Pottery Collection: Johnston

I'm still trying to get my photo system setup. I have been able to take decent pictures using one system, but it was cumbersome and I had work on the image quite a bit after it came out of the camera. I'm getting closer to being able to have a simple, compact system with little image processing, but still a ways to go. Here is another practice shot of one of my favorite pots.I realize I need to just use a reflector to cut the glare, but for some reason I just won't give in.

Daniel Johnston - Seagrove, NC

Current system:

Etsy Shop Up

I finally got an Etsy site started yesterday:

http://barberpottery.etsy.com

Window Wonderland Video

Every year,  Franklin has an event called Window Wonderland. The main street shops stay open on Friday night and serve things like cider and cookies. There are carriage rides, carolers, and luminaries. The really neat thing is that most of the windows have live people in them creating a scene. For example the shoe store has a cobbler and other stores might have children for a Christmas morning scene. Our shop doesn't have room for people in the window space so we're getting creative. We've shot a short promotional video that we are going to have playing in the window instead. It's not a high quality production, but maybe it will occupy the men while their wives shop.

I've put it up for now on BarberPottery.com @

http://www.barberpottery.com/seeitmade.aspx

Unaker - Processing

I'm trying to get a little more of the white clay processed so that I can make a few items for processing. Also, Annie mentioned the pieces I showed in the blog earlier, wondering how they made it through the kiln

Well, they made it fine. This clay is very high fire so it isn't vitrified at cone 6. I'm almost positive it wouldn't be at cone 10 either without amendments. But it looks good for decorative purposes with the clear glaze. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the bowl before I took it over to Tom. This time I'll actually post of photo of the next finished piece.

Anyway, here is a short video showing how I process the clay:

Smiley Face Thing

An explanation of the smiley face thing in the last blog post.

Evening's Work

After work I started slaking down some of the unaker I still have from the Rose Creek mine, trimmed some work from yesterday, and threw a batch of dessert cups along with a couple of vases.

New Extruder

My new extruder arrived today. I had recently decided that I would extrude the overflow channel for some sinks I'm working on. I have one sink in the drying rack now, but it is sans-overflow. Anyway, I stood in wonder as I extruded foot after foot of a round clay tube I had no use for whatsoever. It took me back to the Play-Doh days - without the intoxicating smell.

Even with the economy imploding, this month has been our best month in the two years we have ran our shop. Saturday was the Pumpkin Festival and we had our biggest day ever. The down side of that of course is that I have to get crackin' on the pottery. And since I work for a tax software company, this is our busiest time of year (yes, tax professionals work Jan-April, but the software is written right now). Between the two gigs, it's making for long days. But this year I am going to just keep producing all through the lean months to help build stock for the busier times. Last year I didn't quite have the confidence that it would all sell.

Pottery Collection: Kline

I was recently photographing some of my pottery and decided to shoot some of my favorite pots to show on this blog. This one is by Michael Kline in Bakersville, NC. You can read more about him here. It's as much a bowl with a handle as a cup and often serves as my ice cream bowl.

Unaker - Made it through the bisque

I bisque fire my pots to cone 04, and the first tiny vase I made survived just fine. The clay really looks nice. The really small specks that were black before firing now have an iron red color too them. If you hold it in the sun they really stand out. Otherwise it has a very pale pink tone to it. Nothing like the other stuff I've used. My current iron-rich clay is very pink after bisque and the buff color clay I used previously is still significantly pinker.

After the bisque:

 

Here is a "greenware" (unfired)  bowl. It definitely has a greenish cast:

 

Unaker - Now what?

Below you'll see me with my score of white clay. Great, but now what? I did some research and came up with a plan. While the balls look like they are all clay, they have a large amount of sand trapped in them. So to separate the sand from the clay I do the following;

• Soak the dry clay in water to make it into a slurry
• Thin the slurry down so that the sand can settle in the bottom of the bucket.
• Pour the good water (with clay suspended) into something so the water can be removed.

I decided to use some small flower boxes and pieces of bed sheet. This allows the water to drip out over time leaving me with clay.

