New bowls from the kiln; pots in a new book

I did a glaze firing Tuesday, delayed by a day because a cone pack exploded at the top and I - fortunately - spotted the clay grenade fragments relatively early on in the firing. So I shut it down, let it cool, then went in and cleaned out the debris. This was a clean-up firing, using up as many of my bisqued bowls as I could, along with bowls from friends Sue Wadoski, Sarah Caruso and a platter from Kim Medeiros.
It was a good firing, with more faceted and stretched Shino bowls from me, continuing my exploration of that process. The Sheffield T3 clay body reacts very well to the three or four Shinos in my studio. I am abandoning B-Mix, at least temporarily, to concentrate on the more reactive T3 for a white stoneware body. But now I have to get a shipment from Sheffield, or travel to western Mass. in the pickup to fetch a load.
In other news, British writer and potter Linda Bloomfield's new book, "Contemporary Tableware" (Bloomsbury and the American Ceramic Society), has been published, with some of my teabowls in it. She kindly sent me an email today telling me about the book and including a link to one of the first reviews. Here's the link.
http://www.thedesigntrust.co.uk/book-review-contemporary-tableware-by-linda-bloomfield/
The photos: Top, a two-page spread from "Contemporary Tableware"; hakeme small plate with Dan Finnegan's amber ash glaze; faceted Shino bowl; faceted Shino bowl; small faceted Shino bowl with blue glass runs.

Slowly focusing kiln design ideas

Dan Finnegan flew from Boston last week, leaving Kim Medeiros and me here on Cape Cod, contemplating the kiln design discussion we had with him over 48 hours. (Oh, and we had a pretty damn good vegetarian potluck dinner party here with a number of local potters, many of them already FOFs ... Friends of Finnegan.)
Kim and I were left with some immediate homework: First, find wood. I mean, it seems like a given, but finding appropriate fuel for the kiln is a fairly crucial first step. Fortunately, I've lived here long enough to know the kind of people who know those kinds of people. That means we've got a line of a couple of sawmills not far from the Cape who create lots and lots of pine offcuts. OK, that's a start.
We also need the shelves around which the kiln will be built. Our initial decision is to use 14x28-inch shelves, configured to basically create a square and, vertically, a cube. We know we can buy the shelves new, but we're on the lookout for used silicon carbide. Anyone know of any? We'll travel to pick up, within reason. Lemme know.
The same goes for brick. I have about 800 used soft and hard brick, but we think most of the hard brick will go into the chimney. Again, we'll probably buy new, but are not averse to saving money. Lemme know.
After talking kiln with Dan for about two days, what we came up with - perhaps not remarkably - will look a lot like a single-chamber version of his two-chamber kiln outside Fredericksburg. A photo of that kiln is attached, as is one of Dan in consult mode. Dan led us through options for capacity, arch, firebox, etc. and something like this really seems to do what we want it to. Big enough to fire with others, not so big that one or the other of us couldn't do a single big firing if need be.
So, we're on the trail of all the details that need to be done before the planned June start date. Anyone who has advice, feel free.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Dee and I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and happy holidays of all kinds. Through this blog and through the Hatchville Pottery Facebook page, we have friends on almost every continent. (Any potters active in Antarctica?) That kind of connection is a real blessing. We know the joy and pain of many of those friends, and we know the great pots many of them are producing. I love that.
Many people around me and friends my age are retired or thinking about retirement, and I am often asked, "So, is this pottery a retirement thing that you do?" To which I do not usually have a civil answer.
For the past decade or more, pottery has been the next thing I do, not the retirement thing I do.
I think I keep getting better, making better pots, more interesting pots, more complex pots. Why would I not want to keep doing that? And replace it with what?
This year, I started serving on the board of directors of The Studio Potter, a good and serious-minded hard-copy pottery magazine struggling to find subscribers in a digital world. I'm very new and at times very much trying to catch up with the others on the board. But I've made new friends and connections I'd never have made without the magazine. And maybe I can help.
And this year I talked my a-little-bit-reluctant friend Kim Medeiros of The Barn Pottery in Pocasset into a weekend woodfiring at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. She got great pots from the train kiln there by the ocean, pots that I personally thought were the best that came from that firing. And she fell in love with wood. Friend Dan Finnegan of Fredericksburg, Va., is coming here in a couple of weeks to talk about guiding the two of us through the building of our own wood kiln in the spring.
Our holiday kiln-opening and open studio was busier than ever; Kim, Lois Hirshberg and I sold more pots than ever before. Kim and I sold many pots right out of the warm kiln. Much jewelry, blown glass, coffee and paper goods went out the door, as well.
With luck, this winter we'll add studio and gallery space to the front of my current studio here in Hatchville. Our friend Mike Race, known by some of you, will do the building. More room for good pots.
Things keep changing and growing around here. Hoping it stays that way for many years.
Happy Holidays, everyone.

