As I’m setting up my studio, one of the things I need is a plaster drying block. Lori Keenan Watts, potter/blogger posted this excellent tutorial on how to do this! Thanks!
Fine Mess Pottery: Side Effects, and How to Pour a Plaster Drying Block
I was so amazed by the fireworks in Sydney on NYE!!! It reminded me of the effect of color on our senses and emotions.
This link explains how color affects us.
Achieving amazing results in glazes on ceramics is my quest. Wishing you all the best and great success in all your endeavours this new year!
Greg Daly is the master of lustres on ceramics and his new book is now available!!! Very exciting!!! Greg Daly’s New Book on Lustres!!! His workshop on Lustres in Coffs Harbour was amazing and I’ll post more on that later. For now, get the book!! Yeah! Can’t wait to get mine! I checked Amazon in the USA and it is listed but not available quite yet-keep checking!
My daily perusal of blogs, websites, and the internet in general will often allow me to stubble upon some inspirational and wonderful stuff. Alex Solla’s blogpost today definitely “wowed” me! Love his photography and the work of Renata Wadsworth. Great form, colour and design- now go make a pot!
I suppose my move to Australia from the USA introduced me to colour – vibrant colour, not subtle in any way, In Australia, the flowers, trees, birds, houses, beaches, fish, and people tend to be more colourful.
This bombardment of colour seems to have produced in me a desire to create those colours in the glazes on my pottery.
I’ve always loved blues (OMG!!!) but I when I first saw a book on the glazes and work produced by Greg Daly, reknown Australian potter, I was gobsmacked (Australian for flabbergasted!). I had never seen colour used so beautifully, intricately or interestingly. It was vivid colour as well! Not the typical “pottery” colours that so many of us are used to. So I was motivated to learn how to do this myself.
Fortunately, the Coffs Harbour TAFE and the Coastal Claymakers were hosting a workshop by Greg Daly and I purchased a spot. Greg’s workshop was fantastic! He is such a generous, knowledgable, inspiring potter/teacher/man.
The first day of the workshop was centred around lustres and how to formulate, fire, and use them on pottery pieces. His slide show was impressive, especially in that he could focus in on a small portion of the glazed piece to show an incredible interaction and how it was achieved. The ability to look at glazes in minutia is key to the development of interesting interaction of colour in glazes.
Greg Daly showed how to mix glazes (as described in his book) so that you can test line blends and then see the results and develop new glazes.
These test tiles show a few of the colours achieved by using this line blend technique. Although I would love to merely have a great, reliable glaze recipe for a particular colour, the process of developing the glazes is very educative and interesting.
These test tiles are examples of some of the colours that can be achieved through this process-pretty exciting!
Applying glaze to pottery is an art in itself and Greg Daly was great to show us how he layers, waxes and applies various glazes to a piece. For example, this bowl had five glazes, waxing, dipped glaze and painted glaze.
I’d never seen anyone plan so intricately for glazing a piece.
I’ve only begun to dip my toe into the crazy world of colourful ceramic glazes, but I’m having a bit of luck and can’t wait to see what I can come up with! This bowl was in the third firing of my fibre-lined gas kiln cone 10 reduction. The base glaze is Royal Blue. The bowl was then waxed in a criss-cross pattern with Greg Daly’s formula of mixing baby oil and turpentine with wax so that it flows better and “paints” on. However, it is very important to wear a protective gas mask while using this type of wax. The piece was then sprayed with Cone 6 Copper Red from the book, Oriental Glazes by Bailey.
There is something about a spoon, especially a ceramic handmade spoon. It makes the piece seem so much more complete and useful. I love the work of Gwendolyn Yoppolo. Check out her website for more beautiful examples of spoons!
I attended Steven Hill‘s workshop at the Craft Guild of Dallas several years ago. He is a generous and amazing potter.
I love his work and am constantly impressed and influenced by it!
Wood firing is something that I had always wanted to try/experience and I am most fortunate that the Murwillumbah Potter’s Group has a wood kiln at the Fernvale location
The wood fired kiln was built by JIm Hall (pictured above). Ann Lee (also pictured above) is instrumental in the success of the wood firings at Fernvale.
I’ve participated in two wood firings and I found several things surprising.
For one, it is a tremendous amount of work! I worked the midnight to morning shift both times stoking the kiln and it was a killer – heat, physically difficult – but fun!!!
Another epiphany about the wood firings is that the type of piece and the glaze put on the piece are both very important. Each piece must be suited to the earthy, ash glazes that result from the wood fire. Also, the delicate, carefully thrown pieces don’t look as good as the more rustic, hand-built pieces. Sculpture is especially nice in the wood fired kiln.
The most recent wood firing at the Murwillumbah Potters Group, Murwillumbah, NSW was a huge success!
Sumerian Jug
My daughter, Liz, had a dream that I was a Sumerian potter – which seemed really random at the time. Upon googling “Sumerian potter” we discovered that:
“The wheel was invented by the ancient Sumerians. They lived in the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers in the Middle East. Much, much later this land became part of the country we call Iraq. The Sumerians were the first people to develop a written language. Extensive studies of their writings have led archaeologists and historians to also credit them with the invention of the wheel.
“Potter” Image courtesy of dan/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The concept of the wheel actually grew out of a mechanical device that the Sumerians had invented shortly after 3500 B.C.—the potter’s wheel. No other civilization of their time had one. This was a heavy flat disk made of hardened clay. It was spun horizontally on an axis to allow the potter to form evenly shaped jars and bowls from wet clay. The Sumerians didn’t, however, simply turn this clay-splattered wheel on its end and hook it to a wagon to make a wheel. Instead, the concept of the wheel went through many stages of development before it became a practical method for moving heavy objects from one location to another.” Source
In addition, historically, many potters were women. Source
That is my dream too – to someday be regarded as a great, or at least good, potter.
Isn’t it great to be part of a craft that has such an amazing history and that it’s still going today in much the same way as it did thousands of years ago!