August 10th, 2008

"Water and feed are not tools that I need for the thing that I've chosen to be." - Sinead O'Connor

My Dad is nearly twice my age, but he can still outwork me any day of the week. I routinely forget that he's in his 70's now -- it rarely shows. When he commits to a project, his focus and stamina are amazing. I was reminded of all this as we tackled one project after another this week, following our standard protocol when my parents come to visit.

Since we bought our first house in 2000, he's helped me rewire a second story, finish drywall, install siding,windows and doors in the studio, renovate the barn, pour foundations for the new kiln shed, and dozens of smaller projects along the way. We've just added underground power line repair to the list, and are working on wood floor refinishing. My Dad has done just about every kind of house repair, construction and remodeling at least once before, so his knowledge of this stuff is as great a gift as his relentless labor. He's saved us untold thousands of dollars over the years, and taught me more than I ever thought I'd know (or need to know!). It's all very useful to building and maintaining the infrastructure of a pottery, and I also notice these new skills making subtle changes to the way I think and work in the studio.

So the power is back on, at last. I loaded a bisque into the electric kiln -- it's ready to fire and test for bugs in the system. It ended up that the (theoretically) helpful red X in the grass wasn't anywhere close to the problem in the line, as we discovered in the process of digging an 80' long trench through the backyard. (The culprit was a really ugly splice, wrapped in electrical tape and tossed back in the ground. To quote the electrician: "I've never seen anything like that." Go figure.) We've had unbelievably nice weather, which made the digging a lot easier, and I'm pleased to say that my potter's back held up really well. If I ever want to dig local red clay, I now know exactly where it is... everywhere!

All of that made for a lot of long days, but with good progress to show for it. Mixed in there somewhere were great meals, our first baby class at the hospital, doing job interviews at the university, watching the Olympics on TV, multiple trips to the hardware store, and some fantastic twilights on the front porch.

It's been 2 weeks since I've thrown pots, which is just at the edge of my tolerance. Longer than that and I start going a little nuts, which reminds me that I'm definitely a Mud & Water potter. For me, throwing is at the heart of making pots. Having my hands in wet clay, watching the wheel spin, pulling up that soft wall -- that's where it's at. While I get anxious if too much time goes by between glazing or firings or mixing clay, I never long for those things in quite the same way. It's more like they're just necessary parts of the process.

Firing #30 turned out quite well, as they usually do when the firing itself goes haywire. Getting back good pots is like karmic retribution for all the stress and exhaustion. I forgot to shoot a photo before unloading (a bit distracted with my parents as an audience), but a few of the highlights are below -- some really nice bottles and mugs. My black underglaze bubbled some towards the top of the load, which reinforces my belief that this happens when I replace the metal stack; the inner lining burns out, which I think causes a metallic reaction with whatever's in that underglaze. (This is one of those times when it would be better if I mixed my own underglazes. Then I'd know what what in it and, perhaps, be able to alter it to fix the problem.) Other than that, I had some great salt/soda flashing, really good color response from the slips, and some more very encouraging results from the Turner Porcelain clay -- I'm still just firing those first test teabowls, but looks like it's time to go full steam ahead with that clay when I get back to the wheel. There's an avalanche of potential there just waiting to release.

Since the firing wasn't much faster with the newly-rebuilt stack, afterwards I swapped my old burner for a larger version of the same thing -- a GACO MR100 from Ward Burner. It should put out about 20% more BTU's, which my wood stoking experiments suggest might help speed things up. I'm excited to fire the next load and see what difference it makes.

Lastly this week, I had this interesting question via email: "Would you consider clay to be a renewable resource?"

After a bit of thought, here's what I came up with:

Renewable? Technically, yes -- clays are decomposed rock, created by glaciers, weathering, erosion, etc. So more is always being made as part of those natural processes. (But like fossil fuels, whether it's being made as fast as we use it is another matter!) An interesting thing about clay is that it's endlessly reusable up to the point of firing, because you're just adding and removing physical water. However, firing essentially converts it back to stone, at which point the decomposition process starts again...

I enjoy thinking about the geological origins of these materials I love, and how that relates to our society's increasing awareness of scarce resources, ecological impact, and so on. It's a stretch to think of making pots as "green", particularly when trucking raw materials across country and firing with natural gas or propane, but I like how most everything else we do in ceramics is a simulation of natural processes that were going to cycle through anyways. As potters, we just try to squeeze out some beauty and utility along the way.

August 3rd, 2008

"Baby, ain't we a beautiful disaster?" - Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers

We started on the baby's room this week, in our typical disorganized, behind-schedule fashion. This involves consolidating our 2 home offices into 1, which -- just like my studio -- have been semi-functional disasters since we moved in. So I started with trying to put some order to the chaos: consolidating piles of paper, packing peripheral things away for storage, throwing out junk like 10-year-old phone bills and pay stubs from my workstudy job in college. (Literally. But oddly enough, those were carefully organized. I sometimes wonder exactly when it was that I went nuts.)

We discovered that the original wood floor in one room was in pretty good condition, hidden under a coat of grey paint. We decided on a whim to refinish the wood, instead of slapping another coat of paint or carpet on top, which resulted in spending the better part of two days sanding and scraping paint. But the floor is great -- lots of grain and good color, with a record of the years of wear written into it. Most of the original wood in our circa-1900 house was lost to termites or remodeling years ago, so it's really cool to salvage the bits that are left. Plus it evens out my karma for buying a prefab shelving unit last week.

The downside is that the entire upstairs of the house is a complete disaster, and not really that much closer to freshly painted walls and an assembled crib. The studio is suddenly my most usable work space, but I went another week with my trusty extension cords supplying the juice. A utility locating scan marked out the buried cable and a guess as to a good spot to start digging, but the built-in margin of error to that hasn't inspired me to get out the shovel quite yet. And since I'd already bumped my soda firing a couple times to work on organizing the studio, it was time to get firing #30 in the books.

I put my new chalkboard to use with a checklist of all the little things that go into preparing a firing. Seeing them all lined up like that makes the whole endeavor seem kind of overwhelming, which reminds me of this quote by Michael Simon from that wonderful Smithsonian Archives interview by Mark Shapiro a couple years ago:

"I thought how difficult it was to make a kilnload of pottery. Since I have not been working, pottery has become much harder work than it was when I was a potter. I can't imagine anymore how people make a kiln of pottery, when you consider how all of that shape and all of the considerations and everything that has to line up and make sense and have -- not just thought about, but actually accomplished -- glazes mixed and, oh, everything right. It's flabbergasting the amount of work to do." - Michael Simon

And then you've got to fire the damn thing!

I took a lot of photos during the glazing and loading process this time, which provide some evidence for Simon's view. And this is for a very small kiln... doing the same for a large firing can be like a marathon.

After getting it loaded up on Saturday, I had a lucky spot in the weather on Sunday and fired it off before the August heat returned. (My One Day Off plan hasn't been working out so well the last few weeks.) After rebuilding the stack and extending it's height, I was hoping this firing would go better than #29, but it was still a bear -- stalling mercilessly, and needing a lot of wood stoking to get it to temperature. After a long day and into the night I managed to get a bend in 10, so the pots have a good chance of coming out well, but something significant has changed with the kiln and I still don't know what it is. I've ruled out most of the obvious things, which leaves the strange and obscure, and strains my understanding of kiln design and the dynamics of firing. Where to go with it from here is a frustrating mystery.

July 27th, 2008

"What's this war in the heart of nature?" - The Thin Red Line

Tuesday morning, 1am: Lightning like a giant strobe. Constant, booming, like it was hitting the house each time. Strike - crack - sizzle - lights out! The utility company had the power back on by mid-day, but then I discovered that the studio was still off. Dead. Nada. Uh-oh. By the end of the week, an electrician had diagnosed it as a problem with the buried wire from the house to the studio, somewhere along that 100-yard run. Hell. This storm was only slightly less intense than the one that claimed our barn in January, so in the last 6 months we've now had the two worst storms I've ever seen. That's not a good trend.

Since then I've had an extension cord trailed across the yard to the studio, which gets juice to about three devices at a time. This makes for kind of a "desert island" scenario: If you could only power three things in the studio at once, what would they be and why? Mine are: lights, fan and stereo.

Coincidentally, just before the storm I had a visit by a potter from Montana, who asked why I prefer using a treadle wheel to an electric. I listed things like no motor sound, slower throwing speed, slight irregularity, and that it encourages a certain style of pots... but forgot to mention that you can still throw during a blackout! If it takes a while to get the power on, I may get to utilize the same advantage with the Venturi burner on the soda kiln. I'm no purist, but it's interesting to realize that I could do the two main parts of making pots -- throwing and firing -- without electricity.

(This was also the first time I've met someone in person who's been reading this blog. That's a bit odd, sort of like a Victorian novel in which a character's reputation has proceeded him. "You, ma'am, have me at something of a disadvantage!")

After all that excitement, I made a few more jars and started glazing for my next soda firing, but mainly continued the ever-expanding studio cleanup and reorganization job. I bought a new shelving unit for bisqueware, which replaces a smaller, crummy particle board bookshelf -- a vast improvement. For a few brief moments here, I actually have that rarest of commodities in a pottery: empty shelf space. Then I moved the electric kiln a few feet, to get it out from in front of a window and use the space a bit more efficiently. Also, after 3 1/2 years of it sitting where I dropped it when we moved in, I finally rehung my chalk board, on that new span of clean white wall. It still had some notes from my old studio on it, which brought back a lot of memories.

