Every Year

It happens every year.  It doesn't matter how much we try to plan ahead, we find ourselves the week before Christmas needing to get in one more glaze fire.  I guess it's because I'm pretty much only at the studio on the weekends, but this year, Christmas snuck up on me.  I realized on Wednesday morning (Dec 21) that if we were going to get those last pieces done before Christmas Eve, that I needed to fire THAT NIGHT.  I knew there were things that Lisa and Gail hoped to have finished, and as of Wednesday morning, some of them hadn't even been glazed yet.  While I didn't specifically need anything by Dec 24, I needed to get a few things glazed so that the kiln would be full.

I think Gail was at the studio the better part of the day - or at least most of the afternoon, and I came in after work in the afternoon.  We got it all glazed and loaded...

I can't help but think about this time last year.  On the morning of Dec 22, Allen was loading up the kiln and I could tell he didn't feel well.  I offered to finish it and he took me up on it.  I know this because we keep a firing log that includes the date, the type of fire (bisque or glaze), who loaded it, how long it took, and whatever notes seem appropriate (like forgot to close the peeps, FULL load, results weird, etc.)  That was the last time that Allen loaded his kiln.  Every load of bisque and glaze ware since then has been me.  It's weird still to think about things like that for me.  Clearly I still miss Allen a lot.  I hope that I always will.

Before I could get to the studio Friday, the unloading elf had the kiln unloaded.  For the most part, things seemed to behave appropriately.  The possible exception was the very bottom layer which might not have gotten hot enough.  I'll be doing an element test in the near future to determine if there is an issue or not.

A few weeks ago, I told you about making a replacement piece for a casserole dish that had cracked.

 And below there's the old one on the right and the new on on the left.  Of course, it's not a perfect match, but that's not too shabby, huh?

I also had a few good sized bowls that were finished.

I'm still trying to get our glaze that we call denim blue replaced.  For the second time in a row, I managed to get a glaze with a very similar name that is a very different color.  Our glaze, in the bucket on the left, is labeled Variegated Base Blue and what I've managed to buy twice now is a glaze called Variegated Blue.  I'll be digging in the file of glaze recipes to see if I can find the recipe.   

In other glaze mysteries, our bucket of Falls Creek Shino glaze had gotten all gritty. I sieved it yesterday to see if I could get the chunks to break down.  Didn't get them all dissolved, but maybe it helped some. There was a good bit of grit left in the sieve and a few larger bits.  I rinsed them off to see what they looked like.

What the heck?  It looks like glass, doesn't it?  I have no idea what is going on.

This Week

Just a quick note....

We've been really busy at A Griffin Pottery Associates over the past few weeks.  We appreciate everyone who has shopped with us! 

For your shopping convenience, the studio and gallery will be open the following times:

• Tuesday, Dec 20: noon-4pm (except for a brief time about 2 or so that Jeff has to leave to take care of another obligation)
• Thursday, Dec 22: noon-5:30pm (I'll be closing a little early to go to dinner with friends from out of town.)
• Friday, Dec 23: noon-5pm
• Saturday, Dec 24: 9:30-noon

I'll try to do an actual post about what I've been working on lately sometime later in the week.  

If I forget to say it later on, Merry Christmas!!

Who Would Have Thought?

We decorated our Christmas tree at home today.  In the process, I found this little ornament.

In December of 2002, I attended a week-long seminar titled Contemporary Potters of Western North Carolina at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (or NCCAT).  I had an absolute blast.  It was there under the tutelage of George Rector and Joan Byrd that I tried wheel throwing the first time.  Oh my!  It was so awful.  Awful and definitely something that I wanted to try again some day.  

Fourteen years after that week at NCCAT, here I am.  I own a pottery studio and I am contemplating retirement from teaching and my next career as a full time pauper - I mean potter.  😉  While I still have a few years yet to go before I can retire, it is fun to start thinking about what's next.  

So what happened at the studio this week? 

On Saturdays when I know its going to be a long day, I go home after my workout so I can get a shower.  Yesterday was one of those days.  On the way back, I stopped at Bojangles to get some breakfast.  When the cashier handed me the coffee, I spilled it all over myself.  Oh well.  Then when I took the cup out of the cup holder, the cup holder was full of coffee!  What?  Guess they gave me a defective cup or something.  Getting in the rest of the bag, there were 7 creamers, some butter, and a straw.  So I've got a lot of cream and a coffee cup that I had to leave outside on the sidewalk.  I've got butter and no idea why.  It sure wasn't to go on the seasoned fries or cajun filet biscuit.  I suppose the straw was for stirring cream into coffee.  Once I ate my fries, I forgave them everything though.  The fries were really good.  I'm a fan of a good french fry.

Yes...pots.  

