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. #27 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 "rich" interfaces, or XML and RSS for passing data around. These technologies are behind everything that gets piled under the "Web 2.0" label -- social networking, wikis, blogs, feeds, sites as software -- and they fuel this rapid, constant growth in both what the web can do and how people use it. That's a mighty agile, evolving set of tools to work with.

Compare that to ceramics and it's a completely different story. While ceramics surely has a bleeding edge of technical development, it happens in the outer reaches of high-tech and aerospace, not on the ground where a typical potter has access to it and can change his or her process as a consequence. The tools that potters use, by and large, change very slowly. This makes sense: A traditional craft medium requires consistency to survive. Otherwise, it becomes something else.

And come to think of it, the most significant changes to the way I make pots over the same period of time that I've been building websites have also come from digital technology: computerized kiln sitters, digital pyrometers, and -- yes -- using the web for research, communication and promotion.

March 23rd, 2008

TW@SE I finished another throwing cycle and transitioned to getting the last pots dry, loading and firing another bisque, and starting to glaze for my next firing. I remixed a couple glaze batches, so that they could settle overnight before use, then began waxing bases, feet and the connecting points of lids and jars.

One of the hardest parts of glazing is making decisions about which glaze to put on which pot. This requires making that imaginative leap to seeing what the fired glaze would be like on the blank, bisque-fired form, while considering logistical factors like how the kin will be loaded, which glazes work best in which zones, and how many pots I ideally want to end up with in each glaze (i.e. not too many Teadust, too few Celadon, etc.). I've started deliberately making most of these decisions in advance, while I'm fresh and the coffee is still active in my bloodstream. I set all the pots that could potentially go into the current load out in one place, then start grouping them by which glaze they'll get. Some are obvious, such as when I had a glaze in mind before I even made the pot. Others are more difficult, particularly if it's a really good example of a certain form. (Even working in series, there are usually one or two that are better than the rest.) I try not to be too cautious with these, but knowing that they're potentially the best new work often makes me think twice. Sometimes I'll decide I'm not ready to commit yet, and set them back on the bisque shelf for a later firing. Whether that's logical caution or dumb superstition is hard to say.

Applying glazes is an elaborate, familiar ritual, repetitive and labor-intensive, but also focused and mixed with anxiety about the results. I've been surprised over the years, in talking to my customers or other non-potters, to discover how often they underestimate both the complexity and significance of the glazing process. While almost anyone can imagine what goes into brushwork decoration, based on the personal experience of writing or painting, understanding how a coat of glaze gets successfully applied to a pot is almost a complete mystery. I suppose this makes sense -- the process just doesn't map to any other familiar activity. (Dipping french toast, perhaps?)

So, in the absence of any reason to think otherwise, many people seem to assume that there's a Glazing Magic Wand of some sort, which the potter points at each piece and - Zap! - it's green or yellow or black with a pattern of fine gold crystals. Ahhh... if I had but one wish in the studio, it would be to have one of those wands.

What I find interesting is that, as a beginning potter years ago, I made a similar miscalculation. Glazing was an afterthought, a roll of the dice. The room where all those strange powders were stored was locked, a vault reserved for professors and grad students. The means by which those trash cans full of liquid glaze appeared week after week was mysterious. And after all the hard work of learning how to actually make a thing from clay -- to finally arrive at the point of having some reasonably good bisqueware -- it seemed impossible that there was yet another step, a make-or-break requirement, which was even more challenging and risky. But there was.

Today, while I still fight it grudgingly, I understand and accept this fact. Almost everything in ceramics seems to expand to new levels of depth and complexity with experience -- the mechanics of throwing, the subtlety of form, the endless possibilities for decoration, the challenges of successful kiln design and building, glaze formulation and application, firing, and so on.

I've always been drawn to the "mud and water" aspects of making pots, so for me the "glaze and fire" parts are the most challenging. Literally, the more I learn the more I realize how much I have left to learn. I read books, magazines, Clayart posts; I test glazes, new materials, stacking patterns, and variations to firing schedules. But progress is slow. That magic wand never materializes. Lots of good bisqueware goes into the kiln on the calculated gambles of hope and luck. And, sometimes, really good pots come out.

March 16th, 2008

TW@SE I fixed my electric kiln, which had been out of commission since my last bisque firing in November. I'd been stalling on investigating the problem -- mainly due to fear that it was a major issue -- but with shelves full of greenware, it was time to get to it. Necessity is such a great motivator!

Upon opening the control panel, I discovered that one of the main wires coming in from the plug had overheated, burning the insulation and actually disintegrating the wire itself. Now I'm no expert, but that would certainly explain why the kiln died. Between advice from my Dad (a former electrician) and some excellent help from the service guy at Skutt Kilns, I ordered a new power cord and installed it. I normally draw the line on home/studio repairs at electrical and plumbing, so I was really cautious about doing this myself, but after seeing what was what and getting assurances that I probably wouldn't electrocute myself or burn the studio down, it went fairly easily. Score one for technical self-sufficiency! I was afraid that some other components had been fried during the meltdown, but when I cautiously flipped the breaker back on, the kiln came back like new. After some testing and a bisque firing, it all appears to be in working order.

The consensus opinion of my team of experts is that this was caused by a loose cable clamp where the wire enters the metal controller box. The kiln is about 12 years old -- I bought it used from another potter -- but I had it in storage for 6 years and moved it several times. That long, stiff power cord is easy to bang around and catches on stuff easily. Apparently, over time that loosened the clamp that's supposed to keep tension off the terminal connections inside, allowing them to flex and loosen, which built up electrical resistance, which creates heat, which burns stuff, which kills the power (quite abruptly), which stops firings, which creates panic and dread, which is how this story started.

So my unsolicited advice to any electric kiln owners out there is: a) Don't drag it around by the cord; and b) If you do, consider opening it up once in a while to check that everything is tight and in good condition.

As if that wasn't enough to overwhelm my mechanically-challenged brain for one week, we also started the demolition of our late, great barn. Our delayed spring this year made for less than ideal working conditions, but with help from a few generous volunteers we made excellent progress. My friend Ken brought his tractor, which made a huge difference with hauling stuff away from the site and pulling parts of the structure to the ground. As a child of the suburbs, I still haven't adapted my view of country life to include using heavy equipment. I see tasks from the perspective of doing them by hand, so I'm continually surprised to see what a tractor like that can do -- it's like a 10x multiplier in the right circumstances.

Some large pieces of the barn were barely hanging on, suspended thirty feet in the air; others were hard to dismantle even after we cut the joints and pulled on them. (The saying "they don't make them like they used to" is such a cliche, but in this case it's very literally true -- those 9" x 9" posts and hand-carved mortise and tenon joints are amazingly strong, and that structural design is just plain brilliant. Frank V. Day sure knew his business.) The stubbornness of the good parts to let go combined with the unpredictability of sections that had jumped off the foundation and were hanging free in space made the whole project resemble a massive, high-stakes game of Jenga. To the extent that we didn't accidentally destroy anything else or get anyone killed in the process, I'd say we won.

The adrenaline rush of sawing through beams up in the loft and dragging large sections of the structure to the ground with a tow chain was tempered by the knowledge that we were dismantling such a fine example of 19th century craftsmanship, adding a few more unfortunate bits of entropy to the universe by undoing things that had been so well done almost 100 years ago. Technically, I guess one could argue that the storm was responsible for the undoing, and we were actually restoring some order to things, but it wasn't nearly as rewarding as straightening and fixing all those same parts last year. This was more like throwing bad pots on the shard pile than pulling up a wall of wet clay for a new pot.

