Small cups from me, commentary from another

I put handles on cups this afternoon, cups thrown yesterday. I tend to make big mugs, so I thought I would adapt a footed teabowl form to make a footed and handled cup. I threw about 25 yesterday and pulled the handles today. Always satisfying to see great groups of more or less the same pot sitting there drying.

Middleboro, Mass., potter and brushmaker Ron Mello's facebook page carried a link today to Wildmud Pottery's blog, which I've now added to the roll of blogs to the right. Wildmud is where Oklahoma potter Freeman Loughridge makes his clay and metal sculptures, in a studio on the Red River. I just discovered Freeman, so I don't know a great deal about him. But he appears to be a guy who's been making art of one kind or another for a lot of years. What caught my attention this time was his "B.P. Slick Petroleum Monster," a clay commentary on the disastrous spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Worth looking at.

Voice of a soldier's mother on a postcard

I was rummaging in a postcard bin in Fredericksburg, Va., about 15 years ago and came across this postcard. I did that sometimes, finding old images that told us today what people in the past thought was worth photographing and sending through the mail. Paper memories of places they had been.

"Penny postcards" were still just that in the '40s, cheap and perfect for tourists to send home to the friends and family who couldn't get away. But ordinary people were likely to use the postcard, too, because long-distance phone calls were relatively expensive and difficult to make.

Such, I assume, might have been the case for Beula in Houston, Texas, sending this sad wartime news to her friend or relative Merrill Cash in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in February of 1945. World War II was nearing an end, but soldiers were still dying by the thousands.

"Arthur is missing in Germany since Dec. 24th. ...," Beulah writes on the postcard. "There is faint hope of his safety. I know the depth of despair."

We know this card was addressed to Merrill Cash in Chattanooga. But we don't know Beulah's last name or her son Arthur's, or his branch of the military. I've looked at online records of war casualties in Houston in 1945 and there are several Arthurs listed, but no definitive connection. The same is true of Merrill Cash. So my reporter's sources for this small story are minimal.

By late in 1944, the U.S. and its allies had crossed into Germany and were fighting their way toward Berlin. But the Battle of the Bulge was at its height in December of 1944. Though it was fought largely within Belgium, it would have been easy shorthand on the homefront to refer to it generically as "Germany." More than 19,000 Americans died in what amounted to a last stand for Hitler's forces. Arthur could easily have been one of the 19,000. Or he might have died in any of hundreds of skirmishes with German forces on the way to Berlin. Or he might have been in the Air Corps and been shot down. The postcard doesn't tell us.

It does tell us his age. "I won't forget the joy that has been mine - 21 years the mother of that fine boy," Beulah writes. And then she closes with what seems like the saddest and most anticlimactic of postcard benedictions, "Hope all is well with you - Love, Beulah."

Hope all is well with all of you on Memorial Day weekend.

Hands back in the clay

It's been a while since I made pots. My life apparently demands a time away from clay at some point in the year. Usually it's in the winter, but this year I was conscientious about throwing and firing during the cold and dark months. But working on the new gallery space took me away from the wheel in April and I've just gotten back to it in the past couple of days. Faceted bowls, some taller vases, the teabowls that are usually the first thing I make in a firing cycle.

There's nothing spectacular to see in these pots. Not yet, anyway, but it's good to have the studio door open to the summer-like sun and air and good to make pots again.

Expensive pots in the gallery ...

Sooner or later, I had to price the pots that are upstairs in the new gallery. So I did that this afternoon. Can I actually get $50 for a teabowl? Or $100 for a medium-size pitcher? I have no idea.

I think any of you who do this for a living have been through this business of pricing work. What is a mug worth? $10? $20? $40? Or a cereal bowl? Or a dinner plate? Or the very best anything that you have ever made?

That's the problem I'm dealing with right now. The point of renovating the space over the studio was to have a gallery that will display the very best pots that are coming off my wheel and out of my kiln. I can remember a time not too long ago ... well, maybe 15 years ago ... when I thought long and hard about charging $10 for a mug. And was amazed when someone paid that for it. Today, I put $50 price tags on maybe 20 of what I think are very good teabowls. And everything else took prices that reflect that kind of value - $250 for a wood-fired pitcher, $100 for a vase glazed with Shino pours, $75 for a particularly good slab plate.

I can remember asking a student of mine 12 or 13 years ago to pick up a Phil Rogers teabowl for me when she was in London. She did, a lovely one. Also, shockingly, a $75 one. And now, at the Pucker Gallery in Boston, Phil and Randy Johnston and other such potters are getting $300 for teabowls. So I'm not there yet. Still ... $50 sounds like a lot of money.

