Latest Wood Firing Results

And the results... I'm happy.

With wood firing, the highs and lows are quite dramatic, though. I lost a few pieces that I really had high hopes for. And a number just didn't come out terribly well. But the good pieces—wow! I'm so particularly pleased with some of these pieces that I might not put them up for sale. Or at least not yet.

Check out more photos of my latest work in this photo album.

Oh Sweet Temmoku

In this most recent firing, I experimented a bit more with the carved decorations I've been doing.

I had some encouraging success glazing similar pieces with my Shino recipe, but I was a little less impressed with the results from this firing with the same glaze. It's not that I'm unhappy, but I liked the stark contrast of orange against white that I achieved last time.

Thankfully, I also tried using the studio's Temmoku on a heavily faceted piece, and loved the way the glaze "broke" along the edges. So I tried it on a few of my new carved pieces (shown to the right) and I couldn't be happier.

Interestingly, the carved diagonal lines, I realize, are reminiscent of the Jomon-style rope impression technique that was often seen in the work of Tatsuzo Shimaoka, one of my favorite potters of the Mingei movement.

Finally, the tiny ochoko shown at the bottom right was glazed with a Temmoku recipe from Malcolm Wright's website. The recipe is quite different than Mark's Temmoku (used on the other three pieces) as it incorporates wood ash, high-iron clays and relatively little pure red iron oxide. If you look very closely at the piece, you'll see variations in color and pattern in the dark, blue-black glaze. I'm now anxious to test it on a carved piece. Stay tuned...

Soda Firing November 2010

I didn't put many pieces in this recent soda firing, but I took the opportunity to experiment a little with texture and some different glaze techniques. At right, there are two stoneware tea bowls that I sprayed with a mixture of wood ash and whiting (about 5 parts to 1). I was trying to emulate the look of a real wood-fired piece, and I came fairly close.

The two tea cups feature carvings. The lower one is straight stoneware, whereas the upper one was dipped in a white crackle slip before being incised. I'm pretty happy with both.

You can see more on my Flickr page.

So Much Shino!

I did kind of go wild with the Shino this summer/fall. We finally unloaded the reduction kiln, and I couldn't be much happier with the results. Check them out on my Flickr page.

The recipe?


Shino - Cone 10 Reduction

Soda Ash 7.25%
G200 Feldspar 35.5%
Spodumene 32.25%
Silica 2.5%
EPK 14.5%
OM4 8%

Throwing A Bowl

I found myself doing a video demo for work, and edited this little clip for the intra-web. Mind you, this is by no means the best bowl I've ever thrown... Or even a good one, for that matter. I smashed all of the demo pieces as soon as the camera stopped rolling. Making pottery on film was surprisingly nerve-racking.

Soda-fired Hakeme Plates

I made a few soda-fired plates with hakeme decoration with the intention of them being the serving trays for sake sets. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, one of them warped severely in the soda kiln, and will only be useful as a decoration. Still, I'm rather happy with the results.

Another Sake Set

I've been on a roll with these sake pieces... Really, I'm making a special set for a customer, and I want to offer her a number of pieces to choose from. The stoneware cups were glazed with four different standard glazes from our studio and reduction fired to cone 10.

The flask is porcelain, electric fired to cone 10 and then decal fired once again to cone 05. The kanji is an old Japanese poem that nobody I know can translate.

The decal really makes the piece successful. Without it, the eye is drawn to every imperfection in the all white form. But now, it looks complete and the imperfection of the form just says that the piece is hand made.

Đặng Thùy Trâm Plate

This piece is a response to Andrew Pham's book Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, a translation of Đặng Thùy Trâm's diary. From Wikipedia:

Đặng Thùy Trâm (born November 26, 1943 in Huế, Vietnam; died on June 22, 1970 in Đức Phổ, Quảng Ngãi Province, Vietnam) was a Vietnamese civilian doctor who worked as a battlefield surgeon for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. She was killed, in disputed circumstances, at the age of 26, by United States forces while travelling on a trail in the Ba To jungle in the Quảng Ngãi Province of south-central Vietnam. Her wartime diaries, which chronicle the last two years of her life, attracted international attention following their publication in 2005.

The thing that I find most amazing about Thùy was her selflessness. Sure, she acknowledged and accepted her insecurity and her own longings—to be home in Hanoi, amidst her loving family, enjoying the comfortable lifestyle afforded to doctors and educators, and for the love of her life (a communist soldier). But more than anything she longed for peace and prosperity in her country, which is why she volunteered to become a battlefield surgeon in "The American War".

Her diary recounts gruesome details of the amputations and trauma surgeries she performed, but what's even more gut-wrenching are the recurring passages where she laments the deaths of her comrades and countrymen. While she is enraged by the invading American forces—she hates them, in fact—her heart remains full of love for her country, her family and even for the soldier whom she pines for.

She is extremely virtuous, too. As a beautiful young doctor, she attracts the affection of nearly everyone she comes into contact with, but is so wary of public opinion she won't allow herself anything more than the platonic love of a male friend. It almost seems like a propagandist's fairy tale—a young woman who committed her youth to studying before entering the medical field, who subsequently sacrificed the best years of her life to the war effort, and ultimately died for the cause she believed in.