After two days, we'd cleared most of the debris away and made a first pass at sorting the salvageable wood from the burn pile. What's left now seems stable enough that it probably won't fall or blow down until I have time to get back to it later in the year. The lean-to section was the least damaged, and looks like it has some potential, given the right structural work and some luck. That would more fantastic than I can put into words right now. Another positive aspect is that many of the posts, rafters, joists and floorboards that we removed are still in fine condition; the catch now is keeping them dry enough to be put to good use later.

That issue is compounded by the fact that I already have an extensive collection of old barn wood around the yard. Before we started restoring this barn last spring, I helped tear down a neighbor's barn which had partially collapsed and salvaged a lot of material from it, planning to eventually store it in our barn once it was "in the dry". So now we have piles and piles of good wood outside, and very little roof to store it under. What was that I said about plans a couple months ago?

March 9th, 2008

TW@SE I made the last pots for this throwing cycle: a few more lidded jars, two groups of mugs, some bowls with soft-carved wavy rims, and small sushi bowls. I made the jars in two parts, like last week, and was going for a similar form, with that double-curved profile. These three are a little larger; the others might be a bit too narrow at the neck for easy access. Even so, I do like making pots in a range of sizes and with variations to the components that make up any given form. I think there's a lot of merit to the idea that each pot can eventually be found by someone whose hand and way of holding fits the handle just so, or whose idea of a batch of cookies just fits that jar, or whose sense of beauty fits the form and surface and feel of a particular pot.

I was introduced to this idea by a story about Linda Christianson -- one of my all-time favorite potters. (I heard this second- or third-hand, so the following is factually hazy. I can't even remember who told me the story!). She was doing a talk or conference panel and during the questions section, someone in the audience said: I bought one of your cups and I love it, but it has this funky handle that just doesn't work well. In response, Linda said something like: Then that cup's not for you.

That still kind of blows my mind.

Potters usually start out hoping to make something that other people will just appreciate, let alone buy. That was certainly true for me -- I was excited to make things, but really pleased when people wanted them. It's common for beginners to carry over assumptions from a lifetime of consuming mass-produced objects, and to think that the default goal should be matching sets and symmetricality and consistency. The idea that you could make pots that are as quirky and unique as the people that might come along to consider them, and perhaps even be successful enough to make a living at it, revealed a whole range of possibilities.

(And that reminds me of another anecdote about cups, from a talk I actually saw in person. Several years ago, at NCECA in Indianapolis, Chris Staley said that he once asked his young daughter what it was she liked about the handmade pots they used at home. She said, "I like the mistakes." Perfect, right?)

In other news, AKAR Gallery posted a teaser for the upcoming Yunomi show to their site. The show will be online-only, which is a really interesting development, I think, at the intersection of finding an audience for pots and good old fashioned e-commerce. The show "opens" March 28th -- I can't wait to see all the pots.

On the homefront, our winter weather is really hanging on this year, doing that March thing where it taunts us with snow and freezing rain right up to the point where Spring explodes almost overnight. Wood stove season is coming to an end, which is just fine by me -- at this point, I'm pretty tired of building a fire each morning in the studio and hauling around firewood. And I can't wait to open up the windows to fresh air and the sounds of birds and trains going by as I work.

If it warms up enough, next week we're planning to start the barn demolition, clearing away the wreckage and, hopefully, pulling down some of the leaning, hanging parts that look like they're just waiting to fall. It's hard to imagine going back to work on it just to undo so much of what we started a year ago, but I think it'll be good to get out there and touch stuff, to react to it physically for a change.

March 2nd, 2008

TW@SE I continued making vases, but they didn't go nearly as well as the last group. Starting with the bases, I managed to lose 4 at the wheel and ended up with only 2 good ones after most of a morning's work. I kept losing them at the bottom edge of that curve, probably by pulling the clay there too thin and not leaving enough support for the rest of the form. As frustrating as this was, it's pretty rare these days for me to drop a pot at the wheel; more often, the result is just not what I was going for or not a very good execution of the idea. But stuff like this will always go with the territory, particularly when trying something new or unfamiliar.

I read something recently -- perhaps in Studio Potter -- that said something to the effect of: "Don't go looking for problems in ceramics; they will find you." Sad but true! The wheel and that soft, spinning clay can be stern teachers at times. There's no shortage of lessons in humility and gratitude.

So, a few more lessons learned. Lately, I'm trying to get more flowing curves back into my pots, as my tendency is to overuse the metal rib and push things into tight planes and straight lines. I really enjoy working in that "style" (for lack of a better term), but it can feel too mechanical or cold at times. Ideally, each throwing cycle creates a diverse ecosystem of pots lined up on the studio shelves, even if that means going in more directions at once than is optimally productive. Sometimes I really want to make things that are luscious, full, swelling; suggesting fruit and clouds and human lines, rather than buildings and abstractions of mechanical objects. Other times, the opposite is true. One of the best parts about being in control of my own work is the freedom to make those choices on a daily basis.

In an attempt to salvage my momentum and have something tangible to show for the day, I switched from vases to making oval baskets. Sometimes a certain thing just isn't going well at a certain time. It's tricky to know hard hard to push against this and when to give in, but I think it's wise to retreat at some point and live to fight another day. Which reminds me of a great quote from Michael Simon's interview in the Smithsonian Oral History Archive:

"Especially when I was working by myself, I thought, you know, you're your own stimulus really. I mean, one of our jobs as potters... is to keep yourself stimulated. It is not always going to just come to you. You're not going to necessarily wake up feeling terrific every day or something like that, or sometimes you might have setbacks, but you have to keep yourself stimulated; it's really crucial."

I think this is a brilliant insight; another of those ideas that must take years to sort out and then be able to articulate. (That interview is bursting with them -- it's one of the best things I've ever read about making pots.) I like his recognition that the work is often not fun or easy, and that it takes time and effort to compensate for that fact and stay engaged. And especially that doing this is part of the job. Staying inspired is not optional, not if you want to grow and continually make good work that grows with you. Sometimes I think inspiration is as simple as finding ways to not demotivate yourself, like knowing when to temporarily give up in order to maintain enough positive momentum to try again later.

I made three large oval baskets with patterned stamps; they will get my teadust glaze -- hoping for those rust-colored halos again. They'll also have woven cane handles, which I make individually on each pot as the last step (after the glaze firing). Later in the week, I made some bigger lidded jars, thrown in two parts like the vases and with a similar swell near the base. These were less of a struggle, but I may have left them a bit too thick at the base to support that curve. It's also easier to get that shape right on a larger form -- the wider opening at the top makes it easier to get my inside hand through.

I had a mini-epiphany about how to make the knobs for this kind of lid. I start the lids upside down, throwing off the hump (a single, large lump of clay that's recentered at the top to make each lid in sequence). Each lid is just a shallow bowl thrown to match the inside diameter of the seat or gallery on the jar it's for. After drying to leather-hard, I turn them right-side up and trim them on a pad of clay. All of that is still the same. However, I used to score and attach a somewhat random blob of clay on top to throw the knob, often ending up with an odd or unexpected result, committed to a lid that was nearly complete. Since it's more hassle to cut the knob off and try again than to just start over, this meant making lots of extra lids or settling for unsatisfactory ones.

