad habit of not cleaning the garage studio until I change clay bodies, which is absolutely necessary when switching between a white clay and a brown clay. I suspect that…
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Pottery Update
Somehow I allowed a lot of time to pass after last using my wheel. It’s not that I was officially taking a break, but with the kids being home in the summer and then adjusting to having both in school and figuring out how much time to spend volunteering there, working on my fall class (I teach distance graduate engineering courses), and trying to catch up on the neglected house projects, I let the pottery fall to the side. Time was an issue but so was a messy garage. Even if I had made the time to create, I wouldn’t have been able to use the space. Now the studio…