But I've felt for a while that the kind of work I was making resulted a few times in each firing in some particularly good pots. The shapes worked just right with the Shinos, better than most of the pots. And shouldn't the best work be priced higher than the normal good work? That's the thought.

But I produce a lot of pots and my shed gallery is a bit of a jumble of clay, even when it's "organized." And the best stuff gets lost among the good stuff. Hence the new space, the good light, the relative isolation of these pots from their sibling pots. At this point, I don't even know who will get up to the new gallery. Access is via our dining room or through the studio. If I'm not on the property, no one gets to the upstair room. Which is fine.

But if I'm here, to whom do I offer a look at the upstairs pots? I don't get that many people dropping by to see pots, even in the summer. We're on an out-of-the-way road outside of town, populated by motorcycle riders and golfers heading to the local course. Some people find us via the website or the blog or the Cape Cod Potters brochure, but not that many. And there are times when I can just tell that my pots are not going to be what they're looking for. So ... do I offer a look upstairs to everyone? Do I wait for a clue from the pot gods that these particular visitors might want to see better work?

I know why we changed that room upstairs and I love seeing the way the pots stand in the light of the room. I don't think it was the wrong thing to do. I just wonder how it's all going to work out.

Great potter portrait from Doug Fitch

I just checked out the British slipware potter Doug Fitch's blog, which I know most of you already see. (www.slipware.blogspot.com) But I had to steal the portrait of Himself and his new cider jar. These blogs are as much about the potters as they are about the pots. More so, in fact. And we get a lot of pot portraits and we all love them. But I do love seeing a great portrait of a pot AND a potter. And that's what this one is.

Spring rains and the beginnings of the garden

This has nothing to do with pottery. Rain came yesterday just as I was about to mow the grass, neglected over the weekend in favor of the Green Mountains. So I didn't mow the lawn, but instead went out and shot some photos of some of Dee's flowering plants in the garden.

At top is a Mt. St. Helens, whose lava-colored blooms show up this time of year. Then some wet iris leaves ... I think. And a pot of lettuce plants with chives in the background.

Oh, OK, one pottery item. A woman and her grown son showed up unexpectedly yesterday on the gravel path leading to the shed gallery. I joined them as they were looking at pots. "Did you have a good time in Vermont?" she asked. I had never met the woman before yesterday, so I was surprised at the question. Turns out she's Gail Laughlin, an amateur potter near Philadelphia, and a regular reader of this blog. Gail also told me she particularly likes the Fetish Ghost blog, listed on the blog roll to the right. I think she's the second blog-reader (Otto Wenger was the first) to show up and look at the pots in person. And she took a few home with her, too. Thank you, Gail.

Many potters, great food in Vermont

We were away from Cape Cod for less than two days over the weekend, but driving up into the mountains of Vermont feels like going to another country. Winding little state highways, green mountains (oh, so that's why they're called the Green Mountains), red barns, newly plowed fields in the river valley bottoms, sheep, cows, horses ... it's not Cape Cod.

We were at Bob and Christine Compton's pottery and home in Bristol for the annual Potters Potluck dinner and general discussion of all things clay. Over Saturday evening, about 50 people showed up, most carrying a dish of some kind and a bottle or six-pack. Potters came from all over the state and even from Quebec in southern Canada. Nice folks.

Bob has at least three working kilns on the property, a gas-fired car kiln in his studio, a giant two-chamber noborigama outside under the big shed roof and a catenary arch salt kiln on the hillside. All get regular use. And there are raku and pit-fire kilns, as well.

He fires the big noborigama only twice a year, not a big surprise since each chamber has about 250 c.f. of packing space. (I think I'm remembering that right.) Big firebox on the noborigama (fueled by slab wood from nearby mills) and a brick chimney about 20 feet tall. He removes two panels of roofing from the shed when he does his 24-hour-plus firings, to keep smoke from gathering around the firing crew. The spring firing of that kiln is coming up some time in the next few weeks. Lots and lots of bisque pots are stored in the studio, ready for glazing and stacking. (And lots of finished inventory is in their sales shop on the ground level of their home.)

Christine is a weaver, turning out beautiful work that's on their website, and she spins yarn from local fleece. (Which includes the fleece from their two sheep.) And she's a great hostess and saleswoman of their work.

If you find yourself heading up toward northern Vermont, you should stop in. Talented and friendly people.