I recently made two interesting discoveries online, a continuation of the trend towards a wider and better range of clay resources on the web. (Neither is really new, but they're both new to me.) The first is that Ceramics Monthly is now publishing some of the magazine's content on their site. At last! I wrote a rant about this way back in 2002, which is still surprisingly on target. It makes complete sense that they should go this direction, especially given The Long Tail effect of digital media distribution, which suggests that the value of archival and peripheral content rivals that of the new and the popular. The fact that it's taken so long suggests that, like many "old media" institutions, they've struggled to make the transition. (While I'm critical of this, I can certainly sympathize. Back in the day, I attempted to get the university's alumni magazine online at least three different times. Each one failed because the existing workflow and resources couldn't maintain both print and web versions.)

It looks like the CM archives only go back to the start of this year, and that only a few articles are available from each issue (mainly as PDF files, which are better than nothing, but not very user-friendly). Likewise, the Article Archive must amount to less than 1% of the real archive, but at least it's a start. Let's hope they keep expanding both the archive and the proportion of each new issue that's available online.

My longstanding grudge against CM is that every issue has one or two items that are interesting and informative, then a dozen or more that just don't do it for me. Factor in that it's all sandwiched between page after page of dumb ads for equipment, materials and events that I have no interest in, and the signal-to-noise ratio is so low that I let my subscription lapse (again). Compare that with Studio Potter, which has no ads and a quality ratio of more like 5:1. I'll gladly pay for SP, but it was great to read the parts of CM I wanted online without paying for the stuff that I didn't. Whether they can make a viable business out of it remains to be seen, but these days that's true for every newspaper and magazine on earth.

So in the June issue I happily skipped almost everything else, but really enjoyed the series "Work and Play: The Potter's Life". Some quotes from the article really hit home for me:

"My initial reason for pursuing pottery as a livelihood cannot be explained easily. I wanted the work to mature and the only way I could achieve that was to devote my life to it. The by-product of this approach was a lot of work that needed homes. Also, the lifestyle of a potter is well suited to my temperament. It involves the ability to work largely in solitude, confront many challenges, work cyclically through mixing clay, making, firing and selling the finished pots, as well as learning and growing through this process."
- Jeff Oestrich

"As a young potter, my central goal was to make a seamless balance between my studio work and my domestic life."
- Silvie Granatelli

"When it starts to become just a job, one has to realize this job is full of "little Christmases." These can be a piece that turns out the way you wanted, a great firing or maybe just the best mug on the board. These small, consistent rewards aren't really part of a lot of other professions. Making pots is simply one of my favorite things to do in life."
- Blair Meerfeld

"So much physical work takes a toll. Throwing is repetitive and asymmetric on your joints-so many potters have lower back issues, especially on the side of their dominant hand. I have been throwing standing-and seated on a treadle wheel for trimming and throwing off the hump-for the last twenty years, which has helped my back. I also try to use the softest clay possible for the pot I'm making. The softer the clay, the less resistance it has to shaping and the less stress there is on the body. For small bowls and the like, the clay I use is so soft it feels like you only have to look at it to move it. Of course, for taller and thinner forms I use the harder stuff..."
- Mark Shapiro

"I especially love the pre-dawn moments when I re-encounter pots from the previous workday, perhaps waiting for further resolution. Magical."
- John Glick

"When, at twenty four, I finally decided that clay was the right medium for me, it was because I realized that doing what made me happiest was my only option for making a living. I used to think with cynicism that marketing was crucial in a competitive art and design world, but recently I've come full-circle back to the conclusion that there is no substitute for making good, interesting work."
- Ayumi Horie

The second discovery was Ayumi Horie's site, linked from the CM article. I think this is a great site. The design compliments her pots, everything is laid out well and organized, there's a lot of interesting content (check out "Pots In Action"), and it has the best implementation of a web storefront that I've seen. Considering that I do my own site work, and that mine is woefully overdue for a complete redesign, Horie's site is both daunting and inspirational. By comparison, mine is creaky and old. Originally built in 2000, it's now ancient in web years. Heck, that was before the tech bubble popped!

Things to do, things to do...

July 20th, 2008

"Drowning here in summer's cauldron" - XTC

The real summer weather hit this week, hot and damp, extreme enough to make me long for fall. It gets to about cone 098 in the studio in the afternoons, which makes my brain go limp and slows my progress to a crawl. (I'm resisting the desire to install a window AC unit on principle.) So I've been experimenting with my work/sleep schedule again, time-shifting the day to be up at dawn, like a farmer or an old man. It's good to get most of a day's work done before lunch, then go hide in the shade through the late afternoon.

But on the plus side, we had the first tomatoes from our small garden, with gallons of them to come, still green and swelling out in the sun. Nothing looks as good against the celadon glaze of my favorite salad bowl than those bright red cherry tomatos. Peaches coming soon.

I finished those large bowls from last week, and made a group of smaller bowls, on request for Cindy's photo professor from our undergrad days at Iowa. Very cool. Then I switched gears and made two series of lidded jars. I'm starting to go vertical for a while instead of horizontal. I'm enjoying this trend of working on a certain form for several days at a time; it's easier to get warmed up, then do some exploration -- more of an iterative process. (When you're on the crab, you reset your string of pots in the same spot, right?) For example, I'll start two series of lidded jars, say 3-5 pots each, two variations on a similar idea. I finish them the next day, then evaluate them in completed form and make decisions about what's working or not, and where I want them to go next. The day after that I'll do both series again, maybe at a larger size, capitalizing on the good parts and discarding the bad. This seems like a good way to make steady improvement.

I alternated that with continuing my studio reorg project: moving that pallet of dry materials to a more sensible location at the back of the shop, finishing the plywood sheeting and painting the south wall, etc. Then I moved on to some soda kiln maintenance. This was another of those jobs that starts small -- I was just going to replace the burnt-out section of metal pipe on top of the stack -- and expands into a major endeavor. When I added the stack a couple years ago it was kind of a hasty experiment, so the cinder block foundation wasn't great to begin with and had sunk and shifted a bit over time. So I took the whole thing back to the ground and redid it level and solid. Along the way, I made a few modifications, with the idea of improving the draft: a bit more room for primary air intake to the burner, improved fit of the damper slot, and about 2 more feet of height to the metal pipe. It's good to sort these things out for myself and learn as I go, but they always take a long time -- I'm just not very mechanically inclined or experienced. (This is when I really envy potters who know their way around tools and have those skills.)

After consulting with Marc Ward about that last, very slow firing in June, my latest theory is that it's caused by a combination of poor flow through the kiln and not enough burner power. So I ordered a larger version of the same burner (that will work with the existing pilot and safety valve), but I'm only going to change one variable at a time -- it's more important that I learn from the results than improve the situation without knowing why. So my plan is to fire again with the old burner and new stack, see what's what, then switch to the larger burner and see if more BTU's help.

I was looking through my photo archives and found this from November 2005. I'd forgotten this, but it's one Cindy took while I was puzzling out those first firings right after building the soda kiln. That look of intense, head-scratching confusion pretty much sums up the experience, but there's at least some consolation in seeing how much the studio has improved since then!

p.s. TW@SE, I decided to give up on starting every post with "TW@SE". It was fun for a while, but has worn kind of thin. I might try quotes for a while instead. Good things change, right?

July 13th, 2008

TW@SE I was waiting in my car at the Fillmore train crossing, watching the cars go by with their labels and rust and graffiti from far off cities, when this rushed past on a tanker:

Calcium Carbonate - Limestone Slurry
A part of daily life

Southern Indiana is lousy with limestone quarries, so it was no great shock to see some going by on a train, but it was one of those moments of recognition and realization: "Say, I know what's in that one! Hmm... so that's how this stuff gets from a hole in the ground into a 50# bag in Chicago or Minneapolis."

Calcium Carbonate (AKA Limestone, Chalk, or Whiting) is a common ingredient in glazes, and an old friend to any potter who mixes them from raw materials. John Britt's excellent book, The Complete Guide to High Fire Glazes, says it's an alkaline earth flux (fluxes help melt the glass), which "adds hardness and durability to glazes". Wikipedia adds that it's "the main component of shells of marine organisms, snails, and eggshells" and is used in agricultural lime, calcium supplements and as an antacid. (That Mylanta tastes chalky for a reason.)

The funny part was the tagline: A part of daily life. That's a strange bit of marketing -- aimed at whom, I wonder? People sitting at the train crossing in their cars, or going past in commuter trains?

"Dad, what's Calcium Carbonate?"
"Well son, it's simply a part of daily life."
"Why?"
"I don't know. That's what it says."
"Why?"

I confess to imagining these kinds of conversations lately. (Although in the actual event, I'd probably riff a bit on how it adds durability and hardness to our celadons.)

My studio time this week was quite productive. I made more bowls -- one group with carved rims, another with added handles for serving -- and fired a load in the electric kiln, then started a pretty serious studio cleanup and reorganization. Really!

As I suggested last week, I have a hard time switching away from making pots to work on other projects, especially if I have a good momentum built up in the studio. That's essentially this place got to be such a disaster -- perpetually ignoring it in favor of making more pots. I'm not sure if that habit displays a good sense of prioritization or a horrible case of procrastination. Perhaps its some of both.

In any case, after writing about it I had the feeling that I was locked into a pattern, blindly following the routine. That got under my skin. Irritating. I realized that the inefficiencies caused by ignoring the problem -- the minor day-to-day hassles, like working around the junk and never having an open space to set something down -- had become greater than the time it would take to fix the problem. So I decided to just get on with it.