It occurred to me that I could improve on this method by throwing the knobs off the hump and getting them close to their finished shape, with a bit of excess clay at the base to attach to the lid. After scoring and attaching them roughly centered on the lid, it takes just a bit of throwing to join the two parts securely and finish the knob to the desired proportions. This new way involves much less fighting to get that blob centered and still end up with the desired shape, and adds a chance to discard the knobs that aren't very good before committing them to the lids. It adds a small step, but the extra time seems worth the saved effort. This is an example of something that's a true revelation at the time, but seems pretty obvious in retrospect. Many potters have probably done it this way all along! So, not revolutionary by any means, but a nice discovery -- I expect I'll do it this way from now on.

This reinforces my belief that improving knowledge and skills in hands-on studio work is really about refining small processes and how they inter-relate with one another. It's the kind of thing that has to be achieved by doing; I never would have come up with that change by just sitting around thinking about it. Making discoveries and improvements like this is a really gratifying part of the whole, too. There's something special about finding a better way -- taking a troublesome variable out of the equation, streamlining a procedure, making a creative tweak to my engrained habits. I particularly get excited about changes that make the process more enjoyable and the end result better; that's like gold. It makes me think of the hundreds of times I might use this new little thing in the future, and what other discoveries it could lead to. I'm a such sucker for potential! And while it's possible that I'm just late to the game on this one, or that it's an old memory dredged up from a demo or book, that feeling of self-sufficient problem solving is pretty powerful stuff.

Oh, and the jars turned out pretty well, too.

February 24th, 2008

TW@SE I spent less time in the studio than usual, but I made some plates for a commission and some vases with a somewhat different form than I've tried before. Lately, I've been sketching more before starting a new group of pots. I find that it helps to clarify my ideas and improves the pots, even when I just make some quick gestural line drawings and notes. It's kind of like wedging my brain so it's uniformly flexible, and warming up my eyes so they're ready to work.

Having clear concepts and goals in mind before the clay is actually moving through my hands makes throwing more of a deliberate act and less random exploration. There's still room for spontaneity and discovery, but without the haphazard, "take what you get" approach. (I think doing exploratory throwing is a great idea, but probably most useful when it's planned rather than by accident.) Another benefit of making sketches is that they record the original idea for the pots for reference later in the process, including decoration and glazing details. This creates a consistency of intent from start to finish, and I think encourages an iterative development cycle, learning and making adjustments each time.

We have a vase by Clary Illian in our collection that I've admired for many years, but have been apprehensive about trying to emulate. (I say emulate rather than copy because I'm not interested in duplicating her vase. I probably couldn't even if I wanted to! Instead, I want to understand its qualities -- why it "works" -- and then try to make a similar pot that has some of those qualities.) It's porcelain, with a clear glaze that makes for a stark, luscious white and emphasizes the form dramatically. We own several of her pots in this clay and glaze combination, and I think this is the best of them.

So I did a bit of "reverse engineering" -- examining this pot to figure out how it was made. I compared it with one of my latest and greatest vases: handled them thoroughly, measured and weighed them, sketched them a couple times, looking at details and differences. I learned a few things in the process; for example, I'm now more aware of the angle of that shoulder as the rounded lower body becomes the vertical neck, and what a difference it makes to change the size and angle of that small section. I was also reminded of the possibilities of leaving gesture and throwing marks in the clay, something I've gotten away from lately. It was really fun and engaging to work with one of her pots right there in front of the wheel while I was throwing, and the results seem very promising. I'm excited to make more.

This also brought to mind something she taught me once, when I was working in her studio in the mid-90's. She held up a jug and showed me how to turn it around in my hands on it's horizontal axis, which emphasized the dynamics of its weight and balance from top to bottom. She said that it was important for the wall of a pot to have variations, to be deliberately thicker in some areas and thinner in others. That this changed not just the way a pot looks, but how it feels. This was a revelation to me: at the time, I was just trying to get the weight up from the base so that every pot didn't seem designed to function as a boat anchor (often, I still am!). Like many of the things one can learn about clay, this is an elusive lesson. Months go by where I forget about it, stop paying attention to it. Then something, like this vase, will prompt it again and off I go with a slightly changed perspective on what I'm making and why.

I've been slowly reading the most recent issue of Studio Potter. I try to savor it and digest each article before moving on to the next -- it's great for breaks in the studio. This one has a few great articles on the theme of apprenticeship and learning. One is by another of Clary's apprentices, Beth Lambert. Titled "Finding One's Way with Clary," it's about Beth's time in Ely, IA (available as a PDF from the SP website). It was very interesting to read another person's impressions of the experience, and it brought back similar details and memories from my time there: how intimidating it was to work in Clary's studio, anxiety about starting to use the treadle wheel, the dread of not making enough pots worth firing, the brutal honesty and absolute accuracy of her comments and critiques, and the intensity of the example she set of how to go about being a potter. And yes, even her shards were inspirational.

"So, You Want to be a Studio Potter?," by Elisa DiFeo, is about her time as an assistant to potter Silvie Granatelli. I especially liked this:

"The atmosphere of the studio was very different from what I was used to. My first impression was shock. There were only two people at work in the studio: Silvie, a renowned artist with a full-time career as a studio potter, and me... At that moment I realized that this was the real world and I was on my own."

So true!

A companion article by Granatelli, "Sharing My Studio," is very perceptive and well-written, with a perspective that can only come from years of experience. For instance, after describing the challenges of getting started as a young potter, she says:

"Those of us in it for the long haul make our way through these unknowns with varying degrees of success."

And later:

"In my opinion, being a potter can be a very humbling experience, especially during the early years when rejection can happen often and money is scarce. I believe it is in our best interest to develop a thick skin. In the end, most potters work alone, from our heads and our hearts."

Yes, yes!

I think this is what Studio Potter does best. Unfortunately, those last two aren't available online, but if you're serious about pots, I highly recommend that you subscribe to the magazine. It's $30 a year for 2 issues, but as a small publication with no advertising (unlike -- ahem! -- the ghastly schlock that fills the pages of Ceramics Monthly) and excellent content, I think it's well worth the price.

February 17th, 2008

TW@SE, it's time to get back to writing about pots. I've gone on enough about the barn for a while. A couple Saturdays ago, I helped shoot photos for an event at the local museum in conjunction with a retrospective exhibit of potters Richard and Marj Peeler. This was the third event, and like before, it was interesting to see the objects that people brought in from their personal collections to be photographed. Many showed the wide range of the Peeler's creative work, from pots and jewelry to turned wood to textiles. In clay, there were the expected mugs, bowls, vases and so on, but also clocks, lamps, ashtrays (relics from a bygone era!) and a variety of sculptural forms. In a subsequent note from Marj, she said that even she was surprised at the range of things that people brought in, and was very pleased to have seen all of it again.

My favorite object this time was an earthenware lidded jar of Richard's, dated 1959. It has this odd, ugly-beautiful glaze and strange applied sprigs. The glaze looks like it has a lot of clay in it, perhaps a slip glaze, similar to the old Albany glazes? It's kind of clunky, not elegantly thrown, and the rim had several chips from years of use. I suspect it may even be one of his student pots, perhaps from graduate school, as it has an exploratory feel and unresolved execution. Yet for all that, it's a really interesting pot; I was drawn to it and found myself thinking about it later. It stood out to me as dramatically different than their other pots; it has a mystery and vitality to it that's hard to sum up. Of all the Peeler pots I've seen, if I could pick one to own, this would be it.

