Slightly Off Center

I've been glazing steadily since Sunday, banks and mugs first, then, as they came out of the bisque, serving bowls, mugs, pie plates, dinner and dessert plates. Soup and toddler bowls remain for tomorrow; this is why I've shuttered my Saturday Market booth.

Last week's glaze fire came out beautifully, the second in a row with even heat at top and bottom, as well as very little oxidation. The thing both had in common was a full layer of four inch shelves, loaded with bowls, across the bottom of the car (I usually split the bottom layer, have higher items at the door, lower in back). Think I'll have to continue this practice, at least for another firing; I have twenty Empty Bowls that didn't fit into this kiln.

Last firing, the top ended up slightly hotter, by about half a cone. This time? The cones dropped in perfect unison, all the way from cone 4 to cone 10. Definitely saving these cone packs. Maybe I'll have them framed...

Got some beautiful results, including the special order white cat teapot and the blue heron pitcher. The kestrel large serving bowl is just for me. Think I'll take it down to my sale in Roseburg, end of June.

I never did post the results of my last firing, the one where I'd blown up a cone pack and had to fire by guesswork and firing logs?

It actually came out pretty well. I shut down the kiln with bottom cones at about cone 9-1/2, as the top usually fires a half cone hotter. In this case, I could have let it go on another 15 or 20 minutes, but in general, everything reached temperature. Very little oxidation, even around the door, just a little bubble about shoulder height in the back right corner. Even the cone pack explosion did less damage than it could have, as it blew most of the shrapnel toward the door, not the pots. I did lose two special order pieces, a bowl and a tall mug, but should be able to make up replacements in my December firing.

Side and top views of the stack:

A whole bunch of mugs:

Some dessert plates from a special order:

And a few more pics I took for the Clayfolk Instagram feed. Didn't have a proper backdrop, so I improvised using some slab-roller felts.

I'd ask where the last two weeks went, but I know exactly where--into the studio.

Clay Fest was spectacular, the place setting sale was not the last one. My total net was up over $1400 from last year, and I ran nearly out of so many things. So Monday after, I was up early and back in the studio throwing pots. Averaging 75-100 lbs. a day, soup bowls, tall mugs, stew mugs, colanders, batter bowls. Pushed through enough bisque firings to make up for the absolute slow-motion process of drying pots in fall in Oregon.

Started glazing on Saturday, missed Sunday due to an all-afternoon Clayfolk meeting, back again on Monday. Long days the rest of the week, and I finished glazing just before 6 pm the following Saturday. To load on Sunday, yesterday, for today's firing. Sometime later this week or early next, I start throwing again for Holiday Market (this batch will go to Medford for Clayfolk). Fortunately, I have a good half kiln's worth of pots leftover from this cycle.

Didn't get many pics while throwing, but I did remember to grab a few from glazing, mostly flat stuff: baking dishes, dinner pasta bowls. Also a few tall things, cookie jars and canisters.


(These four were part of a special order that includes matching stew mugs and dessert plates.)

This is how the wedding platter came out of the firing! Didn't get picked up Saturday, customer is in Michgan until Tuesday. Can't wait to see how he likes it.

First Saturday of summer, sunny, warm though not hot. Perfect time to go splash in the water somewhere!

Nope, still at Market.

This was the first weekend of the Olympic Track and Field Trials at Hayward field, so there was an influx of a) very fit young people in runner's leggings and b) much older people in branded track gear. All of them looking a little stunned at the variety and diversity of crafts at our little market. My neighbor, Mel, took to asking where people were visiting from. He got Atlanta, Kansas, bits of the east coast. I mostly got Southern California.

Which is actually an advantage, sales-wise. Most of them drove up, so were less worried about fitting a fragile purchase into their carry-on bag. I did have one lovely little bonding moment: a young track fan from Phillips, Wisconsin. It's a small town way up north, that I mostly know from listening to Simply Folk back in the old days. We talked about home, the Big Top Chautauqua, UW-Eau Claire, her alma mater, and Viterbo University, mine.

Had a couple of rush-job special orders pick up, a snail dinner plate and fox large covered casserole that got ordered between my first and make-up firing, with just enough time to wash the glaze off, dry the bisque, and dip and redecorate. I think that's the fastest I've ever turned around an order, one week flat. The snail plate buyer also placed an order for another piece, a soup bowl with ladybug. That one will take a little longer; I've only just started throwing again.

Meanwhile, I'm holding two paid-up orders, waiting to be picked up. One was from the newer firing, bound for Stillwater, Minnesota, if her kids remember to get it for her. The other... well, it's a long story.

About five weeks ago, a woman came in the booth just as I was finishing packing up, wanting to buy a painted mug to match the heron mug she found alongside the road (?). All the mugs were packed at that point, and it was threatening rain, so she said she'd come back the next week. She finally came back two weeks later, picked out an white chickadee mug and a brown heron, but asked if I had a better match for glaze color. As it happens, I knew I had two at home, figured at least one would match. So I took the bag home emailed her a pic and got her approval. She'd pick it up the next Saturday.

That was three weeks ago.

