Help Raise Our Barn!

We have been working on building a barn for several months now. We've been hampered by the cold and wet winter we have had, but finally have the girders up on the concrete piers!  We are rolling forward in order to try and have the barn mostly finished before our Farm Opening and Pottery Sale in June. While farming and pottery is an enjoyable lifestyle, it can be a crunch on finances for major infrastructure building like a barn. We are starting a campaign to raise funds for completing the barn. For a $50 contribution toward the project we are making numbered, square-sided bottles made with a glaze from clay dug at the barn's foundation, decorated with white slip, and a bag of fresh-ground whole wheat flour grown on the farm.

With your help we can fulfill our goal of getting Brenda's pottery shop out of our house and all of our farm tools and machinery out to the farm. It will make a huge difference in our operations to have everything at the farm and near the kiln. The barn will include a space for a harvest room to store produce and prepare vegetables such as dried garlic.

Our flour is a hard red winter wheat for bread flour. It has a great consistency and a nutty flavor.

The variety, NuEast, is a part of the Carolina Bread Project to bring back hard red winter wheat to the South. Most wheat currently grown in the South is a white wheat used in pastry flour.

Only 100 bottles will be made for this project, so send an inquiry to libertystoneware@gmail.com soon so you don't miss out! We will start sending the bottles out after our May firing and will continue through the summer. Thanks in advance!

Kiln Firing Results and Show

 Last week was one of those nightmare weeks when everything seems to happen at once and it all becomes a big blur. We had some nasty weather again, and cleaning the pots took longer than I had hoped. Although delayed, here are some photos of pots from the recent kiln firing:

I am pleased with the results overall and very excited to see the newer forms I have been playing with coming to fruition.

All of these vessels went with me to the Catawba Valley Pottery and Antiques Festival this past weekend and some of them found new homes. Thanks to everyone who came out for the show! I am not going to fire in April so that we can work a lot on the new barn/studio at the farm.

Kiln Firing Video!

The second kiln firing of 2014 took place today! I thought you might enjoy this video I made at the beginning of the firing when color from the heat starts to brighten up the ware chamber. You can see ash already starting to sit on the surface of the pots.

Here is what those same pots looked like at the end of the firing:

They are really coated in ash and salt! We will see the results in a couple of days and then on to the Catawba Valley Pottery and Antiques Festival next weekend!

On the Farm and in the Kiln

Some exciting things at the farm include the fact that the sun is shining, it's trying to dry out, the weather is getting warmer, and there are GIRDERS going on the piers for the barn!

 The boards are getting laminated together and then screwed in and nailed.

Equal in excitement is the fact that the spinach direct seeded into our new greenhouse is coming up!

 After the ice set back on Tuesday, I got back in the kiln on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday and got it halfway loaded.

 It was pretty cold at the farm when these photos were taken on Wednesday. The hard brick in the kiln retain the cold temperature and it feels like loading pots in a frozen tomb!

Above is a photo of the kiln all loaded up. I've got it pretty stuffed, but hope it won't make for a difficult firing.

Then I bricked up the door, making one flat wall on the front.

Finally, I mudded up the door with a mix of refractory clay and sand. I once again forgot to leave a brick free to check the cones in the front. This seems to be my repeat "oops" moment. 

Mark your calendars, we have set a date for the farm open house and pottery sale at the farm in June! Sunday, June 15th from 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Curse and a Blessing

Yesterday I thought I was on top of things. I had a work meeting in the morning and then was just going to finish up a few planter dishes to tuck under the shelves in the kiln. Then it dawned on me that I had not made garlic dishes. It is a blessing that I single fire the ware in my kiln. This means that I do not bisque fire the pots before they go into the final firing. It makes for a little slower firing overall, but I enjoy the process. It also allows me to sometimes make these last minute items that have slipped my mind. It is a curse because I don't hold myself to extremely strict deadlines of when I can and cannot be working on wet work to put in the kiln. I seem to keep pushing it every so often, and though I have not regretted it yet (knock on wood), I'm waiting for the day I learn a lesson about when something is not quite dry enough for a single firing.

Ice on grass

Ice on the rose bush

Another instance of a blessing and a curse was today. I woke up to a sheet of ice on everything and obviously was not going to get out to the kiln in the morning to start loading. Luckily (my blessing) I gave myself three days to load knowing that things would come up.

I made it to the farm this afternoon and started loading the kiln. The Catawba Valley Pottery and Antiques Festival is the 28th and 29th!

52 Form Project - Weeks 9 and 10

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 9 and 10

Sorry for the break in posting about the 52 Form Project. Broken wheels and power outages have a good way of throwing a wrench into the works, or making you more flexible!

As a part of the 52 Form Project, I wanted to revisit a form I made several years ago. The lidded dish I often called a "butter dish" until I was repeatedly asked if it were possible to use it for other purposes. They are made of two pieces, a low dish and a rounded lid.

I am excited to see what these dishes will look like in the kiln firing. I made sure to glaze the interior of the lid. The first time I made this form I found that the interior of the lid stayed very dry, which I think could be seen as disconcerting.

 I also made an attempt at a lidded dish with two flattened sides. I cut  the base much like the way in which I made the baskets, but rather than cutting one feather shape in the base, I cut two on either side of the dish base.

Courtesy, Arizona Daily Star

For my 10th week, I found some inspiration in a 100 year-old potter named  Rose Cabat. I read about an exhibition of her work opening in Arizona, and really wish I could see it in person. I particularly enjoy in the interview that she said, "I didn’t consider it a career...It was what I felt like doing. … If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it.”

Courtesy, Invaluable.com

Rose Cabat makes what she calls "feelies" which are seen in the photo above. I don't tend to be attracted to a form like this, but I think through my interest in her life and work as a potter I am fascinated by the form, the name, and the glazes.

When I went into making the form though, I found myself reverting to the familiar ovoid shape. I made a few pieces that admittedly look basically like ovoid bottles without handles, but then I went toward a different shape.

I have a terrible time leaving enough clay at the shoulder and neck for making a small bottle neck or opening.  Because of this, I found myself with an ovoid shape (which I love) and a simple, cupped rim. I think it might have some potential as a decorative vase, but I will reserve my final judgement for after the kiln firing. Here is how the other decorated pieces ended up:

White slipped surface with a scratched design

 I am going to work a little more on this venture. Making the ovoid shapes with the open rim (as opposed to the bottle shapes) felt really good and the design feels like something I want to return to. The bottle shapes felt just like that, bottles. If they had not dried out so quickly with the power outage, I think I would have just put handles on them, because they just look like bottles to me. Maybe I will also go back to attempting some "feelies!"

Improvisation

Improvised wheel set up

I was okay with using a substitute wheel until the other day. I weighed out my clay to make wine cups and pint cups, and when I turned to the wheel, I thought, "oh, no." Not one of those quick, surprised, "oh, no's," but rather a drawn out, deep-voiced, dramatic, "ohhhhhhhh.....nnnoooooooo!"
Why did I have this thought? It hadn't occurred to me just how accustomed I had become to my little Creative Industries wheel, until I realized that I based the heights of my cups on items sitting on the table that surrounds the wheel. So, basically, I put a long paint brush off the end of my water bucket to gauge my wine cups, and something similarly with the pint cups. It took some figuring and ransacking the broken pottery collection to find the right combination of things to get the correct heights. Above is what I came up with. Never a dull moment!