Lots of sand. This is what's left behind after I pour off the clay water:

Here's the clay drying up:

Finally, here's a small vase made with the clay:

Unaker

"The material is an earth, the produce of the Chirokee nation in America, called by the natives ‘unaker’, the propertys of which are as follows, videlicet,......" 1744 Ceramic Patent

This summer I've been on the trail of "Unaker" or Cherokee white clay. It has a long history in this area involving none other then Josiah Wedgwood (the preeminent English potter) and England's quest for porcelain to rival the Chinese. In 1767 Wedgwood sent a representative over to try to get a monopoly on the clay, but found that there was just too many complications involved regarding dealing with the natives and the high cost of transportation. It was a shame, because he declared the clay as superior to anything found in England.

Though it's Wedgwood's name that constantly comes up and his name as well on the historical marker nearby, there's compelling evidence that Andrew Duche' had already used the clay in the earliest English porcelain production.

Anyway, I've been intrigued by this clay and decided to find some. So I started asking around and got a few leads. I had a great time visiting with Zena Pearl and Ed (octogenarians)  and hearing more about the area and how things were 50 years ago around here. Through a friend I was finally put in touch with the owner of a local ruby mine, Tom Sterrett. Keep in mind that Franklin is after all, the "Gem Capital of the World". Anyway, it turns out that when Tom is using his trac hoe to dig up dirt for the  customers he hits veins of clay. To him the clay is a bane and he was very generous in allowing me to come over last Sunday and load up the minivan with chunks of white clay.

Click below for more reading:

Pictures of the Wedgwood pottery made with this clay 

Did Duche' beat Wedgwood to the punch?

Another guy backs the notion that Duche' is the man

Glazing Pots

Yesterday I took the day off from my full time job to work in my part time job. I had to mix a batch of glaze then coat a bunch of pots. Here are a few of them after getting a coat of one color and waiting for the next.

Couple of Canisters

These haven't been sanded or fired yet and the tallest is 14 inches.

GlazeCalculator.com

I have recently launched a new website: www.GlazeCalculator.com. It offers a free online tool for calculating the Seger Unity Formula from a pottery glaze recipe. Of course, anyone but a potter will have to really work at it to care.

Recent work

It took me a while to figure it out, but the blue responds much more to temperature than my other glazes. It kept going much more blue-green and only occasionally exactly what I wanted. Finally, Christy and I figured out that it got that way if any area of the kiln was fired just past cone 6. The middle of the kiln is the hottest, and even a small difference in temp made a big difference in color. We almost always have witness cones in each load and we finally saw a pattern: The best blues came out on the top shelf and it's the coolest. Now I have lowered the peak temp and that made it clear what the issue was. It's still easy to get the middle too hot unless I back it more loosely, which is hard to do when you have a really small kiln. So I can just put different colors on the middle shelf when possible.

Big (for me) bowl

As I said before I have very little time right now, and so tonight I decided to only throw 2 large bowls. This one is just under 16 inches wide and is the biggest I've thrown so far. I say I had planned to throw 2. But when I had thrown this one I couldn't get it off the wheel without taking off the splash pan, which I didn't want to deal with. The bat that I was using was exactly the same size as the wheel head so I can't really get a good grip on it with something so heavy on it. It's best to use a bat that is at least slightly larger than the wheel head so you can get a good hold on it.

Too busy

I'm plagued by a good problem. Even though it is the off season, I have been selling what little pottery I can make. This doesn't mean I am selling a ton, but rather that I have very little time to make any. This is the busiest time of year at work. And while I don't usually take orders I have several "requests" in where I am suppose to call people when I make them. This is of course a good problem to have, but I am hoping to get a big stock pile before spring and summer so that we can go fly fishing at least once a week in the evenings without feeling guilty.

Magazine is out

The magazine article about Christy is out! The cover and article look good. Because of the format they didn't end up using the photo we hastily put together. It actually looks better without it because the style of the photo didn't fit in well with the artwork. I like that they put in a shot of our honor system racks and storefront instead.

