Prepare ye
Apr. 23rd, 2020 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrI've recently taken a special order that should net me a lot of bread. Literally, a lot of bread. I'm making custom coffee mugs for our local Great Harvest Bakery, and being paid in kind.
I've been buying bread there since they first opened a Eugene branch. They're down in south Eugene, conveniently located between downtown (where Saturday Market happens) and Lane Community College (where KLCC used to broadcast from), so for many years, they were a regular Saturday stop, on my way from my radio show back to Market. After KLCC moved their studio downtown (and later, I retired from radio), it was less convenient, but it's still a short hop by car from my studio at Club Mud (or a long, grueling bike ride from my home up on River Road). But I really like their bread: It's dense, tasty (especially their Honey Wheat) and keeps really well. On an average week, we'll go through two loaves, sometimes more.
So last spring, when Gordo the owner caught me on my weekly bread run and asked if I'd be interested in replacing their customer coffee mugs with handmade stoneware, I readily agreed. We talked about designs, and he gave me a mug to take home and measure.
For a job like this, where I'm making a new form, and aiming for at least some consistency, it helps to prepare. I measured the original mug: height, inner diameter, width of foot. Volume (16 oz. up to the brim; probably 12 comfortably full with room for cream and sugar). I record all this information on an index card, and back-calculate shrinkage--with my stoneware, multiplying finished dimension by 113% gets a pretty good estimate of wet-clay size.
Then I made a tool. The little wooden cross you see here is called a tonbo, or dragonfly. I learned about them years ago from an illustrated book on Japanese folk pottery. It's very handy for quick checks of dimension. The vertical stem, up to the crossbar, is the desired height of the pot; the cross-piece is the diameter at the rim. I made mine from a bamboo skewer and popsicle stick. Back when I threw production for Slippery Bank Pottery, I had dozens of them, one for each form. I don't use them as much anymore, as I'm less concerned with identical pots. If I need to match them for a set, I'll just pick the ones that match best, use the rest in my booth. But these are not my regular shapes, and I can't put them in the booth, because they'll also be marked my my second special tool: a Great Harvest Bakery rubber stamp.
I've been buying bread there since they first opened a Eugene branch. They're down in south Eugene, conveniently located between downtown (where Saturday Market happens) and Lane Community College (where KLCC used to broadcast from), so for many years, they were a regular Saturday stop, on my way from my radio show back to Market. After KLCC moved their studio downtown (and later, I retired from radio), it was less convenient, but it's still a short hop by car from my studio at Club Mud (or a long, grueling bike ride from my home up on River Road). But I really like their bread: It's dense, tasty (especially their Honey Wheat) and keeps really well. On an average week, we'll go through two loaves, sometimes more.
So last spring, when Gordo the owner caught me on my weekly bread run and asked if I'd be interested in replacing their customer coffee mugs with handmade stoneware, I readily agreed. We talked about designs, and he gave me a mug to take home and measure.
For a job like this, where I'm making a new form, and aiming for at least some consistency, it helps to prepare. I measured the original mug: height, inner diameter, width of foot. Volume (16 oz. up to the brim; probably 12 comfortably full with room for cream and sugar). I record all this information on an index card, and back-calculate shrinkage--with my stoneware, multiplying finished dimension by 113% gets a pretty good estimate of wet-clay size.
Then I made a tool. The little wooden cross you see here is called a tonbo, or dragonfly. I learned about them years ago from an illustrated book on Japanese folk pottery. It's very handy for quick checks of dimension. The vertical stem, up to the crossbar, is the desired height of the pot; the cross-piece is the diameter at the rim. I made mine from a bamboo skewer and popsicle stick. Back when I threw production for Slippery Bank Pottery, I had dozens of them, one for each form. I don't use them as much anymore, as I'm less concerned with identical pots. If I need to match them for a set, I'll just pick the ones that match best, use the rest in my booth. But these are not my regular shapes, and I can't put them in the booth, because they'll also be marked my my second special tool: a Great Harvest Bakery rubber stamp.