As much as any of us are touched by the story of her tragic demise, nobody took the news of her death as hard as her own family. When her father, a surgeon and educator, heard of Thùy's death he instantaneously fell victim to a stroke and died.

Blue Ash Plates

I've been experimenting a bit more with the batch of blue wood ash glaze Junji mixed up for me. I've been spraying it, and trying it in combinations with other glazes in the studio. On the left it's alternated with a rutile-based glaze, and on the right it's combined with a standard white liner glaze.

Tokkuri and Ochoko

I'm working on a custom sake set for a customer, and I've been learning and experimenting quite a bit. The pieces above came out of the soda kiln today, along with a few other sake cups (ochoko). I'm planning to raku fire a serving tray, and then I'll also be making several more tokkuri (flasks) for her to choose from, as well as several more cups, fired in both wood and reduction firings.

Table of Elements 2010

This weekend, The Manchester Craftsmen's Guild will be hosting a fundraiser featuring ceramic art by local and national artists (and some two dimensional works, as well).

I'll be donating a 20-piece bicycle-themed dinnerware set (5 pieces for 4 settings). I didn't actually get a chance to properly photograph the pieces, but you can see the ones I didn't choose on my Flickr page. Rest assured, the actual pieces in the set are similar, but tacitly superior. If you happen to be interested in something on my Flickr page, just drop me an email and I'll let you know if it's available.

Click here for more information on Table of Elements 2010.

Old Trees, Level Distance

I created this mug for my friend Junji.

The decal artwork Old Trees, Level Distance is from Guo Xi's ink painting from the year 1080. I got the idea to use this decal while watching a documentary on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of Chinese art. The piece was created as a goodbye present for Xi's good friend and fellow coworker who was due to retire and move somewhere far from the city. Although it's not immediately apparent, the overarching theme of the artwork is eternal friendship.

Coincidentally, I had just learned that Junji would likely be leaving town to manage a studio several hours away. And while I'll be sad to see him go, I know the opportunity to run his own ceramics studio will be a dream come true. I wish him luck in getting the job, and I know that like Xi and his compatriot, we'll always be friends.

Raku - American Style

Although the style of firing pots in a small kiln and pulling them out while still glowing hot is a Japanese tradition, in the United States the term "raku" is commonly used to reference the style invented by Paul Soldner.

Soldner's method involves placing the hot pots in a container filled with combustable material such as sawdust, leaves, newspaper, etc. The effect is that the heavy reduction atmosphere creates unique colors and patterns in the glaze, and the smoke imparts a charcoal black finish on any unglazed surface. This especially emphasizes the crackle effect that's inherent on most raku fired pieces.

I've been experimenting quite a bit with this American-style raku firing, and will be posting more photos to my Flickr page in the near future.

Hakeme Bamboo Tumbler

Hakeme is a Korean technique of painting white slip onto stoneware with a rough brush. The technique came about as a response to problems that arose from dipping dark clay forms in white slip. The dipped ware often became saturated and either deformed or fell apart, or the thick slip cracked upon drying. So the Korean potters began painting their slip on. Some Japanese potters, Hamada for example, took to this style and used it as an expressive means of decoration.

I actually made this tumbler a while back with no knowledge of the technique, only thinking that the white slip with obvious brush strokes might make for a nice contrast for my carved decoration. And much like the Korean and Japanese potters, I intuitively chose a translucent celadon glaze. The result is simple, yet beautiful.

Blue Wave Sushi Tray

This is one of my rare experiments with slab built pottery. I really enjoyed making these, though, and need to make time to do more and improve upon the design.

This design for a sushi tray came to me out of nowhere, and admittedly was more difficult to achieve than I expected. The teardrop shaped end was difficult to bend without cracking the clay, and I'm not entirely happy with the curve I achieved.

The glaze is wonderful, though. I saw an example in John Britt's book, The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes and upon mentioning it to Junji, I found a batch mixed and ready for use the next time I came to the studio. The recipe is based on Richard Aerni's wood ash, and contains added colorants such as cobalt, iron and manganese.

Interestingly, while the form mostly makes me think of an ocean wave, it also bears a resemblance to my new computer's keyboard.

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.

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.

Craft Sales VS Online Sales

Selling my ceramics in person is awesome. Selling ceramics online... Not so great.

In person, people get to touch things. Pottery is very much about how things feel, and that can't be expressed online.

I haven't sold anything on Etsy in months. I made a month's rent in one afternoon at this recent craft fair.

When I ship ceramics, despite my best attempts to package things for Armageddon, it's inevitable that every so often, things get broken. Neither USPS or UPS has ever paid for the damages. In person, I wrap the pottery in newspaper and people carefully carry them home.

Finally, as much as it's nice to hear some feedback over the internet, there's nothing more satisfying than seeing how happy a customer is face to face.

Sold!

I was recently fortunate enough to be included in a group show at The Clay Place. The show, entitled Ceramic Gamut, featured work by the staff and students of The Manchester Craftsmen's Guild. Not only was I lucky enough to show my work, I sold a Raku fired piece. I have a sneaking suspicion that one of my mentor's bought it, but that's even more validating.

The piece is wheel-thrown and features a heavily carved surface depicting three faces. The inspiration was drawn from the ancient Mexican stone sculptures of the Guerrero region.