View a PDF of the article here.

Magazine Photo

In January a local magazine (one of those kind you find in resort towns that highlights galleries, restaurants, etc)  is doing a feature on Christy and her art will be on the cover. As a part of that they also want to show some of our pottery in the article. So this evening after work I had to rig up a way to take better photos. I made a soft box out of foam core and tracing paper and we were able to get a sheet of Formica 1/2 price at Lowes because it was so grimy. It didn't take much to make it almost new. There is still a little too much glare, which I think I can eliminate with more thought. This was about the best we could do in 2 hours pointing a halogen lamp through a homemade soft box:

Latest Casserole

Here is the latest casserole. This one is just under 2 quarts. I'd list it as 1.5, but it is probably 1.75 or more.

Small Canister

I recently started working on canisters. I have some bigger ones in the drying stage but we just glazed a batch of smaller ones:

 

Studio pictures

These are really just pictures of the throwing room. We have the kiln in another room and all the spraying of glaze outside. The second picture is my view from the wheel. Usually Christy is setting at that small table carving designs on pots while I'm throwing. After I trim the leather hard pots and Christy carves them they go on the wooden rack to dry enough to bisque fire them before glazing them. The white table by the window is the wedging table. You can see the wire running from near the top of the window on the right to the side of the table. I take a block of clay and use that to slice it before weighing it and kneading it. The triple beam scale in the window is used to weigh out glaze ingredients.

 

Recent work

 

My first mug:

First Casserole

The handle is a little jacked up, but this is my first casserole. It is about 12" wide. Hopefully it dries without cracking. If it makes it through glazing, I'll post another picture.

 

Wheel running again

The pottery wheel is up and running again. I had the motor pulley machined this weekend and installed everything yesterday. I had to modify the belt and pulley system cover using a jigsaw, but that was pretty simple. The new motor is at least as smooth as the old one and is certainly more powerful.

Ice cream bowls

We started selling small ice cream bowls in the ice cream shop next door. They are really dessert cups and they fit a scoop of ice cream about perfectly. In the past we have had people buy a bowl and then go next door and ask to get their ice cream in it. So, we started displaying the bowls on the ice cream counter and people can get a bowl they can keep with their ice cream. Sharon (ice cream/chocolate shop owner) allows them to pick a bowl, she washes it, then serves them up. We just started and sold 2 today. That really isn't bad considering that it was a pretty slow day. I'll have to get busy and make a few more when the wheel is back up.

These pictures also show how we are spraying glazes. We are able to keep the lines from being quite as hard that way, though the colors are less blended on these bowls than most of our other sprayed items. We switched to spraying partly because the prettiest parts of the glazing was where the two colors mixed. Now we can put the "overlap" color in more places, more evenly if we want.

Blown Motor

Sunday evening the motor to my pottery wheel blew. Well, it basically just quit working. When I tried to center about 7 pounds of clay the resistance bogged the motor down. When I took every thing apart, I found that the motor was really hot and decided I had better get to finding a new one. I looked around and found that I could get a more powerful surplus motor for about half of what it would cost me to order a replacement from Brent (the wheel company). In fairness to Brent, their prices did match similar motors. It's just that I could get this particular one for much less. This wheel uses a permanent magnet DC motor, which is significantly more expensive than normal AC motors like you might find on most woodworking equipment. As I understand it, the DC is better at handling the variable speed control. As you can see it is much bigger. The only problem I have now is that the diameter of the shaft is 1/8 bigger, so Jason (older brother) is going to re-bore the hole to fit this weekend. He is a machinist, so hopefully it will be no big deal. I wired it up to the controller and it seemed fine. Of course, without having the pulley bored out I couldn't use it to turn the wheel. If all goes well, I will be back in business Monday.

Wax Resist

Yesterday we made our first attempts at using wax resist on the body of the pot. We always wax the feet of the pots, but this was our first attempt at wax resist to decorative effect.

