Last few pots before New Year's Eve

Dee was working today, so I thought I would, too. It's a quiet time here at the pottery ... actually, from now until May will be a quiet time if I don't make some noise. But I thought I'd get a start today on the winter's output and the summer's inventory. So I threw a group of bowls just to keep the muscle memory current.
I started making this form a couple of years ago and I do a larger version of it as a serving bowl. It's a simple bowl with the rim turned over flat. I usually cut the rim after the first pull, which ultimately widens out into a slightly wonky rim. Sometimes I rib the outside smooth, sometimes I leave in the throwing rings. I sell a lot of these bowls at $20-$25 apiece. After Christmas Eve service this year, a friend pulled me aside and said his wife always eats her morning cereal out of one of these bowls that she bought from me. "She won't let me touch it," he said. "I think it's her soulmate." That's more than I would usually claim for a bowl, but if it works for her ...
I'll attach a photo of some finished bowls, so you get an idea of what they look like. These are glazed on the outside with an orange Malcolm Davis Shino and inside with a slightly modified Phil Rogers standard ash glaze.

Merry Christmas to all!

Still more shopping to do this afternoon, then perhaps a bit of cooking, then off to a Christmas Eve party at the home of some friends, then Dee drags me to Messiah Episcopal Church in Woods Hole for a service of carols and candles. Actually, a lovely service.
Happy Christmas and Hannukah to all. We look forward to January 20 and a new beginning here in the USA.

Some pots from the holiday firing

Here are several pots that came out of the kiln Saturday morning. There were a few good ones that more or less left immediately with discerning buyers, but there are always some good ones left. Here are a few of them, including a row of "tiddlers," as Doug Fitch calls them. These are little pots that fill in spaces between the bigger ones and raise the pot total in the kiln considerably.

A snowy but successful open studio weekend

Saturday morning dawned (sort of ... ) white and wet and deep here at the pottery.
I looked out the window at about ten inches of snow on the driveway/parking area and thought ... "No one will be able to park there. On the other hand, no one will leave their house, anyway, so what does it matter?" So I got dressed and headed in to Falmouth at 7 a.m. to get coffee and pick up some things needed for the open studio, just in case some brave souls actually came to our place.
Amazingly, they did. Angela and Jeff showed up with their snowblower and went to work on the driveway and path to the gallery. Jean Swan, Ruth Bleakley and Kim Collins - the other artists doing this show with me - all arrived with their work. By the time of our scheduled kiln-opening at 11, there were several cars in the driveway and about 15 people here to see what had become of the pots fired on Friday. We had, as usual, an enthusiastic line of people helping move new pots from the kiln to the table, with a few being claimed along the way and bought later. You can see some of our fine and brave unloading crew in one of the photos, with my wife Dee standing front and center in the still-falling snow.
It was, as it always is, fun and profitable and people got lots of good pots, jewelry (from Kim), paintings (from Jean) and handmade books (from Ruth).
In the past five years, this weekend has become as much a social event as a selling event. While I sell pots in the summer to visitors - and I love that - I think we get much more of a community feeling from the pre-Christmas open studio. Though a few people come from off Cape Cod, most are from Falmouth or one of the nearby Cape towns. Many people bring food.
Donna Sutherland, usually a participant, is busy with a new grandchild, but still made wonderful breads. Janet Simons showed up with a pie and toffee. Lafe Coppola brought muffins. Dave Masch made excellent chopped liver. We had New Mexico chile and hot dogs. No one left unfed.
And as much as I feared a big snowstorm, there's something gratifying and heart-warming in seeing friends walk carefully through the falling snow, heads down against the weather, headed for the unheated gallery in the back or coming into the studio in front.
I'm not going to make any pots between now and Christmas. I'll leave my part of the in-studio show set up in case anyone comes by at the last minute.
The firing, by the way, was a good one. There were new glazes, untried techniques and a couple of new slips in the firing and things look pretty good. I'll attach a photo of a couple of the shelves. In the next day or so I'll shoot photos of some of the better pots.
Happy holidays to everyone. Now ... Christmas shopping ...

