Flexibility

Life has a good way of teaching you to be flexible. After a broken wheel the other week, we were hit with an awful ice storm last week. Pottery and farming have been pretty good at teaching me to go with the flow.

 This storm shut off our power for several days and wreaked havoc all over the area. Above is how we cooked supper one evening. How romantic, right? As one of my friends said to me, "I worry about you less than just about anyone I know." I guess working at living history museums and reenacting has its perks to prepare you for going with the flow when the electric goes out!

Weighted down tree in the front yard

Ice is one of those beautiful, scary things. I was mesmerized by the heavy coat of ice on every surface, but not so mesmerized by the frequent breaking limbs, branches, and falling trees.

Production was put on hold for the days without electricity, but I was able to make it out of the house to help out at the North Carolina Potter's Conference. It was great to be among a laid-back crowd that was flexible enough to deal with power outages and changing program schedules. I'll post more about the Potter's Conference soon.

I got back in the studio on Sunday to get things glazed and decorated.

Empty cases at the Pottery Center

On Monday, I dismantled the "Old Ways in Mind" exhibition at the North Carolina Pottery Center.I was elated to take it down, but happy to have seen it on Sunday with other potters at the Center.

Today I was in the studio for my last week of wet work.  I call it my "last week of wet work" since that was what we called it at Berea College when I was in the ceramics studio there. Do you all have terms for your last week before the cut-off date to have pots ready for firing?

On the Farm and the Wheel Debacle

Well, late last week (Thursday and then into Friday morning), my trusty wheel motor died. If any of you fine readers happen to have a Creative Industries Model MP (earlier model, probably not 1 HP) wheel and could tell me some specs on the motor, that would be awesome. I'm hoping it is just the bearings, and have ordered some replacements, but the labels on the motor were removed at some point so I do not know the RPM, horse power, or voltage. If I don't have the specs just right, I can blow the controller! I'm limping along with an older Shimpo that also has a motor going out, but the photo above is where Week 9 of the 52 Form project got stopped! I've been playing a lot of catch up this week, so week 9 & 10 may just have to get combined when I can get things back in order!

Other projects this week in the studio have been mostly small items easily thrown on my rickety wheel. Bowls, mugs, and bottles have been filling the tables and shelves up!

New basket shapes

I was excited to make a few more of the basket shapes based on trials from one of my earlier forms from this year.

Pouring soil into the beds

Beds filled!

Plastic on!

In other news, we have plastic on the greenhouse and soil in the beds! I personally raked and hoed about 24 cubic yards of soil into the beds! The greenhouse plastic went on this past Sunday just before we had some snow and ice on Monday.

This morning's adventure was to pick up some wood for future kiln firings. This weekend is the North Carolina Potter's Conference. I'll be there on Friday and Sunday, and think it should be a good time.

52 Form Project- Week 8

The 52 Form Project 

What is it?

My 52 Form Project is devised to help me stretch my creative muscles, explore new forms, or finally get to making forms I have been wanting to try for a long time. I am planning to make a new or modified form for every week of this year.

How can you help?

Your input on the forms, their shape, decoration, appeal, and function would be greatly appreciated. Some forms, if they seem like they may do well in the market, may become a part of my regular production.

Week 8

Sorry for the delay in getting this post out for last week's form. I wanted to wait because I was able to tuck a few of this form into the recent kiln firing. I was very excited about their results and waited to post and share!

Last week's form was a double bowl, made by basically squishing two wet bowls together. I made them with about 1 1/4 pound balls of clay (for each bowl). The first step was the make a few bowls and put them on a dry bat or board (as seen above).

Wet the bat

Slide the second bowl into the first bowl

Then I  put a little water on the bat in front of the other bowl, threw a second bowl, and slid the two together. Because the walls are wet, they make a good adherence to one another. Simon Leach also has a good video on the basics of putting a double bowl together with this video:

Leach puts a strap handle over the top of the piece, but I went for a different approach.

Bowls together with pulled wall

Pulled walls like a pitcher lip

Much like pulling a spout or lip for a pitcher, I grasped the wall between the two bowls and pulled upward to make a little arch. The wide rim on the bowls helped add some clay to the wall and made this process a little more possible.

Feather cut out

Smooth edges with fingers

Rather than waiting for the bowls to set up, I cut a feather shape into the wall between the bowls, and then smoothed it out, making a little handle.

Squeezing the sides to level the bowls

On  few of the sets the walls dipped in at the juncture, and I found squeezing the sides of the bowls put them back into basic level with one another.

Where that didn't work out to my liking, I fluted the edge, also like turning a pitcher lip over, and created a decorative edge on the bowls.

Row of bowls

Smaller double bowls or the double-dipper condiment dish!

I am rather fond of this form, and have also tried it out with my little condiment dishes to make double-dipper condiment dishes! Here are some photos of the finished pieces from the kiln firing:

I stamped the front side of the bowls with "Liberty Stoneware"

On the Farm and Kiln Firing

Blue skies!

It was an absolutely gorgeous day for a kiln firing yesterday! Everything was all loaded up, the overnight preheat went well, and other than some strong winds that wreaked havoc on the pressure in the kiln, it was a good firing! When the wind is strong, it keeps the chimney from drawing quite as well, and plays around with the fireboxes, but we did not have a lot of stalling out or holding at one temperature, so that was nice.

I cannot say it was a successful firing until tomorrow when I open it up!

The draw rings, as seen above, which are pulled when I am salting the kiln, looked nice. I put about 10 pounds of salt in, then drew some of the rings out. The first round of ring were not quite as salted as I would like, but the blue slip color looked nice. I added a little more salt and then pulled some more draw rings.