Different clay and glaze

 

 

Recent glazes

Recently I mixed up a blue that I really like. It looks totally different depending on the thickness. It looks midnight blue with tiny crystals in it when it's thick and it is very light, matte blue where thinner. The best part is that it overlaps well with my other glazes. My favorite is probably it matched with the green. This is it over a nutmeg glaze. The first is an example of a very thin application. The second picture is an example of a thicker application.

Mom, this is not the pattern we were talking about the other day. I don't have a picture of that. But I was about to take this one to Christy's shop, so I snapped a picture.

For BB

Becky, you pointed out that our mother hoarded all the "seconds" I sent home with her last time and you were left out. Well, last night I bought some porcelain clay and tried it. It is much less plastic and harder to use, so I may not do many (any) for a while, but you get my first one. I even marked it for you (see photo below - it's not clear but is says "for BB". I guess it is a bowl. I started out pulling a cylinder, then I decided to make it bowl like. I didn't make it wide enough to be useful for eating without chopsticks, but you'll find a use for it.

I have no idea how my glazes will work on porcelain, so it could end up really bad. Who knows. I was thinking of trying the tri-color glaze. I hope it turns out really cool so you can gloat about it.

Christy's Underglazing

This morning while I threw a few pots, Christy painted on a couple that I had done a few days ago. When we were at Highwater Clays recently we bought some underglaze, and as it turns out, they work pretty much like her watercolors. I think for the look we really want we will be using over-glaze, but I still thought it was neat. She painted a vine that went most of the way around, where it met a dragonfly.

Custom Pottery Order

I was up at Christy's shop for lunch the other day when a call came in. It was a very sweet lady that I met briefly on the street a few weeks earlier. She had complimented my pottery as I was bringing back into the shop one afternoon. We were both in a hurry and so we just chatted a few minutes and that was it. Anyway, this time she was calling because she needed some chalices (think Anglican communion) made for a confirmation class. Eight children in her church were going through confirmation classes and would soon be admitted to the Lord's Table and full church membership.  I explained that I was flattered that she thought of me, but that I really was a beginner, I didn't make chalices, and if I did it was unlikely I could make eight that were all alike.

She wouldn't take no for an answer. She was very kind but continued to press me - pleading to at least give it a try. I told her I would think about it and call her back in an hour or so. I called back and explained everything. There were a few things she had to understand:

1) Pottery isn't woodworking. When I "make" them it might be 10-14 days before I know if they turn out ok.

2) By the time I do know if they turn out OK or not, there is no going back and fixing them by the time she needs them.

She assured me that while she thought it would be very special for them, they would be OK if I didn't deliver. In short, either I tried it or they didn't get them anyway.

So I have spent a few hours now trying to figure out how to make them. There are several ways and I have tried them all, but I think I have settled on an approach. I made a prototype yesterday. It is not very good and it is about 2 inches too small, but it did give me hope that I can pull it off. It was the shape and attachment of the stem and the bowl that concerned me, and I think I have the "how" part of it. Now, I just have to make it bigger and pull off eight (plus extras for breakage) of them that are roughly the same.

New glaze

As I mentioned before, my last kiln load was different than I had hoped. It had a few good pieces, but many bad ones. After that one I thought about what might have caused the results and it all boiled down to glaze application and thickness. Yesterday we mixed up a new glaze called raspberry and glazed another kiln load. The kiln was cool enough to open when I got home from work and I was pleased to see how things turned out. The only new glaze shown below is the raspberry. The other is the coppery green I am working with.  When it is thicker it is green. Where it is thin it turns bronze.

It's interesting to note that the raspberry glaze is actually a spearmint green color before it is fired. It ends up that color because of what happens to tin oxide and chrome oxide when they interact during the firing.

Vase - 5 " tall, 5 1/2' wide

Bowl - 9" wide

Vase - 5 1/2" tall

Thru-hikers and glazes

Franklin is starting wake up for the spring with snowbirds and tourists coming back. As a result more people are starting to come by the Christy's art shop and today got to chat with an older AT thru-hiker. He was probably in his late fifties and was a little banged up so he was taking a few days off in Franklin to rest. His wife was mailing him sections of 'War and Peace' along the way. She would bind up small (and therefore light) sections of the book and mail them to him along he way. Pretty neat.