There were also a couple pots dated 1998, the year Richard passed away. That's almost a 40 year span from that early lidded jar, which really puts the pots I made last week, or even last year, into perspective. To reach that same mark, I'll have to be potting in 2032, which is 24 years from now. But heck, I'll only be 60 then; with bio-digital-genetic life extension, I should have a few good decades left after that, right? (Provided my bionic knee can still kick the treadle bar...)

That's an interesting thing to contemplate, what my pots will be like a quarter century from now. They could be wildly different or just gradually evolved in subtle ways. I wonder if they will seem stylistically attached to the time and place I started, still echoing Leach via MacKenzie and the Mingeisota school? It strains my imagination to think of all the things that will come and go in between. That's a benefit of knowing older potters and looking at work from the past. It frames time in a different way; shifts my perspective on a life making things from clay.

I had a glitch with my digital camera, so wasn't taking photos in the studio for a while. Here are some of the pots I've made in the last three weeks: lidded jars, small altered dished and bottles.

I find that it really helps to make lidded jars in series -- I take careful measurements of each rim just after they're thrown, but then make a group of lids that span this range of dimensions, and mix and match as necessary to get a good fit for each once they're bone dry. I'd like to be able to just make one lid per pot and know it was going to work, but with the variations in drying and the tight fit I'm looking for, that's really difficult to do. (I'd rather make extra lids than trim them to fit at the leatherhard stage.)

I really like these fluted lidded jars; it's a shape I come back to every year or so. When my celadon glaze is working just right, it fills in the grooves perfectly, emphasizing the texture while smoothing it out. I'm not sure which lid style is best for these -- the one in the center with the loop handle duplicates the lugs on the side of the jar, but that tall, skinny knob at the far left mirrors the vertical lines of the flutes nicely. I've also done them with drop-in lids, which make for a sqaut, compact profile. Rims and feet, rims and feet.

I make these bottle/vase forms in two parts, allowing the bottom part to stiffen overnight before attaching a thrown ring of clay to the top and then throwing the neck. Getting that connection between the two parts just so is important; if the join is going to show, I want it to be a deliberate transition point -- otherwise, I want it to be a seamless continuation of the curve. As with the lids, I could throw these in one go, but would have to go back later and do some trimming at the base to remove excess clay and weight. On a form with a narrow top like this, that involves using chucks to support the pot upside down or -- God forbid -- a Giffin Grip, all of which I find really unpleasant to mess with. Other potters seem to swear by them; to each his own, I guess. I also think the pot is best when the base to maintains the character it has as it comes off the wheel wet, rather than carved later. That's in keeping with my theory that only pots with defined footrings -- like bowls and plates -- need to be trimmed. The two-stage extended throwing thing is definitely a trick that takes practice to learn, but I think it eventually gives more control over the complete form, including it's balance and weight.

Lastly, I'll conclude this week with a few quotes by (ceramic) sculptor Stephen DeStaebler. I heard both of these years ago and they really hit home; something got me thinking of them again recently, so I scrounged them up on the web. I'm not sure how accurate they are, so I may be paraphrasing here a bit, but I think they're close to the original ideas:

"Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working."

"A life without making the things that tell you who you are and what you feel... is not enough. So I make things."

February 10th, 2008

TW@SE, I'm starting to accept that our barn is gone. It happened so fast and unexpectedly that it was a shock, that kicked-in-the-gut feeling that comes with the realization of what's been lost. As with most things, I guess the key now lies in choosing between the half-full or half-empty view, and then deciding what to do about it. The negatives are really dismaying: the loss of a beautifully-crafted building and a historical artifact; all its potential as a showroom and studio gone; over a year of planning, work and money invested; and now the effort it will take to untangle the mess just to arrive back at zero. It's a hell of a thing that it stood there for 99 years and is now just a pile of stuff to be salvaged or discarded.

But in the optimistic view -- the one I'm trying to maintain -- I think of all the ways it could have been worse. The storm was the most intense I've ever seen, with winds recorded up to 100mph. Other barns and houses nearby were damaged. People in other parts of the state were killed. I don't know if it was "officially" a tornado or not, but if that same force had hit the house or studio, I don't think there would be much left of them. The entire barn roof is gone, structure and all, and the north wall just collapsed. Some big pieces blew hundreds of feet away, yet landed harmlessly in our empty field. If the storm had come from the other direction, it would have been a very different story.

Luckily, it was insured for what we've invested up to this point. We should be able to start over and build something new in it's place. And finally, this could have happened years from now, after we had spent more time, money and care bringing it back to life for a new century. If it was going to happen, better now than later. (I started this blog last June with a photo of the just-completed new roof. That image now seems very distant.)

So, last week at St. Earth will resonate in my memory for quite some time. It's one of those defining moments that you don't choose, but have to live with. It will affect my pots, my business, my realtionship to our land and the elements. There's a metaphor for life here, I suspect, hidden not too far under the surface.

That quote last week was about all I could muster at the time. (I didn't want to commit my feelings to words too soon and regret them later.) It's a lyric by one of my favorite bands, Death Cab For Cutie, from their album Plans:

"And it came to me then, that every plan, is a tiny prayer to father time."

It suggests how so much of what we try to control is out of our hands; that what we plan for and expect is conditional and that, possibly, our ability to influence it is illusionary. I suppose that interpretation fits my existential worldview, and probably isn't very useful or relevant if yours is substantially different. But in any case, I think significant events like this call into question the big philosophical issues: Why do things happen the way they do? How can I influence them, if at all? What do we do next, and how does this change my view of the world? To not take this as an opportunity for contemplation would be just another loss.

My background in English Lit would probably consider citing a pop song as sacreligious, juvenile or lazy. ("Plans? How can you pass on Of Mice and Men?" ) And I do love Steinbeck, but I'll speculate that popular music has largely become our common poetry, a modern substitute for what was traditionally an epic, shared mythology. I've been working my way through Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy, a book by cultural critic/art historian Dave Hickey. In one essay, he says that the primary significance of art like pop songs is that they function as a social tool, instructing us about how to act in unknown circumstances.

For example, he cites courtship as a necessary social activity that used to be governed by strict traditional codes but which, in a modern individualistic society, is only sketchily defined. This change creates a vaccuum, a need to be filled, and so love songs are written and consumed by the thousands in every generation; they act as transmitters of encoded wisdom, teaching people how to navigate such perilous waters. While the "usefulness" of any given song would vary, I think it's a very interesting and plausible idea. If this is true, I like the way it puts pop music into the category of utilitarian art, just like pots, and suggests that these things which might seem optional are actually quite necessary. There are songs (and novels) that help you understand and cope with the fact that your barn just fell into the dirt.

With the hope that I've now successfully justified quoting song lyrics, I'll throw out one more that seems significant at the moment, by Alt. Rock band Jimmy Eat World:

"If there's something left to lose, then don't let me wear out my shoes while I'm still walking."

In the studio, I managed to make a few pots last week, in an attempt at forward progress, despite the inclination to just give up for a while. The view out my studio windows will never be the same, and it's hard to ignore the bones of the barn piled out in the yard, but I have to find a Plan B so the work can go on. This week I made some altered dishes -- I'm working on different approaches to the character of the wall, trying some out-of-round shapes beyond ovals, and refining details like lugs and tripod feet.