This was tricky, however, because: 1) After three years in this studio, I still can't imagine the ideal layout of workspace and storage; and 2) There's so much stuff everywhere that finding a space to move something to is difficult. This is more a matter of having too much stuff than not enough space, so I began by ruthlessly consolidating, trashing, or relocating to the basement everything that wasn't strictly necessary. Then I started finishing the part I'm sure about -- the southeast corner, where my worktable sits in front of a big window. Trying to do things right -- i.e. for the long term -- takes more time, but it was worth it. Another pile sorted, more junk disposed of, some extensive cleaning, and a coat of white paint on the wall and now it feels like a completely different space. Less junk = more clarity, and I need all I can get. With that first big push out of the way, I'm hoping to keep working my way around the studio a couple hours at a time over the next few months. It should be much improved by the time I complete the circuit.

July 6th, 2008

TW@SE I spent 2 days at the U, 4 days in studio, and 1 an actual, certified "day off". (Not on the 4th, however; I worked in the studio all day, then went to a very late, disturbingly loud fireworks show at the local park. Is it just showing my age to remember when these things used to be short, sweet, and didn't wreck havoc on one's eardrums?)

In the studio, I made another series of bottles/vases, this time with more ovoid bodies. That makes for a lot of bottles the last month, but lately I've been trying to stretch out each series of pots -- making one or two more groups of a form before moving on, particularly when they're going well and it feels like I'm learning something. With this variation on the form, I like that broad shoulder that comes in from the belly and narrows into the neck. Good dynamic changes of direction from the rim to the foot.

Speaking of making longer series, later in the week I went kind of bowl crazy: two more groups of straight-sided bowls (4# and 6#) and 8 shallow serving bowls. On the vertical bowls, I'm exploring more stamping patterns and trying various numbers of small lugs or handles -- 2,3,4,6. I'm also experimenting with doing the sequence of steps in a different order. Normally, I trim feet first, then stamp patterns and add lugs as the last step. Now I'm reversing that: stamps while the clay is still quite soft, then lugs before the bowl is flipped over to dry the base, then trimming the footring last. This gives more options for the stamp pattern (and leaves a better mark), and I don't have to be as cautious about keeping the rim soft enough to attach lugs at the end. The downside to the new method is trimming the foot without disturbing that finished surface decoration, and having those fragile little lugs spinning around on the wheel amidst flying ribbons of trimmed clay. (I haven't torn any off yet, but it's bound happen eventually.) So, this new way is an improvement, but it seems like there are more tweaks that could improve it. I think this illustrates the importance of exploring not just the pots, but the process of making them, too. Working in the same old comfortable ways, while necessary to some extent, probably limits perspective and growth. As with most endeavors, fear of change could lead to a downward spiral.

Also in the studio this week, I did an inventory of my clay stockpile -- particularly sorting the 38M white stoneware remaining from last summer by stiffness. I'm often disappointed by how inconsistent this Amaco clay is out of the box -- one bag will be too stiff to throw, the next so soft that I have to air dry it before use. I haven't used the porcelain clays I got from Standard or Laguna enough to have a good basis of comparison yet, but I hope they're better. This goes with the territory, I guess -- one of the trade-offs of not mixing my own clay. So, I set some bags out in rainbows to stiffen up, the others I sliced, wetted, and sealed tight in the bag to get softer (that's the harder direction -- it's much easier to take water away than to put it back).

That was prompted by not having any clay of the right consistency to make those larger bowls. I've been paying more attention to the stiffness of the clay I use for throwing different pots. Generally, the more vertical the form, the stiffer the clay. For tall forms I use the stiffest clay that I can wedge and center comfortably (too stiff and it's much harder on the hands and arms); for flat forms like shallow bowls and plates, I use the softest clay that will still hold up a rim as the bat comes off the wheelhead. I guess that too would be filed under: Studio Process, refinement of.

Looking at my clay supply made it painfully clear just how far behind I am in processing slops back into usable throwing consistency. I've got several large barrels and at least a dozen buckets of of wet slops, and 10-15 clay boxes full of dry trimmings that need to be broken up and slaked. Until I get the new shed built, I'm stuck drying slops inside the studio, so my next realization was that the floorspace for the drying rack had gradually been overtaken by other objects, which appear like kudzu. "What the hell is all this stuff?", I wondered. Working up the courage to investigate further, I discovered, behind that stuff and a pallet of raw clay materials, stacked between the two doors on the south wall of studio... a random pile of junk. Junk! Cinder blocks, a box of other empty boxes, 3 frisbees, half a can of Fix-A-Flat, a few old glaze buckets, and so on. Right there in prime studio real estate.

This is all a casualty of the fact that I never properly moved into this studio, back when we bought the place 3 1/2 years ago. The move -- in the middle of freezing January -- was more like a desperate dumping of everything from the old studio in the order it came off the truck, much of it intermingled with garage stuff and years worth of household clutter. But in my typical fashion, once I had things ordered just enough to find my tools and start making pots, I never went back to organizing the rest -- essentially conceding several large areas of the studio to random, frightening piles of the unknown. (If you've been reading this for any length of time, no doubt you've seen this stuff in the background of many photos. How embarassing.) And then... well, let's just say that procrastination is an amazing force.

It took all of about 10 minutes to dig through the junk, which emptied a nice 2 x 6 foot space behind the pallet which, if moved, would create the perfect spot for the drying rack. As these things go, however, I then realized that the wall behind the pallet, which has been open studs with no insulation since I inherited the building, was suddenly clear enough that I could work on that abandoned project. So I found a roll of insulation (hiding at the bottom of yet another pile), and got it all tacked in place. I started the studio insulation a couple years ago, and had been meaning to get back to it as well (trying, meanwhile, not to think about all the heat racing into the atmosphere each winter), so it was great to make some progress on it. I've still got to get the plywood sheeting up, so there's an actual wall to the wall, but after that it will be a nice improvement to my workspace. In a perfect world, I would take this little turbocharge of momentum and dive into the rest of the junk, sort those piles, finish insulating the east wall, and get the entire studio in proper working order.

Or I could just go back to making pots.

June 29th, 2008

TW@SE things got a little out of hand. I'd been planning a firing towards the end of the week, but realized mid-day on Monday that the forecast was for thunderstorms from Wednesday through Saturday. (Let's skip over how I hopelessly lost track of time this month, and let this firing slip way too close to the deadline for a couple of those barn jars. And let's not dwell on the fact that I foolishly built my soda kiln without a proper shed, and have since discovered that the rain up here on our hill usually comes sideways with 30mph winds, and that firing in that kind of weather is damn near useless. No, let's not dwell on any of those things.)

So starting in the afternoon on Monday, I unloaded the bisque kiln, glazed and loaded the soda kiln, and -- working straight through to almost midnight -- somehow had it ready to fire on Tuesday. This normally takes me at least 2 days to do well, so I was quite surprised that I actually pulled it off. That's both an endurance test and an experiment in working overtime without screwing things up along the way. (In a surreal, life-imitates-television way, it felt a lot like an episode of Deadliest Catch.)

Tuesday was as good as the weather ever gets for firing around here: cool, calm, clear. And so, naturally, I had a crazy, extra-long firing where nothing went as expected. The kiln pretty well stalled at about 2000°F, then just crawled along for hours through the high cones. I ended up pushing the last 2 cones down by stoking small pieces of wood into the fireboxes (which reminds me of a story about Bernard Palissy tearing up the floorboards of his house to finish off a stubborn kiln). I've been experimenting with adding wood when salting/spraying soda, trying to make a longer flame to pull the vapor through the kiln, so with few other options in sight, I just extended the idea. The firing was ridiculously long, but it worked eventually. It was interesting to see the results of adding more wood, and surprising how much temperature gain the kiln got from a couple small sticks at a time. And while nicely reminiscient of my woodfiring days, and a good bail-out strategy, it's not something I want to be dependent on just to get cone 10 down on the top shelf. No sir.

So now I've got yet another technical issue to solve, and that itchy, anxious knowledge that my kiln -- the lifeline to finished pots -- isn't behaving properly. The possible causes that come to mind are: 1) a problem with the gas supply; 2) a problem with the burner; or 3) a problem with the flue/stack. Certainly, there could be others, but everything else is the same as in previous firings, as far as I can tell. I'm inclined to rule out #1, because nothing's changed with the propane tank or the gas lines. Likewise for #3, because the kiln seemed to respond normally to damper changes, and I didn't see anything obvious when unloading. So that leaves #2, the burner, and some puzzling questions. Hell.

Considering all that, the firing turned out quite well. Almost all the pots were good, including the barn jars, and there were several promising developments for future firings, too. I had some Turner Porcelain teabowls in there that are all very good: one with bare clay on the exterior and a white liner glaze -- pure white in and out like new snow; one with my favorite flashing slip -- subtle color variations and a nice, satiny texture; and one with my pale green celadon -- really intense color and contrast from the green glaze to the bone-white clay body. I can't wait to do more with that clay body.

I put some planters on the top shelf, where the uneven temperature from top to bottom has been making it difficult to get the liner glazes to flux completely. These are bare clay inside and decorated with wax and flashing slips on the outside, with vertical stripes (in a pattern shamelessly borrowed from Linda Christianson). I think they're striking and playful, and want to try that pattern on other forms.

The square plate prototypes turned out very well, no warping or cracking and the decoration is just as I'd hoped. They fired well stacked 2 high, and I quite like the incidental marks from the wadding in combination with the stamps and underglaze, but the covered one is a bit drier inside than I'd like -- too much shielding from the salt and soda. I'm thinking that if I make the wads taller and put them at the edge of the shelf facing the fireboxes, they might get a bit more gloss on them. They'd be a great form to stack 3-4 tall, if I can get that to work.