The photos: Our gallery, in a snowstorm a year or two ago, the photo used in a recent e-mail greeting from The Studio Potter magazine; one of my bowls from the Truro wood kiln; and one of Kim's pots from the Truro kiln, a pot that now lives comfortably here on a kitchen shelf with Ray Finch, Dan Finnegan, Doug Fitch and Hannah McAndrew.

And just a few more wood pots, refired ...

I refired about 15 of the underfired pots from the Truro wood kiln, opening my own kiln yesterday. It was a pretty good firing. Most of the wood pots, whose glazes looked reeeeaaalllly bad at cone 2, matured nicely, particularly with the amber ash going lovely and transparent over crackle slip (a technique adapted from Virginia potter Dan Finnegan).
And Kim Medeiros, my stoking partner in Truro, got several pots into this firing, too, coming out with very nice work, both refired and first-fired. Her glazes do well in my kiln.
I'll just post a few pictures of the pots for you. I'm throwing again for the next firing here, but I haven't thrown in a few weeks and it feels like I never knew how. Jeez ...
So, to the pots: Top, a lovely fat jar, crackle slip under a gray Shino; squared jar, crackle slip under amber ash, ash celadon on the bottom; trailed crackle slip under amber ash on a small cup; larger teabowl faceted with twisted wire, with amber ash; my prize from the woodfiring, one of Kim's tumblers, traded for one of my small cups.

"Concepts in Clay" opens Friday

Gail Turner, of Mill Stone Pottery in Dennis, and I talked with a group of docents today at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, answering as many questions as we could about the work now on display there. "Concepts in Clay" is a show of work by members of Cape Cod Potters, a very loosely organized group of clay people here on the Cape. The show was juried by Ellen Shankin, of Floyd, Va.
The show was designed to challenge clayworkers to think about their process and their ideas, and then put those thoughts into words and into clay. That's the way I understood it, anyway.
The result is a fine show of work, from functional to sculptural. Each entrant's work is mounted separately on a pedestal or pedestals, allowing separation from the other pots or sculptures in the show.
And on one wall are eight large photographs, shot by this photographer, showing steps in the clayworking process. Images of Kim Medeiros, Dan Finnegan, Sarah Caruso, Tessa Morgan, and myself make up the wall display. Firing is represented by my loaded kiln and flame protruding from the noborigama of Robert Compton, in Bristol, VT. You can see the photos in one of the overall shots here.
The show opens this week, with a formal reception (that means free beer and wine, people) this Friday, from 5 to 7 p.m. Come one, come all.
Photos, top to bottom: bottles by Toni Levin, Oribe work by Linda Riehl, big serving bowls by Kevin Nolan, coil-built and wood-fired vases from Frances Johnson.

Lisa Hammond in the mail ... and Facebook

I've been an admirer of the work of the British potter Lisa Hammond for some time. I love what she does with Shinos. Well, this summer she apparently was moving her studio back to London and relieving herself of some pots. My friend Dan Finnegan harvested a few and one of them showed up in the mail Saturday. A lovely little faceted Shino cup. Thank you, Dan, and thank you Lisa for making it. It held coffee, above, for me this morning.