I'll end with a more optimistic photo: one Cindy shot near Ghost Ranch, New Mexico a few years ago. That's me, holding a piece of lake ice in front of a winter sunset -- I can still remember the cold against my hand. It's from the Sante Fe Workshops site, where she'll be teaching this summer.

February 3rd, 2008

"And it came to me then, that every plan, is a tiny prayer to father time."

January 27th, 2008

TW@SE I worked several days in the studio, and have a good batch of pots to show for it: 12 medium to large sized bowls and a few planters. Like with the smaller bowls a couple weeks ago, I made 4 different groups, each with variations on a general idea: 1) large hemispheres with slightly rolled-in rims; 2) medium hemispheres with carved rims; 3) shallow and wide with a vertical wall and stamps; 4) shallow and wide with carved fluting.

The bowls in the front row above have plastic wrapped over just their rims to slow drying. I do this often to even out the drying process, particularly with the wood stove going in winter or on a breezy day with the windows open. Most pots will air dry at the rim first, with the clay at the bottom staying wet the longest, particularly if it's on a bat. Even if I won't trim a foot, I flip every pot upside down as soon as it's stiff enough to hold its shape, in order to even out the top-to-bottom drying.

In this case, it's to keep the rims soft enough to carve them after trimming the foot (I do the carving last, since the rims are quite fragile afterwards). I carve the rims with an X-acto knife, which has replaceable blades, because a very edge is easier to push through the leather-hard clay. To space the patterns, I mark them out with diluted food coloring before carving. (Making a food coloring sketch on the actual pot is a good way to plan out decoration, too.) I'm generally not interested in making them exactly proportioned -- a bit of variation can be a good thing and avoid making them too "tight" -- but I want them close enough to seem deliberate. I've been having some trouble with these rims cracking in the glaze firing. My current theory is that the cracks are relieving stress in the clay created at during drying, perhaps if that thin rim dries too fast relative to a thicker base, so I'm experimenting with drying them very slowly under plastic sheeting.

These planters are a variation on my "standard" proportions, with a bit more flaring at the rim. I added lugs and tripod feet to these when they were leather-hard. Three holes are drilled in each base and they'll each have a small plate to collect excess water. These will get that new matte yellow glaze that I'm excited about -- I want to see what else it can do. These wide, short bowls with vertical walls are kind of a new thing for me. I like the broad, shallow space they create inside, and all that tempting area for exterior stamping or decoration.

In the photo at left, I've just finished carving the fluting on this group of bowls. These start with a thicker wall at the throwing stage, so there's enough depth to carve into later. This is similar to leaving the base of a bowl or plate thick enough to trim a foot, but goes against the normal practice of pulling excess thickness out of the vertical parts of a form. Getting this part right takes practice and careful attention.

Likewise with the fluting -- it took some time before I evolved a method that works consistently. I use an old Dolan trimming tool, one that's worn a bit thin and is sharpened with a diamond file (seen above left). Several factors are key to getting good character and consistent depth with the carving: tool sharpness, stiffness of the clay, consistent stiffness of the clay wall, pressure and angle of the tool,and using regular, fluid motions. I try to tune out potential distractions and go "in the zone" for the few minutes it takes to do each one. This is one of those parts of ceramics where your body knows better than your brain how to get the job done; a psuedo-Zen thing where you don't aim to precisely at the bullseye in hopes of actually hitting it. I find the results to be much better when I can get into that state of mind.

The last photo shows some peripheral tools of the trade: my sketchbook with notes and drawings; the latest issue of Studio Potter, which has some great articles, as usual; a metal banding wheel, which I use constantly; the aforementioned X-acto knife; my "Made" list, an obsessive record of progress in the studio; and some carving scraps. In the background are books, writing and drawing stuff, tiles of current glaze tests, and a variety of miscellaneous junk. I seem to keep the studio organized just enough to work in, which means I'm constantly surrounded by random clutter. It's one of those things that I'd like to change about my work habits, but probably won't.

Lastly, I finally replaced my dead iPod with a shiny new one, which has about 15 times more space than before. This means there's a much greater selection to choose from in the studio, which is a bit overwhelming, but I'm really enjoying digging into the audio archive. Recent listening:

Jimmy Eat World - Chase This Light
David Gray - Life In Slow Motion
Green Day - American Idiot
Bill Frisell - Bill Frisell with Dave Holland & Elvin Jones
Counting Crows - Across a Wire

January 20th, 2008

TW@SE I packed my 5 pots for the Yunomi Show at AKAR Gallery in Iowa City. This is the second show I've been invited to there, which is really gratifying. I think it's great that AKAR does a show dedicated to this one form, and I can't wait to see them all on the site -- 500 teabowls in one place is amazing and ridiculous!

The three in the middle are from my last soda firing in the fall, the other two were saved from earlier in 2006. I'm reasonably pleased with them, but wish I'd managed one more making and firing cycle so there were a few more to choose from. (Even with the Reserve, it's hard to come up with 5 good pots of the same form.)

The show invitation described a Yunomi as being taller than it is wide, with a trimmed foot and no handle. Mine are within shouting distance of this definition -- hopefully close enough to count, as in horseshoes and hand grenades. I've always called this form a "teabowl", as a more generic term. That's the name I heard as a student, and I tend to make them bowl shaped as often as taller, like a cup. But I suppose, depending on how precisely one likes to choose their terminology, they could just as well be called rice bowls or Chawan or Yunomi. (As with nearly everything, Wikipedia has an interesting description of the differences).

Like most American studio potters, my style is heavily influenced by the Leach family tree, and through that has many latent Asian influences. (In an imaginary expansion of that chart, I'd go under "Clary Illian > Iowa".) However, my knowledge of the original sources is vague, more like I've heard the echo of a distant sound than the sound itself.

In any case, it's an elemental form of wheel-thrown pottery, one that I use to warm up, to sketch ideas in the clay, and that can be pretty good for drinking from. Whatever they're called, I really like making them, and am happy to have an opportunity to show them.

The rest of the week was mostly This Week @ The Dayjob, as we put the last bits in place and launched the new webserver I've been working on the past few months. This took some overtime during the week, which came out of my studio time, but I should get some comp time next week in return. To generalize a bit about what that entails, the tricky thing with a webserver is that it's both really complex and very public. If things don't work just right it shows pretty quickly and, for a site like the university's, there are dozens of components to consider. Like firing a kiln, there are many variables to account for, and a corresponding dose of uncertainty about the outcome. But it seems that we hit it pretty well on target; the server is now live and running well. It's very nice to see that in the rearview mirror for a change.

This project got me thinking about the nature of technical complexity, and how experience in one field only goes so far when applied to another. For example, I've become pretty adept with the intricacies of computer software, but the realms of kiln construction or glaze formulation -- to cite two areas in which I lack both training and practice -- are still daunting to me. While it contradicts the common view of historical progression, the fact that a technology is currently on the "cutting edge" doesn't mean it supercedes older technologies. Wheels are still wheels, even in an age of rockets.