I'm always surprised at how the most difficult firings can produce really good results. It seems there's a supernatural/karma/magic aspect to that (if one is inclined towards believing in such things)... or perhaps it's just a product of the human tendency to link the unknown into cause and effect? Hmm; deep waters there. I think I'll leave that one for another time.

I wrote out another To Make List a while back, this time on butcher paper tacked to the wall in the studio, instead of in my sketchbook. I like being able to glance up and see it, reminding me of where I am in the cycle. And X-ing stuff off with a big magic marker is very satisfying. (This makes me think that I was rewarded with a few too many gold stars as a kid.) The stuff on the left of the list is mostly done now -- on to the right!

Wednesday and Friday I worked at the university, on my new part-time schedule, and the rest of the week I made pots: a bunch of 2-3# bowls to finish out a box of Laguna B-Mix clay, some larger 2-part bottles/vases that came out really well, and a group of straight-sided bowls that will get stamps, small lugs, and my teadust glaze.

The B-Mix clay fires very similarly to my standard Amaco 38-M clay, but handles quite differently when wet. It feels more like porcelain, while the Amaco is a lot more like stoneware. With the bowls, I practiced making them with a thick, rounded rim. As with leaving enough clay to trim a foot on plates or shallow bowls, rims are another place where I tend to pull the clay too thin -- I have to make a conscious effort to leave some extra thickness there. My mom has a bowl by Clary Illian, porcelain with a clear glaze, that has this fantastic rim: a sweet, sinuous curve that your hand gravitates to as a way to hold the pot. I use it every time we visit and always think, "I should try this rim".

I also made a batch of dome lids -- something I've been focusing on lately. Of the many ways to put a lid on a pot, I find these are the most complex, with relationships and measurements that need to fit just so to both work well and look good. My "standard" lid has always been the drop-in kind, which sits in a gallery on top of the pot and is, I think, a lot easier to make. So I'm trying to work out the mechanics of dome lids, getting the form right and playing around with details like edge thickness, how to finish the top (flat, point, button, terrace, swirl), and the texture left by the trimming tool. I matched the good ones up with some jars from a few months ago that didn't find mates the first time around, which is a fun exercise in composition. Which lids works best on which jar, and why?

I failed yet again to take Sunday off -- I had pots to finish and was "on the clay", so it ended up being another studio day. Who has time for a day off? Ha! I'll rest when I'm dead, I suppose.

Lastly, I keep forgetting to mention last month's show at AKAR Gallery: Peter Beasecker and Mark Shapiro (in my old town of Iowa City, lately half-underwater). I love the precise lines of Beasecker's pots, and Shapiro is one of my favorite potters -- everything he makes seems inspired. I think his scribble motif is fantastic, especially on vertical forms like the oval bottles and pitchers, and I aspire to someday use a faceting tool with that kind of grace.

June 22nd, 2008

TW@SE was a good one in the studio. I trimmed feet on all the pots from last week, and cut the rims on that 2nd batch of square plates. I'm really liking that shape -- it's not strictly square, because I kept some of the curve on each side. Is there a geometric name for that? Rhomboid? Parallelogram? Wow, 5th grade was a long time ago. In any case, they turned out well, better thickness and room under the foot than the prototypes. I'm intrigued by their decorative possibilities; they make a good "canvas", particularly with carrying the design from top to bottom and onto that nicely defined edge. If they come out of the fire well, chances are I'll do more later.

I also made some two-part bottles, trying for long, skinny necks and a nice repeated curve on the body and neck. Then I did some that are also made in two parts, but where I throw both parts and then assemble them at the leatherhard stage. These are more angular, with straight sides and necks. This is another fun pot to decorate -- there are lots of interesting ways to work the black underglaze or glazes around that form. Somehow, I've started calling them "nano" bottles (the round ones are just "bottles", I guess). The name came from the idea of making them really small -- less than a half pound of clay for the bottom section -- and now I'm using it for them regardless of the size. I'm not sure if this is cool or dumb, my tendency to invent names for certain forms or decorative patterns or glazes, but some part of my brain seems to like it.

On impulse, I spun my treadle wheel around to face in the opposite direction for a change of pace, then remembered writing about doing it previously. And, sure enough, there in the archives I discovered that I did the same thing almost exactly a year ago this week. Strange. So now as I throw I'm facing East, looking out one window at the piles of barn wood and the cell phone tower at the end of our gravel road, ears towards the stereo, daylight coming in through the south window onto the side of the pot I lean towards when I bend down to see it in profile. Last summer, I said, "It's good to tweak my brain and encourage new perspective." Still true.

On Sunday morning, I loaded and fired a bisque in the electric kiln, planning to fire the soda kiln next week. Cindy and I have been making a point of trying to avoid working seven days a week by taking Sundays off, but we usually each slip in a few things in the studio, or end up doing chores, yardwork, etc. Not that I'm complaining, but there's always so much to do, and so much more I want to do that goes undone! All we've got is time, and yet there's never enough of it.

In other news, my TV addiction has been flaring up again lately -- the NBA Playoffs, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, The Daily Show -- and its newest symptom is Deadliest Catch. If you haven't seen it, it's a reality/documentary show about Alaskan crab fishing on the Discovery Channel. Despite being kind of cheesy and frequently edited-for-melodrama, I just can't seem to get enough of this show -- and I find myself thinking about it surprisingly often. The "characters" are engaging, the images are amazing, and I get a vicarious feeling of accomplishment every time they pile a few hundred crab on deck.

But wait! Before you conclude that I've (yet again) gone hopelessly off-topic, let me say this: I also like it because of the ways it parallels making pots. It touches on themes that are interesting and strongly-related, like work, stamina, and the effect of chance on success. For example, watching these guys has completely recalibrated my concept of hard work, and the hours and determination they put in are astounding. It's also a single-minded endeavor, with it's own rhythms and lots of repetition. It's often done in spite of the elements, which play a big part in the outcome. Experience is critical, but somebody's still got to do the grunt work of hauling stuff around and making things happen. And, last but not least, they say the word "pots" about 100 times per episode. (That's their term for the big cages that they send down to the seabed. When a cage comes up full of crab, a deckhand often yells, "That's a great pot!" This makes me very happy.)

The crab fishermen have another great phrase, which emphasizes how randomness or luck combines with their hard labor to determine the outcome: On the crab. As in, "Now we're on the crab!" It means they've found a spot where the fishing is great, and they're pulling up good numbers. It's like the crab fisherman's version of being "In the zone" -- even though you know that this state exists and that you've been in it before, it's elusive and often fails to turn up. All you can do is search for it long and hard.

With making pots, this is similar to two things. One is when, in the midst of a making cycle, you realize that you've hit your stride, you're in the groove, flowing along, turning out solid pots with an economy of effort, feeling good, the process reinforcing itself as motivation. You're in the sweet spot after getting warmed up and before the inevitability of pending deadlines starts to make things crazy. It's week 2 of a 3 week throwing cycle. It's the 3rd quarter of a big game, or 10:30am on a good day. I found myself there this week, for a day or two, and I thought, "I'm in the clay!"

The other potting comparison to being "on the crab" is when you're in synch with your glazes, kiln and firing process. Too much time between firing cycles and the feel for these things gets rusty. Like the guesswork that goes into throwing metal cages to the bottom of the Bering Sea, every potter knows how the results of their efforts are affected by the mystical variables of glazing and firing. It's not enough to be good -- you've got to be lucky, too. Hmm... "on the fire" or "in the kiln" -- I'm not sure there's as nice a turn of phrase to be had with that one.

I've often thought about the similarities between making pots and farming. They are reinforced for me several times a year, now that we live surrounded by fields of corn and beans, watching the tractors come and go. The fishing analogy seems very appropriate, too. You reap what you sow, and if you don't cast out a good line, you're not taking home any fish.

June 15th, 2008

TW@SE I worked a full week at the office job, but with my new part-time schedule the studio days will even out eventually. Over the weekend, I continued working on my sushi set commission -- the bowls are done and now I'm finishing the square plates. The prototype plates I made last week came out pretty well. I really like the shape for decorating and, since I haven't fired many plates in my soda kiln, this is the first brushwork I've done on plates since I did a series of earthenware a few years ago. Cutting the rims off to create the square is fun. As I often do before decorating, I roughed in the cut lines with diluted food coloring (brushed on; it burns out in the bisque). I suppose I might eventually get to where I cut them freehand, without the guide lines, but for now it helps get the degree of symmetry I'm going for. I had to decide whether to cut the rims before or after trimming the feet; I settled on before, so the clay was still soft enough to smooth that cut edge. To avoid putting pressure on that uneven rim, I dried them face up, then trimmed on a thrown clay chuck to support that slight interior curve and hold the rim away from the wheelhead.

The prototypes were a bit too thin to trim a decent footring -- that's my tendency with throwing plates, even when I consciously remind myself to leave extra clay there. I think the impulse to get as much pot as possible from every lump of clay gets so engrained over time that it's difficult to purposefully leave an area thicker than usual. I have the same problem when making pots that will be faceted or fluted; it takes a while to flip that switch in my head before they start to come out right.

