I just finished the third week of class at the Goshen Clay Guild. It has been great so far. I’ve met a lot of cool people and learned a few things. We have had one class with each of the three teachers so far.

First, Eric Kaufmann (I confess, I spelled his name wrong twice before looking it up) gave us an introduction to the class and talked about crystalline glazes. Then Cindy Cooper subbed for Bob Smoker and gave us a lot of demonstrations and ideas for texture. Last night Justin Rothshank talked about decals. In between demos and instruction, and during lab nights on Thursdays, we get a lot of time to throw on the wheel or work on whatever we like.

I’ve been working with the B-Mix that Eric uses and trying to get used to it. I’ve made little test pieces and catch basins for the crystalline glazes. I can’t wait to learn more about the glazing and firing. I’ve already looked up some ^6 crystalline recipes. The B-Mix has taken some getting used to. It is a lot smoother than the stoneware I’m used to but I get nervous to push it too far.

The decals we are going to be using are printed with black and white toner from an HP laser printer. The iron in the print turns a sepia/brown when it is fired. There are also color decals that you can order but they are a lot more expensive to get custom images made. Apparently a little site called ebay is a pretty good resource for finding them though. Maybe I’ll have to take a look and see what’s available. My notes are to the left. Good luck reading them… I’m not even sure I can read them! I was scribbling like mad. So furiously that I broke out into a sweat. For a moment I thought I might have to sit down, but then a girl passed out (!) and we took a break and got some fans. Don’t worry, she was okay after waking up and drinking some water. And I was okay too…

Here are a few cups with decals. The third one from the left was a crystalline piece by Eric. Justin applied some plant decals and refired it to see if it would work without ruining the crystals. Looks good to me! Second from the left is a color decal. The other two are black and white decals. Justin printed out a page of decals for us if we had images ready. I just used some of the images that I used to order my rubber stamps for some of my other projects.

Check back in a few weeks and I should have another update. Happy 4th of July!