Clay – Page 8

Summer Pottery – Mugs, Vases, Bowls

I glaze fired a number of items way back in July.Â Then I got busy doing other projects like making a backdrop for photographing ceramics, redesigning a website, and getting settled into a new school.Â Finally, you can see the finished pieces from that summer glaze fire below.Â I haven’t really been in the clay studio much since then but I’ve got some ideas rolling around in my head for the next time I get some time at the wheel.

All items are glaze fired to cone 6 and are either Warm Brown Stoneware from Amaco or Speckled Stoneware by Laguna.

: Vase with Glaze streaks

: tall blue-green vase

: stoneware vase

: stoneware mug set

: speckled blue-green pot

: small jug with a lid

: small blue and black vase

: set of bowls with handles

: red-brown mug

: mugs and bowls for the wife

: lidded container with handles

: green-blue mug

: carved vase

: brown bowl with handle

: blue-green tea mug

: blue-green mixing bowl

: blue-green lidded vessel

New Ceramic Supplies

I love Spring Break!Â I recently did some internet shopping at Clay-King.com and Axner.com.Â Both are good places to get ceramic and pottery supplies.

coyote and amaco glazes

Clay King was having a pretty good sale on glazes.Â I ordered a few of my favorites (Coyote: Red Gold and Leopard Shino) and a few new colors to test (Coyote: Espresso Bean and Saturated Iron and Amaco: Frosted Turquoise and Iron Lustre).Â I also ordered 10 lbs. of Pam’s Blue dry powder (by Coyote).Â Finally!Â As soon as I mix up the Pam’s Blue I will be able to dip and pour instead of brushing glaze onto every… single… piece…Â This should drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to glaze a load of bisque ware.Â I guess at first there will be a lot of blue mugs and bowls but if everything goes smoothly I hope to order some more glazes in dry powder form and mix up some large quantities.

hydrometer, sieve, glaze chemicals, kiln posts

Speaking of mixing glazes…Â I needed a few more items to get the job done.Â Axner had some pretty good prices on most of the stuff I needed so I ordered a hydrometer, sieve, kiln posts, and some other dry chemicals.Â I hope to mix some of my own glazes in the future so I’m starting a small collection of dry chemicals.

In other not-very-exciting news I installed a more permanent light above my wheel and made a small shelf behind the wheel where I can put freshly thrown pots to dry.

In the somewhat-exciting department I have a few mugs and bowls drying on the shelf.Â I just threw a few more before track practice today which need handles but I’ll try to put up some pictures before the bisque fire.Â I’m trying a different kind of clay so I’m anxious to see how it fires.

Glazed Clay Items Make Good Gifts

During Christmas Break I was trying to finish throwing a few items on the wheel, then bisque fire, glaze, and then glaze fire everything in about a week. Though I had no team of pointy-eared short people dressed in red and green, I got everything finished up in time for Christmas. I think I glazed the whole load in about a day and a half. Still using the dip-the-brush-in-the-glaze-and-paint-the-glaze-onto-the-bisqueware method which is ridiculously slow but didn’t seem quite as tedious this time. Probably because the glaze thickness on each piece was directly proportional to my patience and time left before Christmas. As in “I made some of the glaze really thin to save time.” This resulted in some of the pieces having a different result than I had gotten before. Some had different colors and some were just a less glossy finish. Most of them turned out okay, just a little different than expected but a few I want to re-glaze or re-fire. Below you can see some of the finished pieces I pulled out of the last load.

: wheel thrown mugs – brown

: wheel thrown mugs – brown

: wheel thrown mugs – dark brown

: dark handmade mugs

: wheel thrown vase – brown

: handmade mugs – earthtone

: wheelthrown mugs – blue and green

: green glazed stoneware mugs

: handmade stoneware mugs – brown

: textured wheel thrown mugs

: large handmade mugs – brown

: large wheelthrown vase

: stoneware bowls with handles

: wheel thrwon bottle – brown

: stoneware mugs

: wheelthrown cylinder

I gave away a lot of these pieces, especially the mugs, as Christmas gifts. I also gave away a few items from the last load that I fired. I got some positive feedback and haven’t heard of any handles falling off or mugs shattering.

As I was shooting the photos of these pots I experimented with a Circular Polarizer filter.Â It was a cheap filter but it was interesting to find out how much I could control the reflection.Â On some of the bigger items I took two photos with different Polarizer settings and then combined them in Photoshop to get a pretty good result.Â Now I just need to upgrade my gray Walmart fabric to a gradient backdrop so the wrinkles won’t show up behind the pots in the photos.

Pottery Search Engines

I’ve been working on a project the past few weeks while putting off my 10 page paper and in between sessions in the studio.Â Go check out the Pottery Search Engine!Â You can search for Information About Making Pottery, Pottery Supplies, or Pottery Videos.Â You can even submit sites that I may have missed.

Drying Boards for the Pottery Studio

I love summer break!Â One small project that I finished recently was to make some drying boards for my clay studio.Â I only have about 6 bats so I often need to remove a thrown pot from the bat so I can use the bat to throw something else.Â Usually I just set the freshly thrown vessels on my wedging table but then I always need to move them somewhere else before they have begun drying.Â Sometimes this is a pain in the rear because I’ll smash or drop the very soft pots.Â So now I can take my new pots directly from the wheel and onto the drying boards and they will be much easier to move around if needed.

I bought a sheet of 2’x4′ plywood from Lowes for about $6.Â Then I cut off a 18″ x 24″ piece to use for things like platters or slab work.Â Then I divided the rest into 12″ or 6″ squares.Â I decided to go with the deluxe model so I got out my router and gave at least one side of each board an angle so it will be easier to pick up when it’s piled with clay items.

Ceramics drying boards

easy lift drying board