While throwing the plates this time, I made careful use of the needle tool to check the depth and tried not to compress the center too much with the wooden rib. I want to end up with a group of four plates, so to be safe I made eight. I've never really practiced throwing multiples (and in fact have philosophical reservations about trying to duplicate the effects of mechanized production), so making more ensures that four of them will be similar enough to qualify as a "set". I think it's best when the pots in a set are like siblings instead of identical twins -- it reinforces the fact that they're made by hand, one at a time. In general, if they seem related and stack relatively well, I consider them a set. Throwing more pots than I need is also a hedge against problems in drying, bisque firing, decorating/glazing, or the glaze firing. As I've said before, there are so many things that can go wrong between the wheel and the finished pot that it's better to make some extras than risk coming up short.

I also made a bunch of plates/trays for the planters I finished last week. Like with lids, matching the two parts is tricky, and I've found it's better to make extras here, too. I make good measurements with calipers and throw as accurately as possible to them, but I treat it like making a range of parts around that size, so there are options later. I pair them up right before the bisque firing, when both are bone dry, finding the best fit and factoring in subtle things like the details of rims, throwing marks, or where the tripod feet on the planter sit in the tray. Between all these plates and a few bowls, I'm going to be "chasing plastic" next week to get everything trimmed (to steal Michael Kline's great phrase).

Since I finally sunk so low as to post a photo of our dog Patches last week, I thought I'd succumb completely and add a better one. Here you can see the origin of her name -- that line directly down the middle of her face is amazing. It's inspired a few decorative patterns on my pots.

And speaking of our family, I've been meaning to announce that my wife Cindy is pregnant, due in early October. Naturally, I'm excited and anxious; being a parent will change a lot of things in my life, including my studio work and business. I'm not exactly sure which things will change yet, or how and why, but it's definitely going to be an adventure. In any case, I will make a valiant attempt to prevent this blog from drifting into the minute details of parenting (because, apparently, it tends to shift one's perspective so that world seems to revolve around diapers, sleeping schedules, infant psychology, and things which can or cannot be chewed). Surely the two topics -- parenting and potting -- will intersect at times, in which case I'll try not to focus too much on the former at the expense of the latter, both here on this blog and otherwise.

June 8th, 2008

TW@SE was #52 -- the one-year mark for this blog. To celebrate this milestone, perhaps you'll indulge me in some meta-blogging, as redundant as that might be. I thought carefully about this project before starting it last June. I had previously kept a blog for a couple years, and while it was occasionally about making pots and there's some good stuff there, it was a random, top-of-mind endeavor, and eventually I just got tired of it.

Wanting to write about making pots and studio life, but hoping to avoid a repeat experience, I decided on a weekly, after-the-fact format, a narrower range of content, a requirement of at least one good photo per post, and a commitment to "keep at it once a week for at least a year." At the time, I was cautious about how it would turn out: "we'll see what it becomes and if the results are worth reading." 39,190 words later, this is what it's become, and I think the results are, for the most part, worth reading. I hope you think so, too.

I've yet to move this year's output into a proper blogging system (with fancy features like linked posts, tags, categories, an RSS feed, etc.) -- it's still just one really long page that I edit by hand each week. There's something contrary and deliberately retrograde about that which appeals to me, but it's not very reader-friendly. I aim to make that change soon, and expect it will make the blog easier to browse.

I've been wondering about what this anniversary means, and if it changes anything to have reached my initial goal. I can look back and remember times when it was a burden, like on the rare occasions that I had nothing to say or when I was so busy that it was hard to set aside the time to sit down, reflect and compose something worth posting. I've often wondered if it was worth continuing -- if anyone out there was benefitting from it, and if I was learning anything in the process.

That one-year commitment turned out to be a good gambit, as I got over the hump around the 6 month mark and gained momentum. I started to get excited about writing on certain topics, and could see how it was informing my thoughts and actions in the studio in a positive way. The writing began to come more easily, and I think I'm slowly getting better at it. I now reflexively stock away ideas during the week that might be useful, and take photos in the studio out of habit, documenting as I go. It's great to have a record of all the pots that have gone through my hands, the studio and the kiln since then.

The visitor numbers began slowly creeping upwards on Google Analytics, and the occasional encouraging email from a reader suggested that I wasn't just throwing all those words into the void. (I'm actually fine with having a small audience; I just want them to be fanatically loyal and to imagine me as some sort of pottery genius. Ha!) Seriously though, I think much of the value of writing on the web comes later, after it's been archived. After all, everything is searchable, and everything will be saved. That's another reason that I chose to write on a weekly schedule: thinking it would allow and encourage more thoughtful output, and perhaps create some bits of information or wisdom that could be of use to someone years from now.

I like habits and patterns, even those that are difficult to keep, and I guess this has become one. I'm generally comfortable with it now, enough so that I'm not inclined to significantly change directions, let alone give it up. I may let myself write less each week for a while, or a bit more loosely (with less second-guessing and revisions). Who knows, perhaps that will even make it better? I can imagine gradually shifting the format, such as focusing less on what I did each week -- which could get tediously repetitive for both you and me -- in favor of writing more topically or thematically. There are some stories I've been meaning to tell, issues I'd like to address, older writings that might be fun to revisit and improve on. I'm intrigued by the idea of writing reviews of new ceramics books, exhibits, or events -- I've been meaning to write about the PBS series Craft In America for months! Or perhaps doing an interview or profile of another potter or one of my mentors. Wherever this may lead now, I think I'm in for a while.

So, this was the 1st week in the studio after the change-up at the dayjob, and it was really, really good to be back. It felt like old times -- even though "old times" was only nine months ago, and was relatively short-lived the last time around. In any case, the difference between 2 days in the studio and 4 is tremendous. So many more options available, and a much better chance to get into the flow and make satisfactory progress.

It's been raining like the end of the world here in Indiana -- almost 11" this week, which is an amazing amount of water everywhere, including a lot of local flooding. A couple days were so humid that I swear the pots were just as wet when I closed up the shop at night as when they first came off the wheel. In between storms it's been far too hot for this time of year -- I'm not ready for the sweaty soup of summertime in the studio yet.

I made another run of teabowls with the Turner porcelain, which I'll use to test glazes in the next couple firings. Then I switched back to my reclaimed white stoneware, which suddenly seemed dark grey and grainy! That's quite a perspective shift, and makes me laugh to think how I used to wonder if there was much difference between the two. I made about 40 pots for the soda kiln, including mugs, bowls, square plates, and planters, most with black underglaze brushwork. I'm working on another commission, a set of rice bowls and sushi plates, that's coming along pretty well. I've only made a few square-cut plates before, so it's interesting to prototype them and try to refine the process.

Lastly, this week was also #37, as in 37 years: another birthday come and gone. It was a good one, relaxing and fun, but it's been a hell of a year. An awful lot has happened since that first post, with its photo of me standing in front of the barn renovation. I'm glad I wrote about it along the way, and am curious to see what comes next. Thanks for reading.

June 1st, 2008

TW@SE marks another big change: it was my last week at the day job as a full-time employee. Believe me, it's a lot easier to quit your job the second time around -- particularly when it's the same job! The first time, about two years ago, I was consumed with anxiety and hope and the crazy depth of the unknown that I was leaping into. This time it was nearly automatic, like falling off a log. No hesitation, no doubt.

OK, so technically I didn't quit this time, at least not completely. I'm actually switching to part-time in the same job, which means I'll work about 20 hours per week at the university, and add those 20-odd other hours to my time in the studio. That should be a substantial improvement to my workflow and output there, compared to what it's been the last nine months (mostly weekends, holidays and the occasional evening). This new arrangement is the one remaining job/studio combination that I haven't tried before; I've been FT as a potter and (obviously) a FT salaryman, but never 50/50. It could work out to be a good balance of time and money, so I'm really excited about the change.

Another part of this deal is that I'll be teaching two ceramics classes in the Fall, and basically on leave from the web job during that semester. That's exciting too, because it's been a few years since I last taught, and I've never done the intermediate level class, let alone taught two classes at once. (I'll be teaching adjunct for Meredith Brickell, the new ceramics faculty at DePauw.) Come to think of it, I've never done just teaching and studio either. The half-dozen times I taught ceramics in the past, I was also working the web job on alternate days and cramming studio time into wherever it would fit. Good grief -- how'd I get any pots made? Anyways, I suspect I'll have more to say about teaching in the coming months.

So back when I returned to the job in September, I wrote that I hoped it would allow me to save money for studio upgrades, refresh my tech skills, and maintain a baseline of productivity in the studio along the way. In retrospect, with that era now over, I'm happy to report that my plan worked out pretty well. I've got a new-soda-kiln-sized war chest in the bank, I now know a hell of a lot more about the acronym-laden stuff that happens on/to web servers, and -- somehow -- I made enough pots to put on two reasonably good studio sales. Not bad.

To start the new era with something noteworthy in the studio, I made some pots with the porcelain clay that I got last August (at long last!). It's Turner's Best Porcelain from Standard Ceramics, made from a recipe Tom Turner has developed over the years. I'm really excited about the possibilities with this clay -- the results were very promising when I tested it back in December, and it seems to throw quite well. I've never used a true porcelain clay body for any length of time, so this is fun new territory to explore. After years of hearing about all porcelain's quirks, as compared to stoneware, it should be interesting to see how different it is from the white stoneware clay I've been using the last few years. I'm wondering how I'll need to adapt my process to accommodate it.

Switching clays meant cleaning up tools, bats and the splash pan of my treadle wheel, which I almost never do otherwise. (There's no use contaminating that pure white clay with iron and stuff from the other body.) This made for an unplanned spring cleaning, which felt really good. A noticeable transition point, a phase change. There's something strangely meditative about scraping off clay and cleaning the work surfaces back down to their original state. There was still actual wood underneath!