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Those of you who look at both my blog and my Hatchville Pottery Facebook page might have seen the top couple of paragraphs on Facebook a few minutes before the blog post went up. I have had a personal FB page for more than a year, using it to lurk and see what my FB friends, many of whom are my actual human friends, are up to. But I rarely used it professionally to spread the pottery word. 
Now that's changed. I was persuaded a couple of weeks ago by my friend Tessa Morgan, sgraffito potter from nearby Woods Hole, that an FB page would make sense for the pottery. It's one more way of reaching out to not only friends (or "friends") but to people who use Facebook when they come to Cape Cod and are looking for potters or art of any kind. 
This past summer just about fried me on craft fairs, as I've said before. And faithful reader Tracey Broome of Chapel Hill, NC, kicked my butt a little and basically said, "Well, stop doing that!" And she's right. So that's my aim for next year, to avoid all craft fairs with the possible exception of two that I feel personally invested in. 
But where does the money come from? I still need to buy clay and pay the gas bill.
We plan to add on to my workshop over the winter, with our friend Mike Race doing the building. That will give better space to allow visitors to see my best pots in the right light.
The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce is doing a wonderful thing by creating a mobile app for the ever-increasing visitors who use smart phones and tablets to plan their trips. Free app, easily updated site for Hatchville Pottery and all those other art people, minimal cost. I've already given them my $150 check and bought into the app game.
Cape Cod View magazine is out now, with a story and photos about our holiday kiln-opening and sale. I haven't seen the story yet, but will post it when I get a copy of the magazine. That kind of attention can't possibly hurt.
And I need to find a gallery (or ten) that will show my pots. Probably off Cape Cod.
All of that (and any other ideas) might add up to the already meager amount I need to keep going.
Ideas still being accepted.
And for my great potter friend (great friend and great potter) Tracey Broome ... I know, I know ... you hate Facebook. So did I. But if someone you know is a member, take a look at Hatchville Pottery's page. There are two pictures of you on the "Other potters" section.

(And for those interested, the FB url is https://www.facebook.com/HatchvillePottery)

Postscript to pots exploding ...

Those of you who look at this blog occasionally may remember my post of a few weeks ago, when a bunch of serving platters became thousands of shards in my electric kiln. And you may remember my bafflement at that circumstance. Well ... still a bit baffled, but this time the bafflement is all about my electric technology and not about how I was pounding out the platters.
I normally set the Skutt KM-1027 to rise slowly to 160F and sit there for 20 hours to make sure the greenware inside is fully dry. Then I set it to cone 07 and let the temp rise slowly until it hits 1779 or so and shuts down. I did this the other day with a fresh load of greenware, kept an eye on it through the day (it rose to 160 and stayed there for hours), and then at some point in the night it went rogue on me and rose at least to 1300F. That's where it was when I came down in the morning. I hit the "stop" button and it made the requisite "beep."
But it didn't shut down. It just kept pumping. Only way I could stop it was by unplugging the kiln and letting it cool.
I emptied the kiln this morning and the pots appeared to have been bisqued, but they had the sort of dull "thunk" of pots fired below my usual bisque temp. As far as I know, I have no way of telling what temp they fired to. (Maybe the computer stores that somewhere ... ) Anyway, I've gotten in touch with Skutt, but it's the Fourth tomorrow and it's unlikely I'll hear anything for a few days. And I can always (very carefully) bisque in the gas kiln, I guess.
Does anyone have any ideas this time?
I'll attach a couple of photos that have absolutely nothing to do with this problem. I'm preparing a story about my work in photography, so I'll let you see some of those images.
Happy Fourth, everyone!
Top to bottom: Creek, off Chatiemac Road, North Creek, NY; summer cottage, Maine; summer cottage, Orleans, Mass.; cathedral candles, Greece; Dan Finnegan workshop, Chatham, Mass.