Also, we mixed up bigger batches of glaze and fired a kiln load. The good news is that we reproduced the colors of the glazes. The bad news is that where the application was a little thick or thin it really showed. I took the quality control hammer to most of them and kept the ones that didn't have many problems. The planter that I posted a week or so ago turned out really good.

Potter's Mark

Recently I had a potter's mark (  aka "chop" ) created by ClayStamps.com. I designed the chop in Photoshop and sent it to be created. It works great. I was worried that the clay would get stuck in it, but that doesn't happen at all. I snapped the following photo after marking on one of the pots I trimmed tonight.

Tea bowls

Some time ago, when I was trying to decide on a type of clay, I bought 50 lbs of brown clay. I have since decided on a buff clay (Ellen Buff clay from Highwater Clays in Asheville, NC).  So the past few days I have been trying to use up the brown. The problem is that if I try to work with both types of clays the equipment (bats, etc) would have to be cleaned up really good each time I change types. This doesn't really make any sense for me, so I am just going to use one type for now.

Anyway, I have been making these "tea bowls". I guess they are really an americanized version of the tea bowl. Meaning of course, that they are a lot bigger. Japanese tea bowls are really pretty small - bigger than a shot glass and smaller than a mug. The ones I have been making have roughly the consistency of a good sized mug. The "Big Gulp" version of a tea bowl I guess. Odds are that they will all end up as driveway fill at some point.  While I was at it I made a planter and saucer. If the clay looks multi colored at all it is simply that it is dryer in some areas. They are both made with the same clay.

Glaze Test Results

We mixed up a few batches of glazes this weekend and I just opened the kiln from the firing. Overall I was really happy. There was only one glaze that I didn't care for much. Also, I adjusted one of the recipes I had very slightly and was very pleased. I don't know much yet about the glaze chemistry but I did know that generally speaking copper gives you green in oxidation. I just upped the amount of copper and I did get the slightly more green I was looking for. Of course I am only basing my "more green" notion on a picture of the original recipe. It could be that there would have been virtually no difference at all between my recipe and the original. The pictures do a poor job of showing glazes. The appear much different in person.  Below are a couple pictures from the test. The isolated test tile is my favorite. Also, I included a photo of the "green" glaze before it was fired. It is amazing that it starts off red and ends up coppery green. I tested many combinations of glazes and if time permits I will post more photos.

ITC and Glaze

I coated the kiln and the shelves with ITC 100-HT. This stuff is really expensive and nobody (except ITC) knows what's in it. What a deal! Seriously, it protects the kiln furniture from the intense heat and also protects the kiln interior. It is best sprayed with a sand blasting gun, but since I don't have one I had to brush it. It is really gritty and almost impossible to get even. Hopefully it still works ok. I fired the kiln with furniture to cone 04 to set everything.

Also, my glaze materials arrived last night. I am in the process of sorting them out and finding containers for each of the chemicals. The stuff can kill you over time if you breathe it, so I strapped on the respirator. Hopefully this weekend I will find time to mix up some glaze tests.

Maiden Voyage

Friday night was the maiden voyage for the new kiln! It is an Olympic 1823whe with the Bartlett electronic controller and an Orton Ventmaster vent.. Christy and I picked it up a week or so ago and Dave from church came and wired it up for us. Having never fired a kiln at all I was a little nervous about the whole thing, but nothing went wrong and all was well. The kiln vent worked great too, as the only thing I smelled was the "new kiln" stuff that comes from the first time everything gets heated up. No sulphur fumes from the ware being bisqued. Another thing I didn't know was the the bisqued pots would be pink. The will be a buff color when glazed fired.



It was pretty cool to open a peep hole and see everything glowing orange at about 1900f degrees. Here are the photos:

This one is a shot looking at a firing cone through a peep hole.