Naturally, I started with teabowls... good for testing the clay and for continuing to warm myself up, too. Trimming feet was really different. This clay is very fine grained and dense, and has zero grit or texture to it. Like carving into a block of some space-age, artificial substance. And so white it looks good enough to eat. I want to learn how to exploit what it can do, like the flawless softness of a compressed curve, or the extremely rigid line it can hold at an angle in the form or where it's cut with a blade.

I also made a few dozen test tiles, because I'm planning to do a series of exploratory glaze tests, trying some of the recipes I've accumulated over the years in my glaze book. I'm thinking about a clear or white glaze, and a couple new options for celadons -- maybe closer to a chun blue, or a smoother, satiny green. Those seem like the kind of things the solid white body should do well, especially if they are semi-transparent, to let light go through the glaze and bounce back off the clay. I can't wait.

May 25th, 2008

TW@SE, Cindy and I took the train to Chicago to celebrate our anniversary (#12). We've made this trip a few times since moving to Indiana ten years ago; it's great to get into the city for a few days, see a lot of art, eat well, wander around and take a break from work. It's about an hour's drive from home to the nearest Amtrack station -- trains used to stop in our town, back before highways all but killed rail travel in the midwest -- but after that it's a fun ride. I love trains, and the contrast of arriving in Union Station at mid-day after waking up at home, surrounded by grass and fields, is good for the senses.

On a typical vacation, we practically walk our feet off trying to see everything there is to see, but since we're both pretty worn down by a crazy spring we kept a light itinerary this time: the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Institute Museum, the River North gallery district and some cool shops -- custom furniture, salvaged-wood flooring. We wandered a lot, laid in the grass at Millennium Park on Memorial Day, sketched at Starbucks, and had some excellent Italian meals (Quartino is our new favorite).

We spent the most time at the Art Institute, which I particularly like for the permanent collection. There was a Toshiko Takeazu show in the Asian wing, which was good but I liked the one at Perimeter Gallery last year better. The Art Institute displayed everything behind glass, but at Perimeter the pots were sitting on the floor where you could wander amongst them and sneak a touch. I like her work much more in person, where the scale of the bigger pots really registers, and the Art Institute display wasn't much better than seeing them as photos.

But they also showed a couple Hamada pots, a Leach pot and a really nice Peter Voulkos bottle from about 1950. I gathered from the curator's statement that the Leach and Hamada were there to show Takeazu's influences -- the state of ceramics when she started working -- but the Voulkos pot doesn't make sense to me. If it's there to represent one of her contemporaries, a later, abstract Voulkos pot would have fit better. (Surely they have one in the collection somewhere, right? God, I hope so!)

She is described as "one of the first artists to explore ceramic’s possibilities as an independent aesthetic medium," and certainly he is also at the top of that list, but not for his utilitarian pots before the mid-1950's. There were some other things in the written introduction and placards that seemed a bit odd to me, as if the writer was straining their ceramics knowledge and trying a bit too hard to jam this work into the art historical cannon. I hesitate to be critical when a major museum puts good pots on display, but I think details like these really matter. It's like when the local news does a story about something you know well enough to see all the mistakes and oversights. "If they got this one so wrong," I think, "what does that say about the accuracy of all the stories I don't know that much about?" There were also all these square columns in the gallery space that seemed unrelated, but almost overshadowed the pots. I'm not sure if they're a permanent fixture, or someone was just trying to fill up the space, but either way it didn't really suit the presentation.

(There were two squared bottles, one each by Leach and Hamada, which were very similar in style. Cindy said, "Wow. Hamada's is a lot better!" I was so proud.)

(And speaking of Voulkos, there was a very small "stack" at Perimeter Gallery last year, priced at about $20,000. It wasn't there this time, which just makes me curious as hell to know who bought it -- what that part of the art market is really like. This time they had a couple nice pieces by Edward Eberle, which I really like. Great decoration.)

Despite my mixed feelings about the Takeazu show, the rest of the stuff on display more than compensated. I really enjoyed seeing the Korean pots from the Koryo Period (9th-13th century). It's so valuable to go see pots like these in person -- up close, their power really comes through. Even behind the plexiglass barrier, it's very different than looking at photographs. I like looking from different angles, studying the subtleties of the forms and glazes, trying to get close enough to see the faintest carved line or the pattern of crazing. In some ways, they seem like they could have just come from the kiln last week; in others their amazing age shows through patina and wear that just couldn't be simulated. It kills me to know that potters 1000 years ago were thinking about the diameter of a turned foot, the thickness of a glaze, what shade of green made the ideal celadon. So much in the world changes, but so much about making pots stays the same.

This left me wanting to know more about these pots, so I did some research when we got home. Here's a short overview of Korean ceramic history from Indiana University, with some great quotes:

"Koryo ceramics were perfected during the 10th and 11th centuries, a transitional period during which Chinese influence on shapes and designs gradually diminished and Korean ceramicists developed their own style."

"Koryo celadon and porcelain began to decline from the early 13th century. Inlaid celadon and plain celadon were the only ceramics to be produced continuously throughout this period. The degeneration that took place in the second half of the 14th century affected both the shapes and designs of this celadon and the methods used to fire them."

There was so much other inspiring stuff, too -- more than I can process in one day: Chinese bronze vessels that always remind me of Ken Ferguson (even though it should be the other way around); Jin Dynasty ceramic pillows; Neolithic Chinese jars that look like they could just as easily be from Africa or Central America; a huge Egyptian stele that was like the Rosetta Stone, but with carved figures in addition to the characters; a great grouping of carved wooden figures and masks in the African section. All of which tells me that I should look at historical objects more often, and not just pots. There's such a rich history of ideas, processes and materials there, and a reminder that humans have been making things for a long, long time, and that almost everything has already been tried at least once.

May 18th, 2008

TW@SE, after collapsing into a post-sale heap on Sunday, it was back to the office on Monday for an interesting week on the job. That's interesting in the Chinese proverb sense ("It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period") -- not interesting as in "good". Our webserver was attacked by a botnet which hacked into the database, causing a whole variety of nasty effects (I'm afraid I actually talk like this in geek mode). So we shut down the site for several hours to research the attack, check code, restore databases, install patches and make a good show of not panicking. I should note that an offline website is like a pot with a hole in it -- essentially worthless -- so this was a pretty bad scenario. In the words a co-worker, "Those are the days that make you wonder why you got into IT in the first place." Amen, brother! Anyways, since it's not called This Week @ the Web Shop, I'll close that topic with this: if you're on a Windows computer, folks, get some good anti-virus software and apply those Microsoft security patches regularly. Really.

Other than that, the rest of the week was a good change of pace; i.e. slower. I delivered and shipped some pots, caught up on business record-keeping, and enjoyed the chance to do nothing in the evenings. On Saturday, after a long wait, I got back to making pots.

It's so good to get back to the studio and the promise of a new making cycle. This required lots of cleaning and organizing before I actually started throwing, clearing out the chaos that accumulates in the run-up to a sale. It's much easier to work in there after some spring cleaning; things in their place and free space to maneuver, the shelves taunting me with their emptyness. I even mopped the floor, for the first time in... well, ever. After three years making pots here I finally got around to cleaning the floor properly (instead of just pushing the clay dust around with a broom). Isn't that terrible? Certainly not good for my pending silicosis. Even worse, if my good wife hadn't bought the mop and janitor's bucket for me, I might have put it off indefinitely. But wow, what a difference -- it's so shiny and clean now that I'd practically wedge porcelain on it. In my slowly escalating attempt to address health and longevity issues in the studio, I'm going to try to make mopping a regular part of my routine. (OK, now I'm writing about mopping the floor; surely this is scraping the bottom of the content barrel. If 4 out of 5 of you just hit the Back button, I won't hold it against you.)

So, preparations out of the way, I made a board of teabowls -- an easy start to getting my brain and hands back into the groove. Those first few pots are always strange; like waking from a weird dream, For a few minutes my body is doing the motions, but my mind hasn't caught up to what's going on yet. It's interesting to me that the brain forgets the patterns before the hands and arms do, and that my left leg just kicks like it's never stopped, no conscious attention required at all. That reminds me of watching experienced potters throw in the studio at the University of Iowa, when I was just getting started in clay, and being amazed at how naturally and automatically they went through the dozens of little actions that go into making a pot. My first teacher, Bunny McBride, did this slow head bob thing, as if he was subconsciously following a point on the wheelhead as it went around. During one of his demos, one of the grad students (Stephen Robison, Dean Adams or Greg Van Dusseldorp, perhaps?) said that David Shaner did the same thing. This kind of freaked me out, like watching someone be hypnotized, but I distinctly remember thinking, "Maybe when your head starts doing that, you'll know you're getting the hang of this." Now, sometimes when I'm adjusting a wobbly rim or trimming a foot, I'll realize that my head is swivelling around, just slightly, tracking that point on the wheel as it goes around the circle. Live and learn.

Cindy happened to be around while I was throwing, so for the first time since I started this blog 11 months ago, here are some photos of me at the wheel. (A bit balder than you were expecting, right? Yeah, me too.)

I trimmed feet and decorated on Sunday, then spent the afternoon in the yard, cleaning up my little tree nursery and such. Dinner off our new, hand-me-down gas grill, time on the porch watching the clouds go by, some basketball on TV, and that was that -- a very different week than they've been lately. Quite nice.

May 11th, 2008

TW@SE: Great firing, good sale. My thanks to all of you who came out to buy pots or ordered them from the website. As always, I sincerely appreciate your business and support. I hope the pots are already serving you well at home, or that they delight the people you give them to.

