Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz
A few weeks ago my wife and I had the opportunity to take some more engagement photos. They were taken at Bonneyville Mill part near sunset. Here are a few samples:
Last weekend I was hard at work in the studio. I not only made a few small clay pieces, I also improved the studio a little bit. I got tired of walking all over to get a bat when I was ready to throw so I upgraded my wheel table to include a bat holder. It can hold a total of eight bats at a time and is conveniently located under my wheel table to the left as I am sitting at the wheel. I also decided that I needed little more shelf space. I put a larger shelf above the original glaze shelf which hangs over the glaze table. Now I have room for glazes, tools and bisque pieces that are ready to be glazed, all within reaching distance of the clay table. So now I’ll probably have to start some sort of exercise program since I won’t be walking back and forth across my studio every few minutes.
This past weekend I threw a couple small lidded vessels. Perhaps there will be pictures available on this very site at some time.
Below you can see a pair of pictures showing a few items that I have recently thrown on the wheel. There aren’t a lot of items but I hope to add a few more this weekend. They are made out of Amaco clay: Warm Brown Stoneware (darker) and Buff Firing Stoneware (lighter). The oval dish was wheel thrown and then stretched into an oval and a slab was attached to create the bottom. I really just wanted to post again to see if all the “automatic upgrades” for WordPress worked. So now I’m crossing my fingers and clicking “Publish”…..
It was like Christmas in August…. Last night the kiln was finally cool enough that it wouldn’t burn my face off when I peered inside. It was the first time I had fired my kiln up to cone 6 (about 2232 degrees F) but everything seemed to work like it should. I started it Sunday afternoon and I stopped it manually at around midnight after almost 8 hours and 2235 degrees. I would have let it stop on it’s own but the witness cones were already bent and I didn’t want to “overcook” by first load. But on to more important things, like the results.
I was happy with almost everything. I used Amaco’s Buff Firing Clay and Warm Brown Stoneware with some of their glazes and a few Coyote glazes that I ordered a few days ago. So I was mostly just experimenting and finding out what the glazes would do. Here are a few pictures I took quickly after I pulled everything out of the kiln:
The only problem was with the small green pitcher. The Gun Metal Green glaze I used on the outside started flaking off. It seemed to be okay on the other pieces that I used it on so I don’t know what happened. All the other glazes look really great. Some of my favorites were Amaco’s Oil Spot, Blue Rutile, and Seaweed and Coyote’s Goldenrod Shino and Pam’s Blue.
ready for the kiln
Summer break seems to be coming to a close. But there are still a few days left to squeeze in some fun. I have been busy lately trying to get a full load ready to bisque fire in the kiln. My wife helped me load it last night. I crammed everything in that was dry. As soon as I get home I’m going to fire it up. Then I hope to glaze for a day or two and glaze fire at the start of next week. This is the test run for the cone 6 clay and glazes that I have. I’ll post the results when I get them fired. I’ve been using Amaco’s warm brown stoneware and buff firing stoneware. I have a few Amaco cone 6 glazes and I might order a few of the Coyote cone 6 glazes.
My wife and I also took some senior pictures a few days ago. It was our first attempt at senior pictures but we got a few nice photos. I’ll try to post some of those soon.