I'm intrigued by the idea that ceramics has always been "high-tech"; that thousands of years before the scientific method was laid out as a framework of exploration and discovery, people used empirical methods to advance the state of the art, and these methods constituted the technology of the time. (Wikipedia (again) defines technology as the "usage and knowledge of tools and crafts"). This probably involved plenty of ritual and superstition -- following belief as well as observation -- but, ever so slowly, the process evolved from accidentally hardening cooking pots over a fire to the high temperature kilns and mass production of ancient China. Following that line through to the current day, we're essentially still finding things that clay is good for: nose cones, turbines, silicon microchips. (I knew I could bring it back around to computers if I forced things a bit.)

In the midst of a good blast of real winter this month, with snow, ice and freezing winds, I thought I'd do a companion panorama to one from last fall. This is the view from just outside the front of my studio. I love the glow of the fields in the evening winter light, and the graphic lines of the trees in that crisp sky.

Lastly, I found a few scraps of paper in my wallet this week, with notes scribbled down during our holiday on the west coast. Like my rap about "form follows function" a few weeks back, these ideas were prompted by the dangerous combination of free time and California culture shock:

* I aspire to Art, but am fully satisfied to arrive at Craft

* "Culture" is just a cult with window dressing

* A Rothko painting may have a lofty place in people's minds and emotions, but one of my mugs can earn a place perhaps more priviledged: in the hands, touched by lips, held close to the heart on cold winter mornings.

Then again, nobody ever tosses a Rothko in the dishwasher.

January 13th, 2008

TW@SE, I made bowls in the studio -- another step towards getting back into the groove of making pots. I had a few different ideas I wanted to try, based on results from my last glaze firing, so I did three series of 5 bowls each: 1) deep hemisphere with a dimple; 2) shallower with 3 lobes at the rim; 3) straight, flaring sides with stamps. I don't specifically try to make "sets" -- "groups" is probably a more accurate term. It's more important to me to try slight variations of an idea than to attempt exact multiples, and to stay open to the possibilities of each individual pot. I'd much rather end up with 5 similar bowls that are all good in their own way than 5 mediocre bowls that are identical in their mediocrity. My favorite groups of pots feel like they started from the same DNA, but expressed it in various ways, each with some unique traits. Obviously, this doesn't always match up to my customer's expectations, but I think the popular concept of "sets" hinges on the tradition of mechanical reproduction and uniformity, neither of which I do or aspire to. And I've noticed that if I make pots that are intended to be a group, quite often they'll sell individually; if I make them individually, they'll sell as a group. This unpredictability just reinforces the value of doing things in the way that suits my aesthetic preferences. (The perils of chasing the desires of the market is a bigger topic, and one probably best saved for another time.)

As I wrote in September, I've been reassessing my approach to trimming, trying not to be so obsessive about wall thickness and weight. My hope is that going back to a more casual approach will gain in gesture what it might compromise in precision. It's also an attempt to spend a little more time throwing and less finishing, if I can do that without sacrificing the quality of the pots. (If not, I won't.)

In the photos above, the inverted pots have all been trimmed to a rough stage -- the basic shape and proportions of the foot defined and most of the excess clay removed. I leave a "button" in the middle to retain the original depth of the foot there, so I can gauge how much has been removed around it, and also as a spot to apply downward pressure with one finger, since I set the pots loose on a pad of clay to trim them (without wads around the edges). Each bowl goes back on the wheel a second time to finish trimming. This allows the clay stiffen some in between, and lets me handle the pot inside and out to get a good idea of what's left to cut away. Here's another good reason to work in series: by the time the last pot is done, the first one is about ready for the next step.

Last week, I mentioned that I make a point of keeping a group of finished pots in the studio. I've come to think of this as a Library -- a reference, a collection of recent successes, a source of inspiration and reinforcement of lessons learned. Like a library of books, the idea is to check them out and learn from them, but then put them back on the shelf for later use -- it's not just a holding space prior to moving them to the showroom. Pots do come and go, but it's over a longer span of time; I rarely take something out without replacing it with a better or more recent version of the same idea. And not all the pots there are good ones. Some are examples of what not to do, others have a detail of form, decoration or glaze that I want to remember and try to repeat, even though the rest of that pot may not be great.

In either case, being able to see and handle the actual pot is very important to me -- it's the only way to gauge weight and balance, and to see the details up close. These are the things that separate the good pots from the great ones, but which fade from memory too easily.

I also archive my work with photos -- a good side-effect of putting them for sale in the website gallery -- and use these as another reference in the studio, but for a three-dimensional medium like pots, photographs too often fail to capture the details and physical presence of the object.

The Library somewhat overlaps another group of pots I keep, which I think of as my Reserve. This is a selection of the very best pots from the past year or so, those where everything went right, the parts all came together in an unexpectedly good way, or a good form came out of the firing exceptionally well. I keep the Reserve so that I'm sure to have a good example of my recent work when an opportunity arises, like applying for an exhibition or getting invited to a show. This is a fairly recent idea, and it comes from going so many years with that exact problem: a chance to show my work in a public setting would come up, prompting a mad scramble to find something worth showing. Come to think of it, I bet this idea originally came from the book Warren MacKenzie: An American Potter, where the author described MacKenzie having a secret stash of pots in the loft above his studio (I'm sketchy on the details, but that was the gist of the idea).

With both groups of pots, it takes discipline to keep them around. I usually wish I could put them in the showroom or on the website, particularly when those inventories are low, or that I had two of each -- one to sell and one to keep. But I think the effort of maintaining both groups is more than repaid by the gains. The Reserve helps me present my best work to the largest audience I can. The Library helps me make better pots, remember where I've been, and stay inspired to continually explore and improve.

January 6th, 2008

TW@SE, I ended the old year and started off the new by getting back to the studio. What better way to spend the holiday? According to my notes it had been about 50 days since I'd last thrown pots, which is a terribly long time, especially since working at the wheel is the part that I love most about being a potter. All that time went to other parts of the process: glazing, firing, sale preparation, the sale, post-sale miscellany. Then there was working at the job and going out of town for the holidays. All reasonably necessary stuff, but it sure is great to be back at it!

Given that much time away, I was surprisingly un-rusty; usually it takes a while to feel comfortable with the clay again. I started slowly as usual, keeping the difficulty level low and working on forms I know well. Teabowls first, of course, then mugs, which are familiar enough to be the next step up. They also require handles, which warms up the off-the-wheel parts, too. (It wasn't always this way. I remember well when putting on handles seemed like the bane of my existence; I dreaded it and was never satisfied with the results. Now it takes concentration to do them well, but I even look forward to that part. Proof that skills do improve with practice, even the very difficult ones. To beginners, my advice is to recognize that it will take at least 100 bad handles to start making any good ones, so start getting those 100 out of the way as quickly as possible.)

I throw mugs directly on the wheelhead and lift each off as it's done. I find this is easier if the "skin" of the pot is made with a metal rib, which cleans excess slip off the surface and leaves a drier, more structurally tight wall. For many years, I used wooden ribs almost exclusively, going for more of a loose, soft-clay surface, but lately I like the tautness and the crisp lines left behind by the metal rib -- particularly in the soda kiln, where every tiny detail of the bare clay is enhanced, rather than concealed by glaze. I also made the change because of a rib I bought from Sherrill Mudtools (the SS2 model), which is a much better quality and gauge of metal than the standard Kemper rib and has a nicely refined edge. A very enjoyable tool to use.