There's still a good selection of pots availble, and the showroom is open year-round by appointment -- just let me know if you'd like to visit. I also plan to take photos of some of the pots that are left and update the site gallery, so there will be some new stuff there in the next week or two.

After all the rush and flailing to get ready, I think we managed to put on a good show. As usual, I couldn't have pulled it off without generous help from Cindy and a few friends. It's wonderful to have other people believe in your dream enough to help make it happen.

I'm never quite sure how I feel about the pots as a group until they're spread out in the showroom. It's really interesting how they relate to each other once all 200+ are together in one place (usually just hours before we open on Saturday morning!). It's surprising to see how the results of all those small, individual decisions over time add up in the end. This is another of those things that seems to be only partially in my control, as if the pots themselves have some say in the collective outcome.

So... another cycle is complete, and I'm excited to start again. I cannot wait to get back to the wheel. It's been 5 weeks since I touched wet clay -- for a "mud & water" potter like me, that's way too long. Things stop making sense when the world doesn't occasionally spin in a circle in front of my eyes.

Lastly, at the risk of making my customers think I'm holding out on them, I have a confession to make: Some of the pots from #28 were so good, and still so new, that I couldn't put them out for sale yet. They're currently sitting in a row on the Reserve shelf, where I can admire them and try to figure out how in the hell I managed to coax them into being. They'll be available eventually, but for now I need them close enough to study and to trigger my memory.

(It's an open question whether I'll be able to repeat these results. When a firing goes wildly off-script like that one did, the variables multiply to an extent that's hard to track, let alone sort out and understand later. Salt firing is always a roll of the dice, and as crazy as that can be sometimes, I really wouldn't have it any other way!)

May 4th, 2008

TW@SE I was in full hustle mode to get the last pots done for the sale. I fired soda kiln #27 mid-week, then glazed, loaded and fired it again on Sunday. It turned out quite well, with some fine slip and glaze results and a good range of salt and soda, from heavy orange-peel to light flashing. Firing #28 was a struggle: I finally had a perfect day for firing, with beautiful weather and almost no wind, and then my burner starts acting up! My guess is that the thermocouple on the pilot burner is failing, but I thought they just died completely, not in stages... I suspect some investigating and testing awaits me in that department.

In any case, I got all the salt and soda in and the cones bent to where I wanted them, so I think it should be OK. It will be ready to unload on Tuesday, so until then I play the waiting game. Somehow the last firing before a big deadline is never dull!

I also continued sale preparations; now just one week to go, but with some long days I think I'll be ready in time (one way or another!). Provided that last soda kiln turns out OK, I expect to have about 200 pots for the sale, most of them from the firings shown here the last couple months.

If you're close enough to attend in person, the 8th Annual Spring Sale will be this Saturday, May 10th from 10am - 6pm. (Just one day this time.) Here are Maps and Directions and some additional info about the sale. I doubt I'll have time to add photos of the most recent pots from the soda kiln to the Gallery in time, but I might get some here in the next few days. Hope to see you on the 10th!

I also -- at long last -- updated my site Archive Gallery with pots from 2007. This is an interesting exercise, looking back through all the pots that have appeared on the site in the past year and picking the ones that are best and also represent my work over that time period. It makes me wonder which of those paths I'll still be on in, say, five or ten years. Or which of these pots I'll still be satisfied with, a couple years from now. It's hard to say -- I still love some of the older pots in the archive, but have mixed feelings about others. I guess that's a sign of progress, right?

April 27th, 2008

TW@SE I mailed out postcards for my upcoming sale on May 10th. For the main photo, I chose this pair of teadust mugs with the stamps and glaze halos that have been working so well lately. I think the cards turned out pretty well, too. (The photo on back is of the barn, post-demolition. Since I've been putting images of the barn renovation on the cards the last few sales, it seemed fitting to end with one.) If you're not already on my mailing list and would like to receive future sale announcements, please sign up here.

In the studio this week, I loaded the soda kiln, but didn't have a good opening in the weather to fire it off. In the meantime, I started putting cane handles on a group of oval baskets and did tons of yard work, trying to make it less of a disaster zone for the sale. The piles of barn wood, downed tree limbs and other early-spring chaos are all a bit tidier now. It's nice to work outside after another long winter.

I had an email from potter Michael Kline in response to one of my posts, which lead me to his blog for the first time -- I've been devouring his archives with every spare minute! It's so great to discover another potter's blog, particularly when it's by someone whose work I've admired for a long time. He is an excellent example of a potter using traditional methods -- like digging local clay and firing with wood -- and working within a traditional/folk aesthetic, while clearly making pots that are personal and unique. His brushwork is exceptional.

The blogging phenomenon seems to be accelerating amongst potters, which is a fantastic development. I think it has the potential to provide such a variety of good information about the craft, particularly being written in the first-person. (My favorite articles in CM and Studio Potter have always been those written by the potter, rather than a profile or review of them by someone else.) At it's best, another potter's blog is like a slow reveal of their working methods, techniques, influences, history, goals, personality, other interests, etc. Really informative and fun reading.

Several of Kline's posts have really hit home for me. For example, this quote from his 2006 show at Ferrin Gallery:

"When I begin a session in my studio, the process of remembering and dreaming begins. My pots are formed with a steady approach to the ideal and the unexpected—they are part memory, part hope. My good ideas and clever intentions are no match for the exceptional pot that just seems to happen. Each pot emerges from a combination of intense focus, forgetting, letting go, and just doing." - Finally, some thoughts

Wow, that's beautiful. That sums it up precisely and poetically. I could write about what it's like to make pots for years and never say it quite that well.

His first post from early last year was about Roman pots; it reminded me of this photo I took in Italy during our trip there in 2002. These pots hit me like a dumptruck full of bricks. Maybe it was the atmosphere, wandering around an ancient city built of clay, one impression after another layered up in my brain way past the point of processing it all, but when we walked around the corner and I saw these in the case, I thought, "I have to make that pot someday." I think they're astoundingly powerful. Strange, wonderful. (And sad too, in a way; with old pots like these, I have to wonder if that beautiful yellow lead glaze is what eventually killed it's maker.)

When we go to museums with lots of pots, I think this view of the back of my head is about all my wife sees for hours at a time:

Anyways, one of those Roman pots was "decorated w/imbricated leaves", a term I'd never heard before. Kline linked to this really interesting definition:

"1. overlapping in sequence, as tiles or shingles on a roof.
2. of, pertaining to, or resembling overlapping tiles, as decoration or drawings.
3. Biology. overlapping like tiles, as scales or leaves."

This is a great word, one of those that sounds just like what it means. It makes complete sense that there would be a word for this, and I like how it's other meanings suggest where that decorative motif comes from in pottery -- tiles, scales and leaves. Inspiration from nature strikes again! And now that I put two and two together, it occurs to me that I've seen that technique on Leach Pottery standard ware, and that Clary Illian does it occasionally under a temmoku glaze. And it seems that other English potters/Leach apprentices have used it too -- Cardew, perhaps?

April 20th, 2008

TW@SE was marked by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake, the 2nd largest event on record in our part of the world. Growing up in southern California, it wasn't uncommon to get rattled out of bed by a good quake, but in the Midwest it's a lot more noteworthy. The USGS site says that "...there is compelling evidence that earthquakes stronger than the April 18 earthquake have shaken the region in the geologically recent past." For some reason, I really like that fact. It goes on to say, "The region is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected." That applies to so many things: continents, pots, people.

I think it's fascinating how the macro and micro share the same properties. Bedrock and continental plates shift at their faultlines just as a glaze crazes at tension points as it comes from the kiln, as if the earth is a big pot, still cooling off after a really hot firing. It's obvious how ceramics incorporates physics and chemistry, but I'd never thought of it in terms of geology before. Firing is like performing mini-experiments in volcanism.

This also got me thinking about the fact that here in central Indiana, we live almost exactly at the southern boundary of the glaciers during the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago. While that's a short time span for the planet, it's quite historic from the human perspective, with dramatic consequences. The wide, flat fields of glacial till that surround our home give way to much more hilly and varied terrain just a few miles south. Imagine how much clay got pushed around in the process...

Closer to the surface, I'm really enjoying the full arrival of spring weather, with more of those strange foggy mornings. Let the mowing begin!

I finally got around to updating my site gallery with pots from last month's firing. There are about 20 new pots there, representative of 150 or so that are currently available (with more to come in the next couple weeks). In the studio, I started glazing for the next firing in the soda kiln, which I'll load and fire next week. Since my kiln isn't under a shed, getting firings done is tricky this time of year; the storms come through often and the forecast seems to change a couple times a day. Ideally, I look for a couple days with no rain and not too much wind, but sometimes I just have to go for it and fight the elements. If there's time, I'll do two more firings before my sale on May 10th.

A few weeks ago, Ron Philbeck and I did a mug trade, each sending one of our mugs to the other. This is a great thing potters can do; for the price of shipping, you get to add a new pot to add to your collection -- with all the enjoyment and learning potential that entails -- and also share your work with a fellow potter.

Years ago, someone told me that you could learn most of what you needed to know about a potter by looking closely at one of their mugs. I've forgotten who said that, but there's a lot of truth in it. I feel like I already know Ron's pots from reading his excellent blog; the way he posts photos as he works reveals a lot of great information (and is a model I try to follow here). But I'd never had one in hand until now, which is a completely different thing than looking at photos. Seeing is virtual; holding is real.