Just what you want the day before a show ...

... seven to 12 inches of snow.
Or so the various weather prognosticators are saying will fall on this part of southeastern Massachusetts through tonight and early tomorrow.
Great.
I was hoping we'd get the first storm of the season on the first day of our holiday open studio. I wonder who will eat all this food ...
Well, we'll see what the morning brings. The firing went smoothly, reaching Cone 10+ by about 10:30 this morning. I was able to go in to Coffee Obsession in Falmouth and have my ritual cup of post-firing coffee well before noon. Then to the grocery for various comestibles to feed the throngs of buyers Saturday morning ... or however many show up ... do two buyers constitute a throng???? Three????
The studio's cleaned up and vacuumed. Pots from the gallery have been brought up through the snowy backyard and are on display. Jean Swan and Dave Masch brought Jean's wonderful and colorful paintings and they've been hung all over the walls of the upstairs "gallery." Kim Collins's jewelry is there, too, covered to keep our two cats from making off with expensive earrings. Ruth Bleakley (isn't that a great surname?) will be here at some point and set up her lovely handmade books.
The only questions remain - how much snow? And how many will come out?

Cleaning up after making a mess

Damn, glazing is messy. Or maybe it's just me ...
So I finished glazing this kiln-load of pots this afternoon about 4. This will be an interesting firing. I've got a couple of new glazes that I'm testing and some glaze combinations I haven't used. Could be great. Could be a disaster. We'll find out Saturday morning.
I've fired this kiln for about six years now, learning all along the way. When I came here to Cape Cod from Virginia, I had had a hand in firing several wood-fueled kilns, but had never once fired a gas kiln by myself. Which is more or less the reverse of most potters' experience. So my first few firings were fairly miserable - over-reduced, crud all over the kiln shelves, glazes running everywhere. Really bad.
But with advice from friends like local Falmouth potter Angela Rose, I dialed back the natural gas, settled on a couple of clay bodies, figured out workable glazes and settled down a bit. For the past few years, the Olympic has turned out some pretty good pots. Or as good as the kiln could make them, given the deficiencies of the potter. I'm pretty happy now with many of the pots that come out of each firing. And the work is getting better. Which is the point.
I'll attach a shot of the loaded kiln and I'll dig up a couple of pots from the past few years' firings to give you an idea of what I like to see when we open the door on kiln-opening morning. The three small vases and the faceted vase are all made from clay dug by my friend Trina Kingsbury on her property on Martha's Vineyard. It's rough stuff, but fires just fine to cone 10 and takes well to some of my Shino glazes.

A'glazin' we will go ...

I thought I would document the way unglazed pots on shelves dominate my studio just before I start glazing. Which is now. I thought this just as I was about to start glazing, so anyone who knows me will tell you that this blog post is just an avoidance tactic. Well ... it is. So sue me.
I prefer to glaze a load of pots over at least two days, to give myself time to think about what I'm doing. So I'll start today and finish tomorrow, then candle Thursday-Friday overnight and turn the burners up early Friday morning. We open at 11 a.m. Saturday, the first of two days of our holiday open studio.
I dry-stack my kiln, which I think I've mentioned before. I picked it up from Toff Milway at Conderton Pottery in the Cotswolds. Loading the kiln before glazing helps me understand how many pots I have, how they fit in the kiln, what can go on the bottom, what on the top and what in the middle. And I get to make decisions about what needs to be in a particular firing and consider what can stay out until another day.
Once it's stacked, I take the shelves out one by one - usually still loaded with pots and props - and set them in various places around the studio not already occupied by glaze buckets. I usually label the back shelves so that things go back in order. And then I'm off.
Which is the point I'm at now. So I'd better get to it.