It's dueling schedules, mostly. She works swing shift, I seem to have meetings or kiln loading or firings on the days she's off work. She apparently lives somewhere up here on River Road, so wants to pick up at the studio. But she emails me her availability at the last minute, misses my replies, doesn't answer phone calls or texts. Thursday, I actually got a call from her cell number, but didn't answer my "Hello"s. I could hear her talking to someone else off-mike. I think she butt-dialed me.

I really hate holding other peoples' paid pots. If it's an unclaimed, unpaid order, I can always resell it. If its paid for, I can't do that. I just want to  finish the transaction, move on. And one time, they never did pick up. After a nearly a year, I finally gave the ferret-food bowl away to someone else. So I'll give another shot at connecting with her, before we leave for Roseburg later this week.

Favorite t-shirt of the day: a drawing of philosopher in a robe, with the quote, "Eh, good enough." Attributed to Mediocrates.

Sales were better than mediocre--not as good as last weekend, but only about a third less.

Some years ago, my friend Kathy Lee started me on a new sideline. She was a potter as well, and her late husband a Lutheran minister, so she'd done a lot of altar ware over the years. Now her church, Central Lutheran, wanted a complete new set: chalices, patens, ciborium, and fairly complicated structures. The chalices were designed for intinction--dipping the host in the wine--and also needed to accommodate both wine and grape juice in the same vessel. Kathy was no longer young, didn't want to take on such a big job, and, frankly, I needed the work.

The commission led to other work, over the years, both for Central and Springfield Lutheran churches. And I recently got a call from the head of the altar guild at Central: their cleaner had had an accident with a backpack vacuum, and could I make some replacements?

As it happened, I had one spare chalice in the shed, but they needed four. Also some tiny patens, and a mini-ciborium that matched the glaze on the rest of their set.

It'd been several years since I'd last made these; I was surprised how quickly it came back to me.


Now I have to go back through my records and see what I charged for these...

I'm currently down at Club Mud, firing the glaze kiln. Emily has a class in the main studio, so I'm in the back room where I usually glaze, which, unexpectedly, has really good wifi reception. So I figure it's time to play catch-up here.

I basically spent the entire week glazing. I have a big wholesale order--nearly $1000 of pots--and multiple commissions, including two platters and an eight-place table setting. The original plan was to glaze Sunday to Sunday, load Monday, but I got ambitious or efficient or something, finished glazing Friday afternoon. So I'm on my usual schedule, more-or-less, which will give me an extra day between unloading the kiln and teaching a workshop on Friday. Good job, past me; future me thanks you.

Present me, however, is in for a long day. Kiln was cooler than usual from pre-heat when I got in around 6 am, didn't get body reduction until 7 (it's normally ready to go when I arrive). It also seemed to be firing slower than usual in general. Finally realized that the previous user had replaced a broken brick that closes the gap between the top of the damper and the chimney. The new brick was an inch wider, and since we've marked the damper settings to read against the edge of the brick, I was effectively firing with a much more open chimney. Fortunately, I figured it out only a couple of hours in and adjusted to compensate, but I'm still feeling a little foolish. Force of habit is a dangerous thing.

Here's some pictures from the past week. Pasta bowls bound for Childhood's End Gallery in Olympia:


Pie plates, ditto:

And a red-winged blackbird platter commissioned by the director of the Craft Center where I'll be teaching on Friday.

First thing I did, on my return from Wisconsin, was to address the elephant in the studio--no, not the elephant banks, though they were high on the list. I mean the giant tulipière. It came through the bisque fine, back in January, and had been hiding in a box while everything else for the firing got made and dried and bisque fired.

Somewhere along the line, while I was diligently not thinking about it, my subconscious had an idea. Since the customer wanted blue-and-white ware, as Delft-ish as possible, why not glaze it in my electric kiln? While I love the warm tones and iron-spotting my white glaze gives in reduction, I was reasonably sure she wouldn't. And this way, I wouldn't have to stack around the huge enormous thing in the big kiln.

So I bought an oversize tub at BiMart--the bottom section being too big to fit in a standard 5-gallon bucket--brought home three buckets of Best Possible White, and unpacked my overglaze kit from the suitcase it flew home from Viterbo in. Asked if I could fit in a few small birds or butterflies and got a definite no. Flowers only please. So I channeled my inner 16th-century Dutchman and laid to.

Fanciful flowers? I'm good. Random arabesques? Let me at 'em. Completely mismatched foliage? Sure, why not?

I sent photos to the client on Instagram, explaining that the lavender was a cobalt mineral that would come out blue, really, and what did she think? She wanted more flowers. Fill in the white space, put some on the spouts. sigh. So I did, and you know? It didn't come out half bad.

So I'm just catching up on my email, post-holiday, and I get this request: can I make a tulip vase for the sender's grandmother? She has a vase of mine, really likes it, would like a tulip vase, in the 23-24" range. Something like this...



Oh good lord.

I make all kinds of excuses: I don't use porcelain, I don't make or use molds, the closest I could do would be something like this:

And even so, it wouldn't be cheap. The least I'd charge would be two or three hundred bucks.

And she said, "Great! I have some birthday money. Could you do two?"

sigh.

I said no, one only. If I could do it at all. I'd try throwing some pieces, send pictures in a day or two.

By the way, the "vase" she has? A fox-pattern pilsner glass.