So I was really excited to get his mug in the mail. I like it a lot, particularly in the ways that it's not like one of mine. That's probably where the real interest is in using another person's pots -- the things I can discover that I didn't already know, alternate solutions to similar problems, learning the subtleties and nuances of their touch on the clay, and the thoughts it suggests. Ron's mug is salt-fired stoneware, which I love, but haven't used now in several years. That clay has a unique character, particularly in the way it responds to the vapor glaze. The slip is a wonderful yellow-orange (only slightly enhanced by the morning sun in this photo). It's got a good weight to it -- solid but not heavy. Two dimples, one on each side at right angles to the handle, give a variety of places to set fingers, encouraging attention to how you're holding it and awareness of it's texture. The handle is great, an exact two-finger grip for me. I really like how the base of the handle has some mass to it, and flares into a really fluid semi-circle. (My handles tend to fade away at the bottom, particularly if I don't make a conscious effort to avoid it.) And the twisted wire cut at the base is great; that quick gesture frozen in stone, smoothed by the salt vapors into a surface that's interesting and enjoyable to touch.

I'm also intrigued by the fact that Ron and I have never met in person. I've been to North Carolina just once, years ago, and I doubt he makes it to the midwest very often. We know one another exclusively through email, blogs and the occasional phone call. (In fact, were it not for the web, I doubt we'd have ever made the connection.) But now we know each other a bit more through our actual pots, which is a very substantial connection. It's interesting to me that this particular exchange could have only happened in the internet era, which makes for yet another small but profound way that technology has changed the potting life.

April 13th, 2008

TW@SE I thought I'd write about those new lidded jars I made last week. Working from photographs, I'm trying to make them in the form of a late 19th-century round barn. I'm making these on request from a woman whose family had one of these fantastic barns nearby (pictured below). Like our barn, this one has now fallen to the passage of time, but for decades it was a working structure that represented the state-of-the-art in the agricultural industry, a well-crafted tool designed for a very specific purpose. Gradually, it faded from daily use to standing as an artifact of a previous time. It was something of a local landmark, too -- one of our routes to town still goes along Round Barn Road.

Round barns are relatively rare, and were largely an American phenomenon. Apparently, they were concentrated in the midwest, with many located in central Indiana, just north of where we live. They were built as part of a movement to make farming more efficient, starting around 1900, but there's evidence that their untraditional form was also motivated by aesthetics and religious/existential beliefs, which is really intriguing. For example:

"In 1826 in a Shaker community at Hancock, Massachusetts, farmers came up with a revolutionary idea--"the model of efficiency", as they described it. They believed it was not only an ideal dairy barn, but much easier to clean because of the elimination of corners, and even better, no corners for which the Devil to hide."
~ Hoosier Round Barns wiki

As I've probably made clear before, I love old farm buildings: barns, silos, grain bins, storage sheds. They're classic "vernacular architecture" -- made individually by hand, and suited to a specific purpose using a localized style, materials and methods. They are like ghosts of a pre-industrialized world.

(As an aside, check out this Toda hut from India - it's a catenary arch!)

And I'm really interested in the similarities between these buildings and handmade pots. Both are utilitarian by definition, but have vast potential to be expressive of their maker's aesthetics and ideals. In both formats, the process of unifying these competing interests makes for a very creative space to work in. The act of doing so on an individual basis allows them to be unique, very expressive of how and why they were made.

So I was attracted to making these by the potential for the pot to symbolically represent the barn, and to echo their shared qualities. I like the local-ness of it, pots and barns being largely about the place where they are made. And I suppose it's an attempt to commemorate the barn we lost, and all the others like it that will soon be gone.

It's also an interesting, complex shape for a lidded jar, which poses design problems that will take a few iterations to solve. I enjoyed working out the proportions and details, deciding how to suggest the barn without representing it too specifically. I'm wary of the pot being just a replica of the barn, like a small clay model you'd find in a diorama at the Barn Museum. There's ample room for the result to be tacky or dumb -- if it comes across as kitsch, it's dead on arrival. It would also be easy to make it look like a barn, but not work like a good pot, so I'm concerned about the functional details as well, like the size and weight of the lid, and shape of the knob.

I've become careful about taking commissions, particularly if they require much diversion from forms or glazes that I already know and use. When working on a customer's request, it's easy to get caught up in the technical details, or to chase the idea they have in mind without ever quite catching it. Marj Peeler told me recently to be wary of taking orders, summing it up in her wonderfully direct way: "We usually lost our shirt on them!" In addition to all that, I'm far more interested in following my ideas than someone else's. I have sketchbooks full of drawings, notes, decoration ideas and untried experiments. The time to work is never enough to do them all. Being a studio potter means following a life-long quest into the unknown, and I think it's a journey best taken following one's own internal compass.

On the other hand, a good request at the right time can be a little nudge in an interesting direction, a random seed inserted into the algorithm of my "What's Next?" program. It can prompt a return to a pot that I haven't made in a while, or a reconsideration about the shape of a handle or the proportions of a form. Sometimes they suggest things I might have thought of on my own, but didn't: using a glaze or pattern on a different form, making a group of related pots, or thinking about a specific purpose, like serving a particular food or holding a certain kind of plant. Ideally, a commission presents challenges that are both interesting and just difficult enough to be within my grasp if I stretch a bit.

Some commissions are like deadly quicksand, others like a refreshing dip in a tropical pool. The trick is to know which is which before jumping in.

April 6th, 2008

TW@SE I started into crunch time for my Spring Sale, now just a month away (it will be Saturday, May 10th this year; I pushed the date back a week in hopes of getting in one more firing). So, my entries here might be more concise than usual the next few weeks. I readily acknowledge that this may be an improvement.

In the studio this week I did one last run of pots for the soda kiln. Given the time I'll have available the next few weeks, that's cutting it close on time to get them dried, bisque fired and through the glaze firing. But it's worth some finessing to squeeze them into the schedule; I hate firing semi-full bisque loads, and stacking the soda kiln is a lot easier with some extra pots on hand to choose from.

I really enjoy returning to wet clay and the wheel after a firing cycle -- it lets me take those fresh impressions of the finished pots and apply them immediately to the new ones. While each making phase is part of a continuum, it's such a dramatic change-up to go from handling hard bisque ware, splashing glazes and firing the kiln to wedging, pushing soft clay around and decorating leather-hard pots. I made small series; just a few pots each in a variety of forms: domino mugs, large bowls that will get slips and glazes after bisque, squared planters, and some lidded jars in a new form (more on that later).

Lastly this week, it appears that we've finally turned the corner on spring here in Indiana. It's a welcome change to not have to worry about pots freezing overnight, to be able to open a window or two, and to hang up the winter coat for another year. Spring is my favorite season, and a great time to be working in the studio. Up here on our small hill, we have these amazing mornings of mist and fog, where the visibility gets so short that even the husk of the barn is partially hidden. It feels like we're on an island surrounded by the unknown.

March 30th, 2008

TW@SE I did a glaze firing, with good results and a lot of new pots for my upcoming spring sale. The showroom was getting pretty sparse, so it will be great to get them cleaned up, priced and on the shelves. On the other hand, I like to stall a bit on getting that part done, because it's so nice to be in the studio surrounded by tables full of finished pots. It reinforces the lessons learned, and gives me time to think about the forms and my glazing decisions. The pots are always interesting tightly stacked up like this too; all the various parts and colors interact in unexpected ways. Occasionally, I'll even get a new idea from one of these accidental arrangements. I guess I like them this way, too, because it's so informal; more like the way they end up in a kitchen cabinet than the clean, orderly way I set them out for sale.

I also took photos of the best pots for my website gallery, which I hope to get updated in the next week or so.

The Yunomi invitational show at AKAR opened this week, featuring 5 pots each by about 150 potters. It's a staggering amount of stuff; looking closely, it takes a long time just to see it all. On the gallery's email list, I received a message on opening day saying that their server was having trouble keeping up with the site traffic. Judging by that and the number of "sold" dots, it looks like the response was really good. I think that's an encouraging prospect, that an online-only show of pots can work (I assume it's profitable enough to be worthwhile).

Here are my teabowls in the show. This time I'm listed between Michael Connelly and David Crane -- quite good company! If you haven't seen the show yet, I highly recommend you check it out.

Also showing at AKAR this month are pots by Wayne Branum, a former MacKenzie student who has a reserved, minimalist style. I really admire his ability to get so much depth and interest from very spare surfaces. His work is a nice counterpoint to the School of Ash & Flash, which draws so many of us in with it's promises of jubilant excess.

And speaking of web stuff: this week I made some minor stylistic changes to the template of this page, dressing it up a bit without -- I hope -- distracting too much from the content. I started this endeavor last summer with as minimal a presentation as I could get away with, hoping to stave off my tendency to get sucked into the web design quicksand, endlessly tweaking page structure and design. As much as I admire good web work and love to play with that stuff, my intent here has been to focus on the content -- text, images, links. Layouts and style are ephemeral; content, when it's good, is almost as permanent as fired clay.

That being said, this latest round of fiddling reminds me of how far the tools for making stuff on the web have advanced in such a very short time. (I'm about to go into some geeky inside-baseball here; if that's not your thing, might I recommend you go check out the Yunomi show instead?) I didn't start building websites until 1999, so I missed the halcyon days of all hand-coded HTML and wacky tricks like using dozens of little spacer images to get things to line up in early web browsers. And I don't mean "missed' in the sense of wishing I'd experienced it -- by most accounts, that was pretty tedious stuff. So by the time I started, many of today's tools were pretty well established, like WYSIWYG editing with Dreamweaver.

But since then, there's been a virtual tidal wave of tools and standards that are great improvements, like using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for layout and appearance, AJAX or Flash for "ri