Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

Getting the Word Out

I’ve had myself a mini spring break the past few days. I had to take a day off Friday because my wife had an appointment. Then over the weekend my wife AND kid got sick. So I stayed home Monday to take care of them. It turns out that it is difficult for a baby to eat if there is no air going in through the nose. So I carried her around outside before she ate which seemed to help open up her nasal passages a little bit. The funny thing is that I had signed up two weeks ago to take a personal day today so my wife could go to her kindergarten roundup. I’m not sure I’ll remember how to teach when I get back to school tomorrow.

The Shelf with New Pots

The Shelf with New Pots

Bad news: I haven’t made one single lump of clay into anything for about two weeks. Good news: I’ve done a lot of other stuff that goes along with making pottery. For example, I went over to the Stone Soup Emporium and picked up my check for the month of March. And for the first month ever, I’m in THE BLACK! I actually made enough money last month to cover the cost of the shelf plus 14 extra dollars. (I sold four items.) Hooray for capitalism!

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Glaze Firing – April 5, 2012

Here are a few images of some things that I pulled out of the last glaze fire:

Not pictured are some small pendants, test tiles/cups and about 3 other items that I re-fired to fix some glaze problems.

I hope to post some images of my glaze test results soon.

PBL and Boberosa Mugs

So… Back at the blog. I’m finally getting some photos of recent mugs uploaded. I had a pretty successful glaze fire on March 18th containing mostly logo mugs and a few other random items. All wheel thrown cone 6 stoneware.

PBL Mugs

These are all larger mugs, more “stein like” really.  All had Saturated Iron poured inside and dipped at the top while the rest of the outside was dipped in Pam’s Blue (both Coyote glazes). I really like this combination and apparently other people do too.

I took the liberty of trying different options on the logos. I used brown and black washes on some, all brown on some, black wash on a pair and the Saturated Iron glaze on the rest. The washes came out a variety of ways. A few seemed more purple than brown, maybe too thick or too thin? But the logos with the washes seem more defined than the logos with the glaze.

Boberosa Mugs

Again, I tried a few different options. Some mugs have Orange glaze over black wash in the logo imprints. I also did some bare clay logos with black or brown washes.

 PBL Experiments

I didn’t have enough Sapphire Blue glaze so I tried some different glaze combinations with glazes such as Really Red, Pam’s Blue, Alabaster Satin, Peacock Green and the black and brown washes.

A Few Misc. Items

A few miscellaneous items to fill the rest of the kiln including a yarn bowl and some pendants. A local customer found my website and asked if I would make her some custom pendants for aroma therapy purposes. I’ve made ornaments that were very similar so I said I would give it a shot. They were pretty quick and easy to make. Except I ruined a few trying to get the hole at the top and glazing each one with a brush was a little tedious. Maybe next time I’ll wax the backs and put some fishing line through the holes so I can dip them. The lady really liked how they turned out and bought 12 of them. Hopefully they work well for the aroma therapy.

I’ve got about 6 more WN large mugs and 6 PBL short mugs to glaze with my new batch of Sapphire Blue. I’ve also been mixing some test glazes from the book Mastering Cone 6 Glazes. I’m hoping to get a glaze fire finished before I go back to school on Monday.

Mixing Glaze

Hooray for Spring Break! Last night we made a trip to our top tourist destination: Goshen, IN. So now I’ve got the rest of break to get some work done. I’m mixing glaze today. I hope to mix up some test batches from some of my glaze books in the next few days and fire the kiln before Saturday.

Mixing Glaze

Mixing Glaze

I bought 10lbs. of Coyote’s Sapphire Blue in powder form and I just mixed that. I’ll let it sit until tomorrow and then glaze some mugs. The Sapphire Blue is pretty smooth. I used exactly 2 gallons of water with the 10lbs. of powder which put it at about 1360 on my homemade hydrometer which is where I like my two previous dipping glazes. I’ll probably add a little more water tomorrow because I don’t want it too thick. It went through an 80 mesh sieve with almost no pushing it through the screen. The particles must be nice and small. I’m glad I wrote that article about mixing glazes because it is not only a nice resource but I remember the process much better after doing it and writing about it.

I’ve got a post almost finished with some photos of recent logo mugs that will be up soon. Be on the lookout for that and remember I also post some shorter updates on my facebook page.

 

 

The Rest of the First 2012 Glaze Fire

The previous post was about mugs with logos.  There were a few other items in the first glaze fire of 2012:

Not pictured: a small teardrop shaped vase, a Charger mug that turned out terribly, and a large mug with some stamped patterns.

I got a little tired of making mugs at one point so I wanted to try a different drinking vessel. I decided to make some tall handle-less forms. I’ll call them tumblers unless someone else has a better name for these tall cups. I feel like tumblers should have straighter sides.  I haven’t actually tried drinking out of them yet but I like how they turned out. My wife wasn’t as impressed and thinks they look like they should be used by kings and queens of the medieval times. Maybe if I dig a moat around the house?

I also wanted to make some yarn bowls to put on my shelf in the Stone Soup Emporium. I made three but I broke one before I could get it bisque fired and one has been donated to the Jefferson Elementary silent auction tomorrow. I’ll probably make a few more. I like how the glaze turned out on the inside of these two.

One of the best parts of the glaze fire was doing a little experimenting and enjoying the results. A while ago I wrote of mugs with poor attachments. A few were salvaged and survived the bisque fire so I decided to experiment with some glaze application. I dipped the two mugs in Saturated Iron to cover the outside. Then I brushed a patch of Eggshell on both sides of one and Alabaster Satin on both sides of the other. On top of these white squares I brushed a quick design with a black wash. The wash and glazes melted together a little bit and I think it adds some interest to each mug.

This weekend (hooray for presidents!) I hope to start cranking out another batch of logo mugs. I’ve been absent from the clay studio for the past week or so except to reclaim some clay and haul a couple boxes of new clay down to the bench. Here’s to getting dirty!