I've been trying to figure out how to make soup bowls with cracker rims like Allen used to make.  The last one of his sold back in the spring, so I've been working from memory.  I finally had a successful attempt this week.  I have a customer who asked me to try to make something to replace some bowls that she ordered online somewhere.  She was really disappointed with the size of the soup bowl in the ones that she bought.  I got this request back in August or early September.  It has taken me this long to get it right.  I hope that in a few weeks, I can call her to tell her that I have something for her to come look at.  If they all come out, there will be 8 of them. 

Here are some mugs that came out of the glaze fire last week.  I am pleased with all of them. 

  

My friend Heather has dubbed the cups below "wine mugs."  I have a few that are different colors with a different design on them and I'll be making more in the future.  They are kind of fun to make (a big plus for me) once I got over being afraid of doing the design on them.  They will work for any drink hot or cold although I do personally like them for wine.  Finish the drink and the cup goes in the dishwasher.  Did you get that?  DISHWASHER.  No hand washing a delicate glass.

One last thing....if you ever wondered about some of the alternative uses of dental floss, we've got one for you right here.  Glaze an ornament in one dip without leaving finger marks.  Leave it to my associates for coming up with a creative way to do what they want to do.  

Christmas is two weeks away and things are about to get busy.  If I don't remember to say it when I see you next, Merry Christmas!  A Griffin Pottery Associates will be open our regular strange hours this week.  Jeff is going to be a little late getting there on Tuesday, but will be there until 4pm.  On Thursday he or I will be there roughly 12 to 6pm.  On Friday, I'll be there 1:30 until 5pm and on Saturday I'll be there (possibly covered in coffee) 10 am to about 4 pm.  

It's Hip To Be Square

I was working on "Not Round Things" this weekend.  A customer returned a large casserole dish that had cracked and I need to replace it.  It has been a long time since I tried making rectangular or square casseroles.

I'm trying to reproduce this dish...or get something like it. 

I started with the biggest round casserole that I could make. 

Then I cut the sides and pushed the walls in on two sides.

I trimmed off the part of the base that was sticking out and cleaned up the seams.

Handles were added the next day and I ended up with this piece.

I also made two others - another rectangular one and something sort of "squareish."

After adding handles...

Keep your fingers crossed that everything turns out ok.  

Speaking of fingers crossed, I need to go unload the kiln.

You Really Can't Find Good Help

Poor Lady dog has been very annoying the last couple of days.  Mostly she is a laid back doggy, but she's been really needy recently.  Jeff has been sick with a really bad cold and I think that she's been concerned because he obviously didn't feel good.  This also means that she hasn't gotten to go on a walk in a while which also might contribute to the neediness of her doggy self.  

I brought her to the studio with me today so that Jeff could sleep.  She H-A-T-E-S the studio.  The only thing more rotten than a second straight day of nothing but glazing is the second straight day of glazing with a whining dog.  

As far as she is concerned, the only upside to the trip was when some people came to visit her.  Please note the blurry, wagging tail.  To you and me, these folks look like customers shopping in the gallery.  To Lady they were obviously there to see her and help her break out of prison.  

Yes - a second straight day of glazing.  I glazed all day yesterday except for when I was waiting on customers.  We had GREAT business yesterday for Small Business Saturday, so I got interrupted a lot.  I also had a ton of things to glaze, so I don't know that I would have gotten finished even if I had been there all alone with no distractions.  Don't misunderstand please.  I will always be happy to be interrupted by people stopping in my gallery to shop.  I was also really happy to get to spend a good part of my afternoon with Gail and her lovely daughter Sara.  It's always fun when Sara visits us.

I went back in today actually just to move the unfinished things out of the way so that Lisa and Gail could work this week, but there are things that I am trying hard to get finished so that I can get Hannah some new things for the coffee shop as soon as possible.  I decided to just suck it up and finish the glazing.  Then I decided to suck it up and go ahead and load the kiln as much as I could.  I'm about 2 shelves short of a full load, so as soon as Lisa and Gail get their glazing done, I'll have a glaze fire.  Stay tuned for pictures of new things soon.  Fingers crossed that all those darn ornaments I've made turn out OK.  Also remind me next year how much I hate making ornaments.  

Small Business Saturday!

Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday.  Please where ever you are, shop with your local small businesses.

I got the place all decorated for Christmas today.  

 

I have to give my mom credit for the decorations.  Without her help, I would have nothing, and that would be sad. The kiln god looks spiffy in his Santa hat, doesn't he?  That is the one decoration that I didn't need Mom to help me with.  Correction.  She was there to call 911 if I fell off the ladder.  All the rest was all her doing.  She gave me advice on what to buy, helped me fancy up the wreaths, made all the bows, and then came over and helped me get it put up.  She even told me it was OK when I managed to accidentally pull the window trim down.  You knew there had to be some sort of struggle, didn't you?

