Summer Pots: Finished and For Sale

About half a year ago I posted an image of some pottery that I was working on.  I finally finished that batch of pots and shot some photos a few weeks ago.  I literally had to dust off my photo booth since it had been so long since I photographed pottery.  So I’ve been busy…  Here’s what I came up with:

All items are wheel thrown stoneware clay with cone 6 glazes. Most items have Pam’s Blue or Saturated Iron glazes by Coyote because I still have a large quantity of both. The plates were “commissioned” by my wife.  I have about 5 more to glaze and fire at some point. The vases came about mostly because I wanted to try some different forms on the pottery wheel.  I really like the teardrop shaped vase with the Red Gold and Espresso Bean dripping down over the Pam’s Blue Glaze.  The bulb vase has some interesting glaze effects but if you look close you might be able to see that it was my first real glaze problem.  I had too much Red Gold and it ran all the way down onto the glaze shelf.  Luckily, the kiln wash helped it to pop right off the shelf.  Unfortunately it also took chunks of the pot with it so there are some sharp edges at the bottom.  The root beer steins/mugs were just a chance to experiment with a mug form only larger.

I also tried to add some imagery to some of the mugs in the form of lightning bolts or “WN” for the school corporation I work at, the West Noble Chargers. I think it would be cool to eventually add logos to mugs for local businesses or schools.  I rolled out some thin slabs and cut out the letters or lightning bolts and then attached them to leather hard mugs. I used wax resist to help glaze the logos a different color than the mug. I was happy with the result. Perhaps this will lead to some additional sales? I will have some items available at West Noble Primary and I currently have a few things at another location.

As I’m typing this I have another load glaze firing in the kiln at about 2000F. It has similar items to those above and a few ornaments for the holiday season. I’m excited to see the results of mugs that I tried a new stamping technique with. I’m a little nervous though because I’m using some glazes that I haven’t tested before. I started feeling the holiday crunch about a week ago so I was in full production mode for a little while.  It worked out well because my mom came down to spend some time with her granddaughter so I got to spend some time with my studio. After bisque firing Friday evening I unloaded, washed and glazed everything Saturday and Sunday morning. I could have fired Sunday but there were a few things that didn’t look completely dry so I didn’t want to risk it. I got it loaded Sunday night and had my wife start it up at about 1:00 today. I preheated for an hour just to make sure there was no pesky water in any of the pieces. I’ve still got my fingers crossed…