Load it up!

I love loading up greenware... there is rarely enough space, but it's fun to try and squeeze... just.. one... more... in.

Dang! I forgot to take a picture! Oh well...

The BoneOrchard is going to be happy, lots of new skully designs on the ribbed yunomi.

Creating a Paper Stencil Part 1

Alright... I know I've shown the process before, but shooting the pictures for these stop motion "how to" videos are how my kids are earning their allowance at the moment and I'm still learning how to put it all together.

This demo is divided into 2 parts. I know I have a hard time sitting still longer than 4 minutes, so I've tried to keep each clip relatively short.

I've got lots of question marks with these videos, but my big question right now is... Does it need sound? I have my stereo blasting Miles Davis and Trombone Shorty while I'm sitting around slapping these videos together, so I assume that everyone else sitting at their computer has their own trax playing in the background.

Self doubt and second guessing always seems to lurk in the shadows, luckily it rarely keeps me from having fun!

Throwing AgateWare Yunomi

This is a short stop motion animation video the kids and I shot last weekend demonstrating the throwing of an "agateware" yunomi. This is a simple process of throwing two contrasting clays together to create a marvelously swirled effect directly in the clay body. I finally got around to pasting together a first draft to share....

BoneOrchard TeaWare

The studio has been a flurry of activity over the past 3 weeks. Between all of the hours and hours spent blissfully gardening, 28 cubic feet of bisque has been put through the kiln and 17 cubic feet of glaze has gone through as well. Well over half of that work was in prep for an experimental soda firing this weekend at Clay Planet in Santa Rosa, CA. with Matt Brown from Moss Beach Ceramics, (more on that in a later post). Finished works are finally beginning to flow out of the studio again. Most joyously, I’ve been very happy with the new works coming out of the kiln for my BoneOrchard collection of teaware. Here are a few works selected from the last firing that will be available at FetishGhost’s Etsy storefront.

2-27 Kiln Load

Before I share what came out of this kiln load I really need to say something... Most people don’t realize how much risk is involved with creating studio ceramics. It’s really all old school alchemy. I stead of lead to gold, it’s clay to sellable work. (It really doesn’t sound as cool, I know, but still, it still takes a huge amount of study, confedence, and work.) I really felt that this was my riskiest kiln load of work to go through the studio in a good while. I loved all of the forms, and the slip stenciled designs were fantastic. It would have been so easy to push everything though with my “I pretty much know what I’m going to get” glazes that I’ve been working with over the past 9 months. But… I have a new glaze that I’ve been playing with. It's a generally untested glaze, but it’s proven to be an amazing glaze that breaks and crawls at cone 6. This load of work was designed to test this glaze’s interactions with most of my studio glazes. this is the point where I point out all of the beads of sweat, lots by the way, over this load of work. It's over 50 peices that will live or die when I open the kiln.

In a situation like this I quite honestly I would have been happy with a 50% loss ratio with this experiment. Hell, I’d have been happy with a 90% loss ratio. I had already seen what this glaze could produce and it would be worth loss just to get a handful of racers with it. I just didn’t know whether the racers I had made before were accidents of application and atmosphere, or whether my assumptions with this gaze were correct. Luckily I hit my marks with 6 out of 10 assumptions. There will be a few refires, but the bulk of this load is going up for sale. First come first serve, these really are amazing yunomi. A local venue has already laid claim to work that’s unsold by the 15th of March.

The first works I want to quickly note are the results of the Agate ware. These have been fired with a clear glaze. WoW! They really look great. The form’s true profile is pleasantly hidden by the marbling effect.
Love it! More in the next few day's...

Back to Burnning

Well, my kiln repair worked and I got a glaze load fired off. I'm always relieved when my repairs haven't created any larger problems. The repair was strait forward enough, but even something as simple as replacing a broken element is really hard on this old kiln. The soft brick walls the elements are embedded into are very quick to crumble and I've been eyeballing a switch or two, wondering when I'm going to get to learn how to test and fix them as well.

I'm happy with how this load came out. The teapots came out really really nicely, and the yunomi cups, with their thickly slipped hakeme surfaces under a translucent dark amber glaze, came out beautifully.

These are gorgeous!



I started pushing a load of small teabag trivets through the studio again. I was surprised at how well these were

received last fall. I've sold and given away all of last years load of trivets and I've already gotten enough seasonal requests for these little dishes to make me begin creating a larger inventory for my fall sales.

There were a few 14 pounders in on this load too. These are some of the large sectional thrown canisters that I've been working on lately. I've I needed a few of theses larger canisters for Novembers Potters Guild sale. This is the scale I love to work in. It's taken over a year to start getting consistent results that I can begin to count on. Now I can more freely invest the time the time necessary to create more elaborate surfaces with out fretting over major defects.

These aren't the most exciting glazes, but they are handsomely warm. Besides... they're a great "fit" for the recycled clay body that I used to practice throwing these canisters.

"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.