"Potters' Potluck" at the Comptons' in Vermont

Potter Bob Compton and his wife Christine host an annual "Potters Potluck" at their home and pottery in Bristol, Vt. I've heard about it for years, but the time was always wrong to go up and be part of it. This year's different, though, so we're headed north tomorrow morning to join a group of potters from around New England (and maybe nearby NY state) for some pottery talk, a discussion of Shino and Celadon glazes, a bit of a pottery yard sale and some good food and drink. I'm bringing clams (dug a couple of days ago with Mike and Tammy Race) for steaming in wine and garlic, and a batch of red New Mexico chile.

I've known Bob and Christine for about 10 years and took a long weekend "Big Pots Workshop" with him a few summers ago. (The absolute cure for too much Cape Cod summer congestion is to drive to rural north-central Vermont for a couple of days and commune with the apple trees and the neighboring sheep.) Bob's a prolific potter and a prolific builder of wood kilns. He's got ... I don't know ... maybe six kilns on the property? Maybe more. I haven't been up there for a while.

And Christine is a fine weaver of wool and other fibers. Take a look at their website at robertcomptonpottery.com.

We'll stay overnight, then return home via Brattleboro, Vt., where there is good, cheap wine and cheese.

Photos: Top, Bob and Christine in front of their place, a multi-chambered noborigama and some pots, and the neck of a lovely blue pot.

New gallery is coming together

I've begun putting up shelves in the new upstairs gallery space and have moved a few pots up there. The bright white walls and the abundant sunlight do a pretty good job of lighting up the pots. I think I may have to put in a spot or two for a couple of the locations, which I think could use a bit more light. Still, the area is what Hemingway called "a clean, well-lighted room."

My idea for this space is to accommodate the three or four particularly special pots that seem to come out of each firing. I'm generally happy with my pots and never sell anything I think isn't up to my standards, but we all know that there are times in reduction firing, especially in Shino firing, that some pots stand out above the others. Those are the ones I want to be in this gallery.

I've got shelves on a couple of walls and am using a worn old dropleaf table that was our dining room table 35 years ago. I like that worn wood look. I've got to get another table up there and then use the wall space for a few prints. But that will all come together. Just thought blog readers might like a look at the way it's coming.

Also, I got my annual supply of Cape Cod Potters brochures this week. I have thousands, so anyone who would like to have one (or more than one) let me know and I'll put it in the mail.

Meanwhile, here's a photo of the cover. That jug in the lower left is mine, which makes this brochure maybe the third time this particular jug is displayed prominently. It's been in two Cape museum shows in the past two years. Which means either that it's a nice jug or I have only made one decent pot in that time.

Happy Mother's Day, everyone

Happy Mother's Day, all. My fellow potter-blogger Tracey Broome inspired this post with her own of her fine daughter and musician Wes. I thought I'd post a few photos of the mothers around us and the children that make them mothers. We're off in a moment for a Mother's Day lunch with Dee's mom, Jan Potter Dorchester, and with Dee's dad, Doug Dorchester.

So, here we go. At top, our son Marcus as a proud young fisherman on Martha's Vineyard, holding a scup he caught (or maybe Doug caught) on a fishing trip with his grandfather. Next, Dee and Marcus and his wife Anastasia, on their neatly gardened front yard in Seattle. Below that, Marcus and Anastasia with a wartime black-and-white image of the young lovers Doug and Jan. Then Jan a couple of years ago with a rapidly diminishing tray of something she knows I like to eat at picnics. And at the bottom, Dee and the two kids again, playing with the drills in the kids' mid-renovation bathroom, also in Seattle.

All for now.

New gallery space, cleaned up, ready for pots

We've been painting the space over my studio for the past month or so, off and on, and I spent a couple of days ripping up the rose-colored wall-to-wall carpet and loading it into my pickup. Last Friday, Mike and Tammy Race came over and helped me get the floor down. Mike's a builder and owns (and knows how to use) a gazillion power saws. Tammy knows how to put down flooring. So, in about three hours, we had the floor laid. It's a Pergo floor that looks just like a light oak flooring and goes down like a jigsaw puzzle with only right angles. I finished off floor where it meets the wall, with painted quarter-round molding. (Now, if anyone has any bright ideas about how to get the radiator cover back on the radiator, I'm listening ... )

For the moment, wooden Japanese screens divide the room. The end nearest the stairway (bottom two images) will be the gallery and the far half of the room (top two images) remains a guest space and work room. The rough barnboard of the room was stained a dark gray-brown, so we put on several coats of white sealer and finish paint, which brightened up the room considerably. It already has lots of windows, so there's a lot of light in there now.

Next step is to build and install the shelves and tables that will hold the pots.

This gallery will be an understated part of our home and I don't expect everyone who comes here to go up to it. For one thing, you have to enter through my studio, which is only open when I am here on the property. The current shed gallery, behind our house, will continue to have the majority of my pots and will be open every day, whether I'm here or away from the house. This new space will be for the best pieces that come from the kiln, and they will be priced that way.