Allen always came in and decorated the Friday after Thanksgiving, so that is what I planned to do.  It was very strange to be doing it myself this year.  Other things that I've done with out him have made me sad.  This time though it was just weird. Maybe because I never helped him decorate, so I don't have those memories.  Or maybe it was just weird because it was 70-something degrees today and I was hanging garland and attaching bows.  Weird weird weird.  

Santa says, "Shop small on Saturday!"

Allen's Pots

Aren't these mugs amazing?

As you know, Ron Philbeck fired the last of Allen's pottery for me a few weeks ago.  Since then, I've sort of been holding them so that the appropriate people got a chance to see them before I put them in our gallery to sell.  I have priced them now, so they will be in the gallery soon.  

Here's a close up of one of those face mugs...

This one must have gotten a blast of soda right in the face. Look how shiny and almost metallic the finish is!  I think it's beautiful.  

There are pitchers...

This one is interesting.  That is a GREEN glaze on the rim, but in that one spot, it turned red. So cool.  I really wanted to buy that one myself, but I've got several Allen pitchers.  At some point one has to say, "I have enough pitchers." 

There are some cool lidded jars...

Each is lined with a different glaze. There was a green one (inside it turned purple), a blue one, a brown one, and a tan one. 

There are some smaller cups...

This is a shape that is very different from what Allen's cups usually look like.  They are almost delicate.  The glazing is probably not what he would have done, but I did the best that I could.  

There are these...

I don't know what he had in mind for these.  They could be really deep baking dishes.  I think they would look wonderful with a plant in them.  

There are some more normal sized baking dishes too, but none of the pictures of them came out all that great. This one shows a few of them.

One last picture of the tea pot...beautiful!

I will probably have these ready to move to the gallery by the end of the week, so if you are interested in owning one or more, you should stop by soon.  

Something New

Earlier this week, I was invited to be a guest on Art Works, a broadcast production of Cleveland Community College. This is a show about art and artists in Cleveland County. Having never done a TV interview before, I really wasn't sure what to expect, but it was fun.  If you would like to watch the show, it will be broadcast later this week on cable channel C-19.  For those of you who are not Time Warner Cable customers, you can catch the show streaming on the Cleveland Community College website.  A link is provided below if you are interested.

Art Works - Susan Jones, Nov 14

Other Things

I don't think that I mentioned here that the kiln chose the weekend right before the pottery show to malfunction.  After determining that the problem was most likely a bad relay (the top two elements weren't heating but the others were) and getting some advice from David Snyder the Kiln Dr, I decided to try to fix it myself.

I'd run across a relay in a drawer that had this piece of tape on it. Here the tape is on my jeans where I stuck it after removing it from the relay. I almost kept it.

What I think probably happened is back in August of 2014, Allen had David come out and replace all the relays in the kiln at once.  The two that were still working at the time, got stuck in the drawer for a time when we needed to do a switch later on.

Being very careful to take one wire off the bad component and put it on the new one exactly the same way, I did the switch.  Then I tested the elements and found them all to be heating like they should be. Success!

I reloaded all the pots and fired it again Friday night.  Today was unload day. 

I was so relieved to see this big platter on the top shelf. It looked absolutely awful before and I was afraid it was ruined.  This is the big platter that I showed a few weeks ago when it was still on the wheel.  I could not be happier about how it turned out.  I didn't kill it!!!

There were lots of other things that I'm happy with too...

I have to say, I'm pretty proud.  Changing out a relay isn't all that hard to do after all.  Once again, I have Allen to thank for setting me up to be successful.  

Soda Fire

I finally had time to check out each of the pots from the soda fire at Ron Philbeck's.  Boxes are unpacked.  The bottoms are checked for rough places and sanded where appropriate.  Close up pictures are taken...and now shared.

Here's some tallish things.

Doppler effect mugs.  When the glaze runs down, they appear less Doppler effect-y to me.  Still ok for mugs.

And some more mugs.  These are shorter and wider than I normally make.

Bowls.

Small lidded bowls.

Small lidded jars.

My favorite casserole from this firing.  Has super cool shiny look on the outside and a wonderful cobalt blue liner glaze. I might have to keep this one. Did a "test drive" last night and it cooks 7-Layer Dip pretty well.

Here's a not so good shot of the other casserole.  Believe it or not, that liner glaze is GREEN. It's an interesting green...goes kind of purple in places.  Almost all the pieces where I used this glaze as a liner came out purpleish instead of green.  It's green on the outsides.

Here's a shot of the outside of those 2 dishes.  Look how different.  The one on the left is made of Wonder White clay and the one on the right is Phoenix.  The different clay bodies produced completely different looks.

All in all, I am very pleased with my results.

I'll share some pictures of Allen's pieces later.  There are people who need to see them in person first.  You can expect more after next weekend probably.