I set the mugs in the front row on bats to facilitate turning them as I apply stamped patterns at the leather-hard stage. The stamp for these is very simple -- just the rectangular end of a carved stick. The pattern is the interesting part. This kind of surface texture has been giving great results under my Teadust glaze, with amber halos where the glaze runs thin, good crystal growth where the glaze pools inside the stamp, and wonderful negative impressions on the inside of the wall. While it can be a lot of fun to do free exploration at the wheel, I also really like knowing what I'm going for when I start a pot, including which glaze it will get and how I'd like it to come out. I think this reinforces the value of keeping a selection of finished pots around the studio, as models of previous success and a tool to reinforce memory.

I lost some teabowls to the deep freeze during a spell of overnight lows in single digits. When I'm working in the studio I heat with the wood stove, with a small propane furnace to keep it above freezing overnight and on days when I'm not there. But the thermostat is this cheap plastic thing, with an analog display and control, which is ridiculously sensitive and inaccurate. So, as happened this week, I occasionally get it set too low, the temperature drops below freezing, and the water in the new pots freezes. With unused clay this cycle easily reverses with heat, but with pots the surface scales and cracks, leaving a trip to the slops bucket as the only option. That's a real bummer. I lost a larger group last year the same way, so I'm hoping the furnace will be compatible with a digital thermostat, for a relatively easy fix.

Outside the studio, I'm really excited about Craft in America, a three-part documentary series that aired last month on PBS. (I have it recorded on the DVR, but am waiting for just the right mood to dive in.) The series looks beautifully shot, with high production values and an interesting selection of artists, and it's also available on DVD.

In the intro, I saw pots by Mark Hewitt and Matt Metz, who are listed in the artists section, but the only potter featured in the show that I know by name is Sarah Jaeger. It will be interesting to see what the editorial/curatorial view is like, how the potters relate to the people working in other materials, and how issues like the old Art v. Craft debate are represented.

And speaking if old issues, being amidst the suburban sprawl of southern California for a week reminded me that the Modernist rule of "form follows function" is best used as a guiding principle, not a firm rule. When applied too strictly, it sacrifices aesthetics and style in favor of pure functionality, which seems like a potentially deadly ideal. One doesn't have to look far to find examples of this working, yet virtually worthless, material culture: strip malls and glass office parks, styrofoam cups and plastic grocery bags.

Making objects in a utilitarian format like pottery requires consideration of concepts like this, and decisions about how to apply them to your own work. (Clay forms without function are Sculpture, by definition. They are probably better off ignoring such rules altogether.) It's a typical Post-modern dilemma: Will you ignore the rule completely? If not, what criteria will you use to determine which parts to keep? For me, the best pots work exceptionally well without discarding aesthetic value; they maintain simplicity and economy without degrading into dull Minimalism. These pots seem to have their own identity; they suggest possibilities or ask for appreciation of small details, all in the process of getting a drink to your mouth or keeping your food off the table.

Lastly, again from the blogging about blogging department, I'm making a few minor changes here for the new year. 1) As you may have noticed, I'm now indulging myself in the abbreviation "TW@SE" at the start of each post. It's catchy, and you can dance to it. 2) I'm increasing the size of the large images, so they show more detail (click on any image to see a larger version). This seems like a good way to use a bit more of the giant monitors and speedy broadband that many people now have. I hope that includes most of you, the clever, web-loving people that comprise my readership.

December 23rd & 30th, 2007

This week at St. Earth, in a flagrant reversal of last week's plan to keep my regular posting schedule through the holidays, I'm combining the last two weeks of December into one. (Wouldn't that make it "These weeks at St. Earth"? Somewhat less elegant, I think.) This is because it's hard to get a rhythm going in the studio between the end of the sale and the holidays, so I've yet to get back to making pots.

I worked another week at the dayjob, where my main project is building out a new webserver for the university. This is very technical and involves a lot of testing and troubleshooting -- good for stretching my brain. My interest in the web and digital technology still runs a distant second to clay, but it's a good second. Then it was off to California for a week, to spend Christmas with my family in San Diego. The weather was a fantastic change, and it was restful and nice to be away. We even ate at a Thai restaraunt called -- I'm not making this up -- Celadon.

The lull in the studio has prompted some end-of-year musings. For example, once the sale weekend is past, I usually survey the showroom and the pots that are left. It's interesting to wonder why one pot sold and another didn't, and to see the odd ones that have lingered through multiple sales, waiting for just the right person to come along. I think there's a person for every pot, and vice versa, but sometimes it takes a while to make this match. It's bittersweet to look at the empty shelves, remembering the pots I was really pleased with that are now gone. From a business standpoint it's great to sell as many pots as possible, but I like the showroom best when it's jammed full and I can stand there surrounded by many month's work.

I'm in the habit of jotting down ideas in the studio on whatever surface presents itself at the moment, including the canvas cover on my main work table. There in the top corner, now so faded with age as to be barely legible, it says "How to be one show ahead?" Clearly, I'm still trying to figure it out, and I often wonder if I ever will -- building a reserve inventory has become my White Whale or Holy Grail. This is partly because my pots have been selling at about the same rate that I can make them, and partly because my output is limited by splitting my time between the studio and other projects (outside jobs, freelance design work, barn renovation, etc.).

Getting ahead would improve my making process in many ways, such as having less anxiety and rush before each big deadline; working in larger and longer series; firing in the best weather and on a more convenient schedule; having more pots available in my site gallery; and having more variety in the showroom at any one time. And so... I look ahead to the next making cycle with anticipation and excitement, hoping I may get a bit farther ahead of the curve, but suspecting that the goal will remain elusive.

I'm also looking forward to putting together the Archive Gallery for 2007 -- I think I made a lot of good pots in the past year. It's really informative to review my recent pots from that perspective, looking for trends and opportunities, ways to capitalize on the things that were successful and to avoid the things that weren't. This also helps plot out an arc of future potential, an imagined direction for where my work as a whole is going.

For lack of current studio photos this week, here are a few from the past year that didn't previously make the cut:

Lastly, from the Department of Meta-Blogging, I thought I'd share an update on my site traffic (via Google Analytics). With 6 months of data, there have now been a total of 2113 visits by 734 unique visitors. Two-thirds of those have come in the last 3 months, so the rate is increasing at a good pace. That equates to an average of about 10 visits a day, with a high of 34 just after I sent out sale announcements in early December. So I think I can now safely number my readers in the tens, if not dozens.

Most visitors have come here via links from my main site or bookmarks, but 33% are referred by Ron Philbeck's blog and 10% by Emily Murphy's -- I'm very pleased to be associated with fine potter-bloggers such as these. Surprisingly, only 6% of my visits come from Google searches. 85% of visits are from the US and 7% from the UK and Canada, but the top 10 include Brazil, Switzerland and Germany.

All of which is great to see and very rewarding -- thank you for reading!

December 16th, 2007

This week at St. Earth, with the sale comfortably past, things slowed down to a more manageable pace. I did a lot of miscellaneous follow-up stuff, like packing and shipping pots purchased from the site gallery, rearranging the showroom and sorting out some of the chaos in the studio. It gets to be pretty wild in there during the weeks before the sale, since I'm usually just barely getting each thing finished and moving on to the next without cleaning or straightening up in between.

After several weeks of glazing, firing, promotion and sale preparation, I can't wait to get back to the wheel. The best reward is that now I get to start thinking about the pots I'll make when I get my hands on wet clay again. Throwing is my favorite part of the entire process, and the anticipation of what comes next is a close second! I had some results in the last couple soda firings that I'm excited to explore further. The Turner porcelain body test looked really promising, even without slip or glaze -- the bare clay came out a pure, glossy white, but with the subtle surface qualities of salt and soda, rather than like a clear glaze.

