Volumetric Image Transfer with Forrest Lesch-Middelton

I've been wanting a good look at how Forrest pulls this off. He definitely doesn't disappoint with this video. Fantastic!



Visit his website to checkout his gallery of work. Make sure to swing by Forrest's Etsy on the 17th for his holiday sale.
This is a studio potter to watch...

addendum... Ceramics Monthly printed an in depth look at Forrest's process.

Wadd?

To wadd or not?
For me, the answer is just a line of reasoning. Even well washed kiln shelves can accidentally make short work of a beautiful piece. The spot of extra time it takes to go through the steps of making the wadding, wadding up everything that's at risk, and knocking off wads and cleaning up the foot, is well worth the effort if I came come out the other end with something I can proudly put in front of a collector, gallery owner, or local customer.


Otherwise I have to shuffle my feet when customers see this... a chipped foot!







We knew that this was labor intensive when we took the job, Eh?

Friday MugShot

I finally got a found a few moments to mix up Steven Young's black inlay slip for incised bisque ware pulled from Ceramic Arts Daily, and give it a whirl. I have made a few changes to his recipe... instead of using XX Sagger fireclay, I did a 1:1 substitution using Glomax, a calcined kaolin. This was just to mess with something and possibly help with fit, but mostly it was just to mess with something.

I also decided to mess with the colorants, forgoing the recommended oxide additions and just add Best Black Maison Stain 6600. Steve's recipe added 16% oxides to the mix and I matched this in a 1:1 ratio as well.

Steve's process of using incised bisque for inlay seems to work very nicely. Simply paint on the slip. Roughly scrape off the majority of excess. Use a green 3M pad to knock off the most of the remainder, and finish by simply wiping with a damp sponge.

Easy... took all of 3 minutes the first time through.

I'm totally curios to see how this fires off... stay tuned!

The Simple Joy of Food Coloring

Quick solution for a new problem...

Recently I've been finding myself juggling a few different white glazes at a time while glazing up kiln a load of work. A few nights ago, I noticed that my small bucket of Eggshell White that I was testing was ominously empty. ????? Last time I had used it I had poured it into a narrow container to make it volumetrically easier to dip my test yunomi into, but unfortunately I must have poured it into... aaaaaaah, which bucket?
Oh Darn it!

So... my stopgap solution, (aside from limiting my pallet), is tinting a few of my problematic glazes with food coloring so I can keep a thumb on what glaze goes back into which bucket.

 The tinting is subtle, but it serves its purpose. So far the food coloring seems to burn away without affecting my finished glazes.

 You know... This wouldn't be a problem if I kept 15 gallon pails of my favorite glazes mixed up and on hand like a real potter.

BlueDream

Well here's the finished piece... it made it through the first round of construction last winter, and now it's made it through the last weekends kiln experiment without any unforeseen what-nots taking it in whole a new direction, (whew).

A quick look at the results of the low-fired yellow glaze infills from last weekend's experiment.

The whole point of this project originally was to test out a idea that would allow me to base works and get results similar to what we would get in the bronze studios.

What I have in mind is built around a simple assembly of welded threaded rod and angle iron, lost-styrofoam cast bronze spacers, and a base.

I started off by sinking the cairns in a bucket of sand so they can be leveled off. Next came the expanding foam... It's Great Stuff eh?

I filled up most of the interior volume with this stuff to keep the weight down and help make it bottom heavy.

After the foam cured, it was a simple matter to sink the welded steel assembly into a concrete plug. The process still needs a bit of refinement, but I'm a bit stoked on how it worked out.

The cast bronze spacers let the piece "float" over the base.

This system allows me change my mind... I can make a base switch if I need to. After all, it's all about presentation and that's still not one of my strong points.

Here's the finished video of this piece making it's way through the studio. Even as a stop-motion, it's a bit long. There's so much that I left out that it almost seems wrong, but hey, ya gotta pick and choose what to show to keep it as short as you can.

PS...
The music might not quite fit the mood of the video, but the kids thought it'd be a good touch.

Clay Ruler

I have no idea where this idea came from… I’m assuming it was from an old copy of Ceramics Monthly, but I’ve been hard pressed to find it in my stack of old well thumbed copies.
It’s a very simple solution to a problem that pops up just often enough to be annoying.

This is the problem of the broken or misfit lid.

Like I said… annoying.

I generally limit my lids to just a few sizes to minimize the confusion but, for whatever reason, sometimes things don’t work out as planned.

A quick note for non-mudheads… Clay shrinks as it dries. With some types of clay it shrinks just a bit, (it’s still a fairly noticeable bit though), sometimes it’s quite a bit… and when work is fired in the kiln, it shrinks a lot! So pulling a measurement straight off a dried or fired piece of work can be problematic.

My fall back plan is the “Clay Ruler”.

This is a clay slab impressed with a ruler with its measurement markings raised. As the slab dries to bone-dry, it shrinks.

Now when I take a measurement with my calipers on the opening of a bone-dry green ware canister, I can get the measurement directly from my clay ruler.

Both are already shrunk so there is no guesswork math, I just note the measurement on my shrunken ruler and readjust my calipers using a regular ruler...

and throw a new lid.