Greenhouse under construction

Yours, truly, volunteered today to help the Farmer with some projects at the farm while the kiln cooled. No rest for the weary! We worked in the morning on pulling dead plants from the garden beds and getting the lining on the raised beds in the new greenhouse in place. Here are some photos of the lining going in:

The lining will keep the grass from growing up from beneath the greenhouse and (hopefully) help keep the weeds down.

While weeding the garden beds this afternoon I came across some lovely worms, which excited me to no end. Our farm was historically used for tobacco and then hay, which can deplete the soil. Earthworms are not present in large numbers where the is depleted soil. When we first started putting in the gardens, we saw very few earthworms. Now, they are all over the place!  This means we are getting lots of good organic matter into the soil.

I also came across a very tiny little frog. Can you find him in the photo above? If not, check out this photo:

We have been enjoying the tiny frogs' return to the creeks and ponds near the farm. Their chirping sounds are such music to my ears!

Of all of the things we did today (which also included bonding over cutting potato starts in the evening), feeding greens to the chickens was perhaps the most entertaining thing of all.  Above is a photo of the chickens eating on a random plant of kale I pulled from the garden. Here is what it looked like after a few short minutes:

Death to the kale plant

The chickens love their greens! I am happy the daylight is getting longer as that means we are getting more eggs from our chickens, so we have a few more options for kitchen adventures! Speaking of the kitchen, I highly recommend trying The Palate magazine's recipe for Brazilian Chicken Stew. We used one of our farm chickens we processed last year, sweet potatoes from the late fall harvest, and tomatoes canned last summer. The flavor of peanuts (I used peanut butter), tomatoes, coconut, and sweet potatoes was fantastic! I also love that it was described as "a kindred spirit to the many aromatic one-pot meat dishes that followed the spice trails and trade winds from the western coast of Africa, to the eastern coast of South America, up through the Caribbean, and into the deep ports of the colonial South."

You might be thinking, "Brenda, where is your 52 Form Project from last week?!" For you who are wondering, I hope to have a surprise from the kiln firing tomorrow about last week's form! Stay tuned! 

Oops

The illusive cones now sealed behind the bricks

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and a thought rushed through my brain, "Brenda, you forgot to leave an open brick to see those cones in the front!" After a pause this thought was followed by, "AGAIN!" Bricking up the front of the kiln is usually at the end of the day, likely just before dusk, and I tend to rush it. This is not the first time I have not left a peep hole to see the cones in the front of the kiln. The cones in the bottom left of the above photo are now invisible until I open the kiln. I suppose, on the bright side, they will still tell me whether that corner made it to temperature!  C'est la Vie. At least I remembered to put the tube in for the lower pyrometer. Another "oops" for this week was discovered when I was loading the kiln and I saw this on a flowerpot:

Upside down "stoneware"

I have been waiting for the day when this made it to the kiln stage. I've accidentally stamped upside down while demonstrating, and have chuckled over more than one piece of historic ceramic with upside down letters or names, but did not even realize I had done this until it was getting ready to go in! If you want some other great "oops" stories, check out Radiolab's show on other "oops" situations.

Kiln Loading

This whole week has been pretty much swallowed up by kiln loading and various errands. On Monday, we worked on the greenhouse at the farm and got the raised beds finished. Here's a photo of the raised beds in construction:

I've been posting photos on Facebook as I went along with the kiln loading, but I thought I would share some thoughts with the photos and about the process since I just finished yesterday.

Do any of you fine readers remember the game Tetris? I would liken loading a kiln to the game Tetris in which you have different shaped blocks that fall and you have to rotate them in order to fit into the blocks below them. Luckily, in loading the kiln, the blocks don't implode or disappear when you fit them together, but I sometimes wonder if I would go insane if I listened to this theme music all day:



First, the pots had to make it to the farm. We're working on building a barn to get my studio and a workshop out there, but for now, I move the pots from my house to the farm like this:

In other words, I move them VERY CAREFULLY because they're thin, raw clay pots! I've been pretty good about taking photos this week at every level of the loading. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember to snap a photo before throwing another shelf on top (which I did in a few instances), but this will give you the general idea of how it works.

The first couple of rows seem to be the hardest for me. Not only do I have to try and fill as many spaces as possible, but these shelves tend to hold my smaller items, so there are more to deal with! Dishes take up a lot of room. The rims are deceptively wide and they need some tending to in order to get them in the right position. I've been trying to be better about making things like the smaller dishes in the photo below to fit below larger dishes in order to maximize filling the spaces. 

 A few more rows:

 I shifted my front shelves around for this firing and decided to put this stack of flowerpots there in front of the firebox. My theory is that this layout may provide for more airflow and make the kiln more evenly fired. We'll see!

 Kiln halfway loaded and here is what I have left:

 First row on the front stack:

 I purposefully made the first two levels of this stack very tall in order to encourage some air flow. Typically this front left corner is pretty cool in temperature, which is also why I put the flowerpots in the corners.

 Sneaking in a few more dishes:

 I had to take the lid off of the compost crock at the front and put it on top of the stack of dishes in the back left. Otherwise, it could have touched the ceiling, which would not have been a good thing. Top part of the final stack:

 This is the final view of the stacks before I put the bricks up in that opening, making a solid wall across the front.

 And here is what was left at the very end:

I will do a gas preheat overnight on Saturday to keep the pots from freezing since it will be cold and to give us a leg-up on the firing. The preheat puts the kiln at around 200 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday morning and ready to roll. I do what is called single firing, which means that the pots are raw when they are loaded into the kiln (no bisque firing). When we were not doing a preheat, the firing took 17-18 hours, and now with the preheat it takes about 16 hours total. Because I salt the kiln I had to build it out of hard brick, and a double layer of hard brick is a lot of thermal mass to heat up!