Some of my latest decorative schemes turned out really well too, so I'm looking forward to playing with the possibilities. For me, that's an iterative process of taking a good initial idea and then finding new combinations and extrapolations of it that refine or stretch its potential. Since most of these start as small, simple tests, an interesting part of this is exploring the options for translating a new pattern to other forms. A decorative scheme that works well on a vase, say, may be very different applied to a bowl or lidded jar, where other parts of the form have to be considered and accounted for to achieve a dynamic, cohesive whole. The integration of form and surface is a constant challenge, but is really powerful when it comes together.

For example, I'm really wild for making dots with this new glossy black glaze:

These carved-rim bowls have been cracking in the soda kiln, which is such a drag when they almost make it. I've got some theories on why it's happening, but have yet to figure it for sure. I really want to solve the problem so I can make more of them -- the possibilities for the interaction of that dynamic rim and surface patterns seem endless. The mugs above were my favorites of the dozens I had for the sale. The one at left has a base coat of flashing slip around the dot which was poured rather than brushed -- another new thing that is really fun to do and gives a very loose, organic result. (Just as throwing captures the gesture of soft clay spinning on the wheelhead, pouring slip and glaze records the momentary path of a flowing liquid in a permanent, solid state. I'm fascinated by both the results and the conceptual implications of that fact.)

The combination of dots and stripes on the pitcher below was a roll of the dice while glazing, but it really blew me away when it came out of the kiln. Maybe a bit too flamboyant -- too much like a flag, perhaps? -- but there's potential there. It may call for a larger surface to spread it out on. It's great to establish some elements that work technically, like a flashing slip or a certain glaze, and then work through the possibilities. The mottled yellow glaze on this planter is a new one that I'm really interested in, too. It's got a semi-matte surface and very detailed texture, almost like an ash glaze. (It's called "Woo Yellow", courtesy of Vince Pitelka at the Appalachian Center for Crafts in Tennessee):

Things around the studio will be slow until after New Year's -- it's always difficult to get a flow going between the end of the sale and the holidays -- but I expect I'll think of something to report in the meantime. I'm sticking to my one-post-per-week rule whether I've got anything of substance to say or not!

December 9th, 2007

This week at St. Earth was the 8th Annual Holiday Sale, my biggest event of the year. The sale went very well, with a good turnout both days, many previous customers and some new ones, and a lot of pots making their way out into the world. As with every year, it's a relief that it was a good sale, and also to have it done. Cindy and I worked right to the end to get everything set up, but it all went smoothly from there. The weather could have been much worse -- it snowed with just enough time to have the driveway plowed, then an ice storm narrowly missed us on Saturday night. (Clary Illian once told me about the year her Fall sale coincided with a blizzard. She had everything ready and then no one showed up! I suppose that possibility is always lingering in the back of my mind, so it's good to see the first cars coming up the driveway on Saturday morning.)

One thing I really like about selling pots directly to a local audience is getting to know my customers; there are a few who have probably been to all 15 studio sales! (The first one was in December of 2000, which now seems like ages ago.) It's fun to see people again, including many of our friends, and I love the opportunity to talk about pots. It's great to hear how previous selections fit into people's homes and daily lives; or how they were received as gifts; or about the occasional favorite broken coffee mug -- what the person liked about it and what it will take to replace it.

This is the kind of contact with customers and immediate feedback that people in other industries would kill for, the things no focus group or telephone survey could tell you. And, incidentally, I think this underscores some of what's wrong with a culture in which almost every object we buy is mass-produced, anonymously distributed, and casually thrown away. Making pots by hand isn't much in terms of a protest against this overwhelming trend, but it suggests that there are alternatives.

I'm also very fortunate to have so many customers who are thoughtful about the pots, and who seem to appreciate the care and details that I put into them. It's very satisfying to watch someone make laps around the showroom, examining the pots, lifting lids, testing the heft of a mug or feel of a handle, trying to decide what they want the most. (That is, of course, when it's because there are too many appealing pots to choose from; the occasional person who looks around in puzzled dismay and leaves empty-handed always makes me wonder. What did they have in mind -- ceramic Santas? More blue?)

Another trend I've noticed lately is that more of my customers are my age or younger. (Granted, I'm rapidly approaching the middle of the demographic curve! It's hard to believe I'll soon be in the older half of the population.) But I take this as a positive indication of who my future customers will be, and that the general interest in having handmade objects is alive and well. It may just work out that today's kids -- who we now entertain with crayons and play-doh while their parents shop -- will come to buy pots for their own homes some day.

That would be very cool.

December 2nd, 2007

This week at St. Earth I continued preparations for the Holiday Sale at a hectic pace. Time's getting short, and there's so much left to do! I added photos of new soda fired pots to the Gallery, mailed out announcement cards, finished the last firing before the sale, put cane handles on some oval basket forms, and started rearranging the showroom, cleaning, putting up seasonal decorations, etc. The firing was really good, with some great new pots for the sale. That's a nice way to end the year's firings.

That's all for now -- I'll leave the rest to the photos.

November 25th, 2007

This week at St. Earth I took some time off for the Thanksgiving holiday -- one last pause before the two week sprint to my sale. For my local customers, the 9th Annual Holiday Sale will be December 8th & 9th from 10am - 6pm. Here are Maps and Directions and some additional info about the sale. I'll be adding photos of new soda fired pots to the Gallery next week, if you'd like to preview the sale or place an order from the site.

The announcement postcards arrived from the printer this week and they look great. It's always a relief to see them in hand, since the intricacies of digital color management are so arcane and unpredictable. I do my best to make things look right on the computer monitor, then send off the order and keep my fingers crossed until they're done.

I stamp and label all the cards by hand, which takes awhile since I send out 600-800 of them for each sale. (The first year, I actually hand-wrote all the addresses; even with a much smaller list back then, it was awful. It's probably best to save that kind of repetitive strain for making pots!) I'm tempted to switch to a pre-printing service, which automates the whole process from your mailing list, but I'm not ready to let go of it that much yet. One reason is that I like seeing the cards go in the mail with my own eyes -- then I know they're sent. There's also a visceral aspect to sticking on that many address labels; not as visceral as writing them by hand, of course, but enough to reinforce the fact that I really am inviting hundreds of people to look at my work. (If you're not already on my mailing list and would like to receive sale announcements, you can sign up here.)

In the studio this week, I started glazing pots for the last soda firing of this sale cycle. The pots from that weird bisque seem OK, but it's hard to tell how close they got to normal temperature (cone 08) just by looking and feeling. The trick here is that the temperature of the bisque firing determines the porosity of the pot for glazing; underfiring makes the pots more porous, so they absorb more glaze than intended (and vice versa). Since glaze thickness is critical to getting the expected color and surface results, this is a variable that's hard to work around, and that's equally difficult to test for. So... I'm going to hedge my bets by saving some of those pots for a later firing. I've got enough left from previous bisque loads to fill the soda kiln, and would rather fire the questionable ones later than risk ruining the whole batch. No more info on my electric kiln yet -- since I won't use it again right away, it will probably have to wait until after the sale. I do hate not knowing what the story is, though.

My writing time may get sparse here over