(If you want to see my lid throwing process, click here...)

No problem… I throw a set of 3, bracketing a hair up and a hair down just to hedge my bets. Usually one of the three works out to be a perfect fit.
Now like I said, each type of clay body shrinks different amounts, so I’ve got different clay rulers for each clay body I use. I also have clay rulers that have been fired as well. A set of bisque fired rulers, and a set of rulers fired to cone 6 and cone 10.
As the old saying goes… He who dies with the most tools wins.

Creating a Paper Stencil Part 2

Here is the second part of this weeks demo...

The first part is in the previous post. It shows the technique I use for cutting out 30 to 40 stencils at a time. I do this by cutting my design out of a billet of newsprint sandwiched between sheet plastic using a jewelers saw and bench pin. I can actually get 60 to 80 stencils out a a single billet if I plan my design around the cut, using both the positives and negitves in a design.

This clip shows how I apply the stencils to create a composition. It goes on to show the slip being applied and the paper being peeled away revealing the surface design.

Enjoy!

Trimming a Tall Vase

This is a quick view of how I trim the foot on a tall narrow necked vase.
To get the piece supported well enough to apply the pressure needed to make my cuts, I throw a thick walled trimming chuck to hold the inverted piece steady. I try to let the fresh chuck set up for a few hours before using it. When I'm ready, I simply invert the vase into the opening of the chuck, level and center the ware and start trimming.
The leather hard chucks are reusable. I simply leave it on it's throwing bat and bag it up well to keep it at a leather hard state. I try to set-up my work scedual to make use of a freash trimming chuck. I cut freash stencils, gather supplies, and throw as much work as I can juggle to finish without loosing control, (not often easy with 2 kids).
Once I'm finally finished using a trimming chuck, it's left to dry out and broken up and put in my bucket of clay scrap for recycling.

Ta Da!!

"Living Life on the Learning Curve" or "Anouther Day of Doh!"

All right, so a good part of Monday was spent prepping the kiln, glazing bisque ware, and then came a typical long night of burning expectations while the kiln fires.

Well... I'm often the one who points out that if you aren't messing stuff up, you aren't trying hard enough.

Yeah I know, it's probably not a great catch phrase to run a business by, it is an excellent motto to investigate a process with. Still... it can get pretty frustrating sometimes, but sometimes the results are amazing.

This came out looking like a nice 'n' tasty toasty marshmallow.

A scrumptious GhostBlue glaze with fantastic optics trapped in the surface breaking off the rim. The photo series from this shoot doesn't do this glaze combo justice. This series is gorgeous!
I love the new GhostMoth stencil. I cut a stack of 32, but I've already used up nearly all of em.

I live for the small victories!

BUT...

Like I was saying... so with all the success there was still a downside. And of course it was a big one. I had decided to try using shallow trivets with some of the cups to catch any glaze that might roll off the surface. I thought a few cups and their glaze combos might be susceptible to a little running. I had a hunch for a new solution and I needed to try it out.

I was WRONG.

The shallow concave of the trivet vitrified it self to the cup at the point of contact...

The edge of the foot then broke nicely away, creating a full set of beautiful 2nds...

And so ends my day of "Doh!"

SteamGear Cup Part 2

This is a video shot last night in the studio as I worked on testing this series of stencils. Sometimes these just don't work as well in real life as they do in my head. The gear designs worked really well though, they laid down well on the compound curved surfaces up the cup without bunching up and they nicely fit into the space. Whoo ho!

This is the process of applying the newsprint stencils to the surface of a freshly thrown cup that's still attached to the wheel head. The stencils are adhered to the surface by spritzing the surface of the cup with water and laying the stencil in place. A gentle pressing with a damp sponge sets the stencil in to place.

A contrasting colored clay slip is then sponged over the entire design. This slip was colored with cobalt oxide, this will fire to a wonderful blue that will influence any glaze that applied over it.

Now I can set back an get a feel how the new stencils have worked. I'll cut a foot on the bottom after it stiffens overnight.

Cutting New Steam Gear Stencil Designs

This is an idea that's been bouncing around inside my head for the past few weeks. It's a geared and steam motif design for a small experimental series of cups and canisters. This project uses the strategy of using cut paper stencils and slips to create compositions to be used as the base designs. After the pieces are glazed, they are then enhanced with a collage layer of home printed high iron decals that are then refired onto the finished surface.

To create enough stencils to play with, I make a stack of 32 sheets of newsprint sandwiched between 2 sheets of thin plastic posterboard. The edges are taped up and a pos/neg design is rubber cemented to the surface. The design is then pierced with a thin drill bit to allow a jewelers saw blade to be threaded though and cut away the design.

The plastic on the exterior of the stack gives the stack a workable level of stiffness. With practice, imagination, and patience, you can get pretty noodley with your designs.

I like mixing and matching stencils to create my designs. I usually start off working to create a specific composition... just to see what it looks like. But after that though, the work turns to a pure freeform and organic style of composition.

This is where I get to fall into a nighttime groove... it's all about the Jazz... the surprises of a flow...it's where the racers happen...