Wednesday, April 23, 2008
New style of rim
Mug handles
Glazing woes
My plan is to do a load of glaze tests before doing anything with the finished pots I'm accumalating. Last night I threw a lot of tiny pots off the hump which should make better glaze tests than tiles. I'm picking up some glaze ingredients from our local potters supplier next week so I can mix a bunch of different recipies.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Visit to the Leach Pottery, St. Ives
While spending a week with family down in Cornwall we visited the recently restored Leach Pottery in St Ives.
The clay room, kiln room and main workshop have all been restored to how they were when the pottery was in use and contain many interesting tools and materials including Bernard Leach's own wheel. New buildings have been added to house an exhibition of Leach's work, a shop and new workshops were some lucky students will learn. There was an exhibition of Bernard Leach's work as well as work for sale by various contomporary potters including Bernard's grandson John Leach all of which was very inspirational.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Off the hump
The name for this blog comes from a pottery technique of producing several items from one large mound of clay on the wheel. This technique appeals to me a lot for some reason although I'm not using it much yet. Its main advantage is for the repeated production of several small items since you don't need to centre a ball of clay for each item, small amounts are fiddly to centre on the wheel. More interesting is the extra freedom it gives you, you can take as much clay as you need for the item, even change your mind and take a bit more by working downwards. This video is a pretty inspiring example of the technique being used by a Spanish potter.
First pots sold
I've been displaying some work at an exhibition of local arts and crafts at the village where I take pottery classes. I wasn't that keen to part with so many items just yet so I only offered 2 for sale which have both sold. I think I underpriced them to be honest. Here they are amongst some other much more interesting pots.
Throwing vases, bottles and jugs
Mel came along to Upwey with me today and got to see me throw some pots for the first time. She took a few decent action shots. The last few sessions I've been concentrating on throwing good cylinders and making bottle or vase shapes. Made 4 today and 8 yesterday.
Another raku firing
It was very windy and some of the items being fired were fragile so the sawdust was added directly to the kiln shelf and the cover replaced with a dustbin. The vase that came out has some really nice crazing lines, they seem to follow a spiral fault in the pot that resulted from how it was thrown.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A small carved vase
Wasn't too happy with this vase when I'd thrown it so I thought I might as well experiment with a bit of carved decoration on it. I finished this with a shino glaze.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Glazing bowls
Had 6 of these rolled rim bowls to glaze tonight as well as a couple of other items. I'm very bad at glazing still, I spend a lot of time cleaning up stray glaze with a sponge, but I gradually made some progress this evening I think. We'll see on Wednesday when I get these back from the kiln.