Gifts from the Guild - 2009 Holiday Arts Sale

Please come down to the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild the weekend of December 18th through 20th, where I'll be selling pottery as part of the annual holiday arts sale. A portion of the proceeds benefit youth arts education. And in addition to my work, you'll find a lot of great pieces from our students and my very talented coworkers.

Click here for directions.

Decal Pottery - Round Two

This weekend I fired up the electric kiln for another round of decals. This time around all the pottery was gas-fired in a reduction kiln, so there were less surprises. Save for the happy accidents, that is.

With a little more knowledge of which glazes look good with reddish-brown decal designs, I was considerably more successful. One of my favorites from this batch is a tumbler with Hokusai's famous erotic woodcut, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife. Hokusai is best known for The Great Wave off Kanagawa which he created as part of a series of Mt. Fuji landscapes in the 1820's.

One of the pieces that's special to me is this tumbler which features a drawing by one of my students, Lu Lu. He's a great kid, but he doesn't speak much English—hardly any at all. We often communicate with facial expressions and hand gestures. You see, Lu Lu is from Burma, and he's from a tribe that speaks the Karen language, which is obviously not too popular here in America. The drawing is of his home, and it says a thousand things he can't put into words I understand.

Check out the whole batch on Flickr.

Decal Mugs - Round One Results

I recently posted about my foray into the world of decal firing. Well, the results are in, and my efforts were met with both success and failure. One huge factor was that I used soda-fired pottery, which inherently produces various and hard-to-predict results. So some of the items cracked, warped or bubbled along the way.

The most successful pieces were the simple forms made with plain old stoneware and glazed with our most reliable white glaze. Shown at right is an example of one such piece, perhaps the best of the bunch. My favorite, however, was a lucky combination of Junji's white slip with clear wood ash glaze. It featured an image of Major Taylor. I gave it to MBC's new VP of Operations, Paulo Nzambi.

I Made It! Market for the Holidays

I'll once again be selling ceramics at I Made It! Market on Saturday, December 5th from noon to 5 p.m. at the Union Project. 

It's been quite a while since I've shown or sold anything I've made, so hopefully those of you who come out will be impressed with the progress I've made.

I also anticipate having one of my prodigious students there to help run the table, so this time around I'll have more time to check out the other vendors' work.

Serving Bowls

I love making serving bowls. They're not really that difficult to make, but the results are rewarding. They're sizable, decorative and functional. I made a small series of bowls with rich red and brown glazes a while back, and just got around to posting some photos on Flickr and listing them on Etsy.

Decal Mugs - In Progress

Everyone at work has been inspired by Justin Rothshank's ceramic decal work, and now I'm the latest to try out his technique. These soda-fired mugs have their decals applied and are waiting for the final cone 05 firing. The end result will leave reddish-brown marks wherever the black ink was.

Junji Miyazawa Teapot

I recently posted about this teapot on my other blog, Urban Velo. It was a gift from my friend, coworker and pottery mentor, Junji Miyazawa. This past week I was really sad because his contract expired. Then just this weekend I learned that he's been re-hired as the new ceramics studio tech.

I'm ecstatic. Quite selfishly, it's in part because Junji's the only person at MCG who consistently wants to get Asian food for lunch, and definitely the only person who can truly appreciate Korea Garden, or who's ready to visit Lucy for bánh mì at the drop of a hat.

Click here to read more about the teapot.