Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

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Summer Pottery – Mugs, Vases, Bowls

I glaze fired a number of items way back in July.  Then I got busy doing other projects like making a backdrop for photographing ceramics, redesigning a website, and getting settled into a new school.  Finally, you can see the finished pieces from that summer glaze fire below.  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
Vase with Glaze streaks
tall blue-green vase
tall blue-green vase
stoneware vase
stoneware vase

stoneware mug set
stoneware mug set
speckled blue-green pot
speckled blue-green pot
small jug with a lid
small jug with a lid

small blue and black vase
small blue and black vase
set of bowls with handles
set of bowls with handles
red-brown mug
red-brown mug

mugs and bowls for the wife
mugs and bowls for the wife
lidded container with handles
lidded container with handles
green-blue mug
green-blue mug

carved vase
carved vase
brown bowl with handle
brown bowl with handle
blue-green tea mug
blue-green tea mug

blue-green mixing bowl
blue-green mixing bowl
blue-green lidded vessel
blue-green lidded vessel

June Glaze Fire Results

Last month I glaze fired close to 20 pieces after mixing some glaze from dry powder.  The Pam’s Blue that I mixed turned out more blue-green instead of the blue-gray that I got from the pre-mixed pint.  It might be applied a little thin but I still like the result.  I got to test a few new glazes such as Espresso Bean and Saturated Iron by Coyote and Frosted Turquoise and Iron Lustre by Amaco.  Some of them turned out nicely.  Most of the items were functional ware: mugs, bowls, etc.

word mugs - laugh, love
word mugs – laugh, love
wheel thrown plate
wheel thrown plate
wheel thrown brown mug
wheel thrown brown mug

wheel thrown bowl
wheel thrown bowl
small blue green bowl
small blue green bowl
pam's blue mixing bowl
pam’s blue mixing bowl

mugs with thumb rest
mugs with thumb rest
mugs saturated iron, pams blue
mugs saturated iron, pams blue
dark brown bowl with handle
dark brown bowl with handle

brown stoneware vessel
brown stoneware vessel
brown speckled bowl
brown speckled bowl
brown mugs
brown mugs

blue green brown platter
blue green brown platter
blue green bowl
blue green bowl
blue brown cup
blue brown cup

I finally got all the pieces photographed about a week ago and I finished cropping and sizing the photos last night.  Now, as I’m uploading these pictures the kiln is cranked up and bisque firing some of the stuff that I’ve thrown recently.   My wife wanted a set of bowls with handles, I’ve got a set of four mugs, there are some vases and other tall forms and  a few lidded vessels.

Pottery Sale / Bisque Fire

I’m finally getting a chance to bisque fire all the stuff I made over spring break.  The kiln is on and firing!  I noticed as I was loading the kiln that I was rapidly running out of shelf space.  I decided to haul a bunch of my finished pieces to Ligonier for an “End of the School Year/Clean off the Shelves” Pottery Sale.  There was a really good response and out of the twenty-some pieces that I took in I only brought back four.  I consider most of the pieces I sold “my experimental work” as I was mostly trying glazes and different forms.  A few people requested items of a certain shape or glaze color for next time.  Now that I’m officially on summer break I plan to spend a good amount of time in the clay studio.  I’m going to head down to the hardware store to get a good respirator and one of those long mixers that can be attached to a drill.  Then I’ll be ready to mix up some Pam’s Blue glaze.  I’ve got about 3 weeks left of my class at IUSB but when I’m not in class or doing homework I hope to be glazing the bisque pieces and throwing some new items.

Spring Break Pottery

Well, back to the real world tomorrow…  Spring Break is over but I feel like I accomplished a few things.  I spent a lot of time in the clay studio, worked on the new site, and did some yard work.

wheel thrown stoneware

wheel thrown stoneware

Here is a look at the drying shelf in the clay studio.  I threw a number of pieces in the last week, mostly mugs and bowls.  I used three different kinds of stoneware over the last few days and I’m excited to see what the two new clays do when they are fired and glazed.  I feel like I’m making some small improvements with my wheel throwing technique.  For one thing, I’m getting more efficient.  I also feel like I’m better at pulling handles than I was a year ago.  A couple things that I hope to work on next might include lids and throwing some larger forms.  I can’t wait to bisque fire and then try some of the new glazes I got.

I also worked on my new side project.  There is a new feed on Potterymakinginfo.com called the working artists feed.  It produces the most recent posts from the blogs of ceramic artists and potters.

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 - brown
wheel thrown mugs – brown
wheel thrown mugs - dark brown
wheel thrown mugs – dark brown

dark handmade mugs
dark handmade mugs
wheel thrown vase - brown
wheel thrown vase – brown
handmade mugs - earthtone
handmade mugs – earthtone

wheelthrown mugs - blue and green
wheelthrown mugs – blue and green
green glazed stoneware mugs
green glazed stoneware mugs
handmade stoneware mugs - brown
handmade stoneware mugs – brown

textured wheel thrown mugs
textured wheel thrown mugs
large handmade mugs - brown
large handmade mugs – brown
large wheelthrown vase
large wheelthrown vase

stoneware bowls with handles
stoneware bowls with handles
wheel thrwon bottle - brown
wheel thrwon bottle – brown
stoneware mugs
stoneware mugs

wheelthrown cylinder
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.  It was a cheap filter but it was interesting to find out how much I could control the reflection.  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.  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.

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