Now, to build the shelves and make more pots.

Oh, and some family history - the big framed portrait is my great-great-grandfather Hiram Jackson, who emigrated here from the English industrial Midlands late in the 19th century and worked in the mills of New Bedford, later settling on the tiny island of Cuttyhunk, which is not far from here. Hiram was a member of a local lifesaving crew on the island. He died in 1893 with five other men when their lifeboat overturned in the waves of a gale as they tried to rescue people from the grounded sailing ship Aquatic, which was on Sow and Pigs Reef offshore. More than you want to know, perhaps, but our son Marcus and daughter-in-law Anastasia, who work in backcountry search and rescue near Seattle, might want to hear that they're carrying on a family tradition.

Extremely cool work in a very hot medium

I was in Brockton, Mass., Sunday afternoon at the Fuller Museum of Craft for the opening of Josh Simpson's show. Josh lives in western Massachusetts and makes glass. But "making glass" is considerably less than what he really does. You may know him as the glassblower who makes "planets," balls of intricately built, several-layered glass that are the size of marbles or the size of bowling balls. (See the "planets" above.)

Josh, in his "Infinity Project," places his "planets" in obscure and not-so-obscure places around the actual planet Earth, to be found tomorrow by a hiker or 500 years from now by an archaeologist, either of which would be left wondering at how this beautiful and amazing ball of glass crossed his or her path. You can read about this part of his life at his website joshsimpson.com, where you will find that the right proposal will allow you, too, to place a "planet" somewhere on the planet.

OK, enough raving about the balls of glass. (They are, however, remarkable. You gotta see them.)

But the show is more than planets - it's goblets, bowls, sculptural work that will remind you of a geode, vases, glass blown into copper cable baskets ... all colors all shapes. A great show. Worth the trip to the museum about a half-hour south of Boston.

As for Hatchville Pottery ... the floor went down in the new guest room/gallery last Friday. I've put in and painted all the quarter-round molding between the new floor and the walls, the furniture has more or less been moved into the guest room part and now I've got to get all the tools and waste material out of the gallery. Today or tomorrow for that. Then back to making pots.

Oh, and a bow to Tracey Broome down in NC, who a couple of weeks ago recommended the film "Throw Down Your Heart." If you are at all interested in music, banjo music, African music, or the American banjo musician Bela Fleck, you should rent this film. It's the wonderful story of Fleck visiting four African countries, bringing the banjo back to visit its ancestors. We watched it last night, getting it from Netflix. Well worth the time. Great music and great people.

I haven't disappeared ... some thoughts on native clay

A couple of UK blogger-potters - Paul Jessop and Doug Fitch - have posted in the past few days about their use of native clay. I thought I'd mention my limited use of native clay dug from the woods off Tea Lane in Chilmark on my home island of Martha's Vineyard.

A couple of years ago, an island friend called and asked if I wanted some of the clay she has in abundance on her wooded property. I said, "Sure, bring it over." And a week or so later she did, dropping maybe 75 pounds of bagged dirt in my driveway. It was iron yellow, loaded with rocks, roots, branches, leaves and sand. It didn't look promising.

But I broke up the clay, pulled out as many of the roots and rocks as I could, dried it and then slaked it, dried and wedged it.

It turned out to be wonderful, though so short that it was barely throwable. But I learned not to expect commercial clay throwability, adapted what I wanted from it, and it worked pretty well. It was rough on the hands, loaded with small rocks that only showed up when they broke through the surface during a firing. But it was good for simple forms, small vases and teabowls, for example. And it took to my Shinos wonderfully, from thin iron-red glases to fat white feldspathic ones. And the clay body, full of the iron that gave the raws clay that yellow color, reduced to a dark, dark iron red.

It was well worth using and, amazingly, it sold very well. I'll post a few examples; one of the balls of wedged clay and several of finished pots.

On the subject of my lack of blogging ... I've been away from the studio, painting the new gallery space, pulling up the carpet, stripping the stairs, learning to play the guitar ... well, mostly it's not the guitar. I haven't thrown in a few weeks. But I'll be back. Summer's coming ...

Now, if we can find a place for all this stuff ...

Damn few pots made here over the past couple of weeks.
The room over the studio is all primed and painted, with both of us wielding paint brushes. Now we just have to move out most of the stray furniture and such that fills the middle of the room, then rip up the carpet and underlayment. Then we can get the people in to put down the new flooring.
At top, you see the wall next to the staircase that comes up from the studio door. The gallery space will take up roughly the space you see in that photo. The full room is about 14 X 24 ft. and the gallery space will be about two-thirds of that. The back end of the room, visible in the lower photo, will be screened off from the gallery and will act as worktable space for me and an overflow guestroom for anyone visiting.
Now, to get back upstairs and start moving things ...