Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz
Here are a few pots from the last glaze fire. ^6 oxidation. Stoneware: Warm Brown or Buff Stoneware by Amaco.
Still trying a lot of different glaze combinations and trying decals on different glazes.
I’ll be glazing another load in the next few days. I hope to start concentrating on a few glazes and combinations that I like in hopes of a more defined body of work.
Apparently I took a couple months off from the blog. But now I should have enough content ideas to keep me posting regularly for a while. You can also see my latest activities on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Anyway, on with the post!
What would your dream weekend look like? A while (months!) ago I experienced something that was pretty darn close for a serious hobbyist potter (like myself at this point). To any full time potter it was probably just another day at the office but for me it was something that I look forward to in the future if I ever go “full time” clay.
On Friday (May 2nd) after school I stopped at the Rothshank wood kiln and found Troy Bungart and Moey Hart on duty. They were trying to get the back chamber temperature up. I sat and chatted with them for a few hours.
Troy and Moe stoking the kiln
I recently shot some photos of the most recent glaze fire. These were mostly completed during the polar vortex winter that kept us cooped up inside for months. Which is always okay with me, as long as I have enough clay! Everything was fired to ^6 in oxidation. Clay is either Warm Brown Stoneware or Buff Stoneware or a combination of both. For more details, click on the images.
This was my favorite surface from this kiln load. I like the Jen’s Juicy Fruit and Waterfall Brown combo better on the Warm Brown Stoneware but it looks pretty good here too on the Buff Stoneware running over my light brown glaze. It might even run a little more on the Buff Stoneware?
side fired bowl
I was commissioned to make 6 small coffee mugs so I made a bunch. It was nice to do a series and work with some subtle variations. I hope to do some more multiples soon.
series of small mugs
The penultimate and final glaze loads before the end of the year have been fired revealing mixed results. About half of the stuff in this last two loads were projects from Clay Camp which all came out pretty well. The stuff that I managed to squeeze in mostly consisted of mugs,cups and tumblers. I had two different Amaco clay bodies present: My old favorite, Warm Brown Stoneware and the smooth and bright Buff Firing Stoneware.
buff stoneware cups
I think these are two of my favorites from the last two loads. The cup on the left is my most Lehman-esqe piece yet and the glaze did some amazing things. The cup on the right also has some awesome crystal-y things happening with the glaze. So I slapped the macro attachment on my lens and got some detail shots.
I had another chance early in December to go visit Dick Lehman and study his fine pottery. As an added bonus, he also had his basement open for browsing which was full of his early work and work from many other great potters that he has collected over the years.
lehman sale
I got to talk with him about his work for a while and asked him all kinds of questions. It’s been a while since the conversation took place but I’ll type out some of the details I remember and post some of my favorite photos. So take everything I say with a grain of salt since my memory is far from flawless.