Malcolm in the mail ... well, in the UPS

Got a small box this afternoon from the UPS guy. It had a Fredericksburg, Va., return address, which made me think it was from Dan Finnegan. Opened up the box and found a fully bubble-wrapped pot with "Horace" handwritten on the tape holding the wrap together. Dan's called me that for years, after a story that is too long to go into here.
Anyway, I opened it and it is a very simple, un-Finneganlike little plate, fired in someone's wood kiln. I thought Dan had gotten all simple and earthy on me, then I noticed that the stamp was either an M or a W and certainly not Dan's. Mystery.
Then I rummaged through the box and found the note you see in the photograph of the plate. "Malcolm Wright!"
Years ago, when I'd only been making pots for a few years and Dan was my teacher at the Art League School in Alexandria, Va., I saw the short film "Bridge of Fire." It's the story of the friendship between Vermont potter Malcolm Wright and Karatsu, Japan, potter Takashi Nakazato. As a young potter, Malcolm worked in the studio of Takashi's father, Living National Treasure Taroemon Nakazato. The two young men knew each other then. Years later, they met again and decided to throw pots in each other's studio and glaze and fire the pots as they would be finished in that particular studio. It's a terrific film, well worth tracking down, and it was an influence on me for years, particularly after I went to Anderson Ranch in Colorado for two weeks with Nakazato.
I don't know for sure if Dan remembers that story, but I suspect he does. And hence the arrival of the little plate. Thanks, Dan.

Ray Finch: 1914-2012

Dee and I met Ray Finch at Winchcombe Pottery in Gloucestershire, U.K., about ten years ago. Toff Milway took us over to Winchcombe from his pottery, which is nearby in the Cotswolds. Ray was in his late 80s then, but still making pots. So was his co-worker Eddie Hopkins. Ray was gentle and courtly and seemed pleased to meet one of Dan Finnegan's students from the U.S. Eddie was lively and joking and wanted to be remembered to "Dan the Yank."

Now they're both gone. Eddie died in 2007 of a lung disease contracted from floodwater swallowed while he clung to the side of his house in deep water. Ray died yesterday, after a long life making pots.

Long before we actually met Ray and Eddie, I felt like I knew them both from the many stories Finnegan told while he taught our class in Alexandria, Va. 20 years ago. No one who paid attention in Dan's class (or at the bar afterward) could escape without knowing the personal geography of the old pottery at Winchcombe and its characters. And I know that a version of that story will appear soon in Dan's blog. So I won't risk making mistakes by telling Dan's stories here.

It's enough for me to count Ray as a kind of pottery grandfather. Ray taught Dan, Dan taught me. Before that, Michael Cardew taught Ray and Bernard Leach taught Cardew and so on. I don't claim any special knowledge or talent or skill because I'm at the bottom of that line of succession, but I do like being able to trace some small part of my lineage back that far.

We're a poorer place without master potters Ray Finch and Eddie Hopkins among us.

Loving teabowls ...

I began making teabowls years ago, only a short time after I first got my hands on clay at the Art League studio in Alexandria, Va. It must have been a book of Japanese work, or a Hamada book, or some such thing. Maybe it was Steve Lally, making them next to me in Saturday morning's open studio. But early on I loved making and drinking from teabowls, and buying other people's teabowls.

I spent perhaps an hour one Saturday morning in about 1992 in Mark Shapiro's booth at the Baltimore ACC show, picking up and putting down faceted orange cups before finally buying one. We still have that pot in our cabinet here on Cape Cod. (And I have a better understanding of those few people at craft shows who come in silently and have to touch everything before buying.)

Dan Finnegan, then my teacher, paid me a great compliment one day in the Alexandria classroom when he offered to trade me one of his cups for one of mine. I felt like I'd made some progress that day.

A couple of years later, by this time teaching beginning pottery in an Alexandria city program, I asked a student who was headed to London to go to the Craftsman Potter's shop there and buy me a Phil Rogers teabowl. I loved Phil's teabowls ... still do, in fact. I'd bought one for $25 at a workshop, but had cracked it. She came back with a lovely ash-glazed cup which cost the equivalent of $75.

Yikes.

"Don't tell my wife," I said, as I cleaned out my wallet. Today Phil's teabowls cost considerably more than that up at the Pucker Gallery in Boston. This one, in the top photo, has survived uncracked.

I continue to make teabowls, lately faceting and torquing them to within an inch of their structural lives. I spend a fair amount of time explaining to browsing buyers what those drinking things without handles are. I should just say "cup" and forget "teabowl." But it's an old habit.

Other photos here: one-pound balls of B-Mix clay soon to be the shallow teabowls and simple mugs you see drying in the bottom two images.