Killing time ... waiting for buyers

The Cranberry Festival arts fair in Harwich last weekend was full of strollers and lookers ... tons of them. Very few buyers of pottery, though. Or, I should say, of my pottery. Enough about that, except that this craft fair business is wearing on me ... there's gotta be a better way to sell a pot.
So while the crowds flowed by in the early Sunday morning sunshine, I took a look at my pots and decided to photograph the brilliantly lighted glaze patterns.

The glazes I use - overlapping Shinos, Kaki, Temmoku, Nuka, ash celadon, copper red, Oribe, a few glass flows - often react with each other like the surface geology of an alien planet or Earth's occasionally rain-soaked desert or a Yellowstone hot spring. But you have to look closely to see that effect. Most people probably won't see it in a stroll past my tent, and even people who like my pots probably won't get close enough to see the glaze landscape.
With my two Nikons, their close-focusing lenses and the straight-on September sunshine, you should be able to see in these photos what I'm talking about.
The photos: Oribe over Shino on a teabowl, ash celadon over Shino on faceted teabowl, copper red and blue ash over Shino on plate, ash celadon on small shallow bowl, finger wipes through Shino on shallow bowl, Nuka overlapping Temmoku on large vase, blue glass run through Temmoku on large vase.

Cups and facets and biggish bowls

Yesterday's firing went more or less by the book, gaining heat steadily from 8:30 a.m. until about 4 p.m. No problems, no sudden shutdowns, no muffled explosions. Scarily routine. I have too long a memory for troubled firings, perhaps. I haven't had one for quite a while.
Lots of small bowls in this one. Faceted teabowls, cups or condiment bowls, depending on your nomenclature. Last firing was largely Nuka, but this firing had more of a variety of glazes. Carbon-trap Shino with Shino and ash glaze pours, glossy iron Kaki, straight ash celadon, Temmoku, a few scary copper reds.
I had tried a new way of faceting small bowls a couple of weeks ago, so there are lots of them in this firing. A more defined wire pattern to the faceting, due to my purchase at NCECA of a coiled wire from a Canadian pottery supply shop.
And I've had some luck with larger shallow bowls the past few weeks. Here's one.
Back to the wheel tomorrow.

All Nuka, all the time

I did something Friday that I’d never done before. I fired a kilnload of about 100 pots which were about 95 percent glazed in a single glaze. In this case, the Nuka recipe that I’ve used in the past few firings. 

Those who have looked at this blog off and on over the past few years know that I usually use at least a couple of Shino glazes, a bit of copper red, a temmoku, a basic ash celadon, one or two more. 

My best pots over the past couple of years have been fairly rich in glaze detail, but also pretty dark. And I wondered, in fact, whether my preference for darker pots were beginning to reflect some kind of personal darkness. Or maybe it was just that those glazes were working. 

In any case, my first experience late last winter with a new Nuka ash glaze recipe (wood ash, though, not the traditional rice hull ash) changed my outlook a bit. At least for a time. I loved the milky blue-white pooling of the thin glaze and the translucency when it’s thicker. This particular recipe came from D. Michael Coffee of Pagosa Springs, Colo., in a post online, and it worked equally well - though with slight differences - on my brown Miller 750 stoneware and my white B-Mix. 

So, with nothing left in the studio but about five pounds of brown clay and 100 pounds of white, I thought I’d use it up and glaze virtually everything in Nuka. Which I more or less did. The glaze is dependable, doesn’t run at high temps like some ash glazes, dries quickly after dipping, breaks over stamping and cutting, and - I discovered - is great over black slip brushwork. 

There’s no doubt more to discover about it. But I need to get more clay ...

I should say that I had unloading help Saturday morning from my friends Brenda Horrigan and Jin Ji. Brenda is an old hand at this thing. Jin was new at it and very excited. She may, though, think that this particular potter never fires anything but white pots.

Here are some photos for you.

A blog-reader ... and new greenware

Gail Laughlin, a Pennsylvania potter and reader of a number of pottery blogs, turned up here yesterday with her son Scott. Gail has been here before, visiting Scott's home down-Cape from us, and she often buys pots. This time she was drawn by the Nuka teabowls that came out of the kiln last week. However, after looking at pots in the upstairs gallery, she took away two crackled Shino teabowls and two of the shallow Shino bowls with copper red pours on them that were also in last week's firing. Sometimes you have to have pots in your hands to decide what fits your needs and desires.
Gail also got to see the three Tracey Broome houses that we have here. Being a blog-reader, she knew about Tracey's wonderful work and wanted to get a sense of the houses' size first-hand. I think she was quite taken with them.

Meanwhile, the last few pots of the next firing have come off the wheel and are drying now. I needed about 20 mugs for the bottom shelf and I used up a bit of brown clay on a few teabowls, with feet cut into them that I have never done before. We'll see how this works out. Firing should happen late this week or early next.

Lotsa bowls in this one ...

I fired yesterday, with 50 small teabowls for Lois Hirshberg's tea ceremony show at the Cotuit Arts Center, and another 25 or so soup bowls for the Cape Cod Potters' Soup Bowls for Hunger event next month. Plus a few tests of glazes on intern Alex Urbina's stuff and some other things.

There were a lot of pots in there, but the firing went off as it usually does, steady climbs and reduction at the right time.

The result was a group of pretty good pots, most made with the rough clay I use that combines Miller 750 with crushed granite and iron sand. We're off to Seattle later this month to see our son and daughter-in-law and for me to go to NCECA. So I wanted to clear out these obligations before going back on the road.

Still building inventory for the summer, also.

This weekend is the Michael Kline/Ron Philbeck workshop at Barnstable High School in Hyannis. I'll be joining a lot of my friends there, including the two visiting North Carolina potters, who have been blogging friends for some time. But I've never met either of them, though I've admired their pots. I'm looking forward to the weekend.

Photos: Cups for the tea ceremony show; a lovely little cup of poured Shinos; Nuka jar and Shino jar; cracked shallow Shino bowl; another shallow Shino bowl with a bit of poured Nuka.