New pots and runaway kilns

January has been spent trying to test yet more glazes while also battling with another hiccup - an 'out-of-control kiln'! Or should I say an 'intermittently out-of-control' kiln. At first we thought it was the controller,but then we decided that it was more likely to be the pyrometer. We tightened up the connections in the pyrometer, then fired the small top loading kiln EMPTY to try and catch it out.

 But annoyingly, of course this time it behaved itself. Next time I fired it with pots in, and guess what - the temperature controller started misreading and jumping about again. It means watching the cones like a hawk. Not knowing when it is going to go running off by itself means an anxious sleepless night, and a ten minute alarm throughout the morning. NOT conducive to building up confidence with glaze tests.

A new pyrometer arrived today - in three pieces. Honestly, you couldn't make it up. Hopefully a replacement will come on Monday and we will then be able to find out if it is indeed a faulty thermocouple . If things are still unreliable then it will point to the control box. Either way hopefully a resolution is round the corner. So there are still pots waiting to be glazed and stuck in a queue!

However I have started getting my teeth into making and I am at last on a good creative roll. I had been asked to remake a tall bird vase, one from a series a few years ago and which had been broken by some house removers. I don’t like to repeat  a past project but the client was very persuasive. Actually it has been good to do, as of course I made extras, which allowed me to play about a bit.

A new die is always a good stimulation, and I am now getting stuck in to some wavy wall vases. It’s just good to be underway and inspired. 

These were manipulated as they were extruded, and started to come to life when they were stood up on their edges.

The tall oval vase goes right through the wall so that it is actually taller than it looks.

This is the first 'arch vase', slipped and now drying out.

Then a second one with the vase offset, which gives it a more jaunty feel. So frustrations aside it has been a good couple of weeks.

Winter Greetings from the North

Wishing you all the best for Christmas and the New Year!

And then it will be full steam ahead. After a dozen plus glaze tests we may have, indeed most likely have, at last found a recipe which appears to be both stable and look as good as my beloved old matt transparent. Good for Rodger, even though he was getting a little slagged off at times for being a 'David Green'. David being our old art school glaze tutor who used contemplate and calculate countless glaze formulas as he puffed his pipe. Most frequently they were dreadfully disappointing but always in his view 'interesting'.

 It has just taken a very long time to put the tests through the kiln and then use them with a sufficient variety of slips and kiln firings to feel confident about them.  I am now optimistic and excited about getting back to pots which have been stuck in the pipeline and ideas which I have had to put on hold. At least I did a lot more throwing than usual over the last few months,  so I am better stocked with the smaller domestic items for the turn of the year. May it be a good one for you all.

Shiver me Timbers (- not this time you won't)!

Although a lot has been going on here, not too much has actually been finished. I have had to put glazing my boats and cars on on hold while we run countless glaze tests. 

I  had no problems over the summer using a fifty/fifty mix of the suspect new batch of clay with my old clay,  but as soon as I used the same mix with my matt transparent glaze which I use on the boats, I noticed that just a hint of the horror problem of 'shivering' (or 'shimmering' - flaking glaze) was still lurking. It is made more complicated because there are undoubtedly two problems - the different batch of clay, PLUS a change in the supply source of my glaze materials. A glaze formula whose heart has never skipped a beat in 30 years has suddenly become unstable! Aargh! Every time a new batch of anything arrives I must remember to test first!

Luckily Rodger has a good chemistry head so we will get there I am sure, but I am not risking weeks of work until 'sure' is truly 'confident'.

  

Meanwhile I have been doing lots of throwing, building up much needed stock and fitting in orders, such as the annual Hardrock Challenge prizes. 

This year I made an extra trophy for 'Mac the Voice', who has compered the event since it started ten years ago.

Last weekend I had a delightful trip to Glasgow to attend a demo day by potter Shozo Michikawa. I very rarely get to these events, but it is well worth making the effort. (In this case the effort being setting my alarm for an unearthly early hour to catch the train).  I came back with a head full of Japanese aesthetic and philosophy - all very stimulating.

Having thrown an initial flat and scored thick plate he threw it and shaped it like dough only to return it to the wheel and re -throw, this time with the concentric circles now elliptical. 

 

It was really good to watch such a fluid worker, whose hands just knew what they were about. Not so much making pots as making pot sculpture, using the wheel as starting point. 'Throw away the rule books' he said and 'Put common sense out of your mind'. He certainly worked with a tremendous freedom which fairly sang through his pieces. 

This 'platter' was textured with a wire brush and manipulated into a rather lovely triangular shape, still retaining its thrown edge.

And here a fat slab, brushed with slip and scored also had the thumping and manipulating treatment. It was just lovely to watch those confident hands and absorb the energy and enthusiasm  of the man.

It's Tuesday morning now I am off to tiptoe around the workshop for a while, listening to the last of Grayson Perry's  Reith lectures. NOT TO BE MISSED! I

An idea taking off

I have had an idea of a piece I wanted to make simmering away ever since I made the Terracotta Tours bus last July. 

I extruded a half pipe and threw a few tyres and exhausts. 

By cutting and pinching one end of the pipe it was converted fairly successfully into the vehicle's bonnet.

The driver and his dog were assembled from thrown sections and popped into the cockpit.

The vehicle is rather rocket like at the back, with a half plate which fills in the hollow end and two thrown tubes as exhausts.

It looks more like a sports car at the front.

The driver has a flying helmet and goggles. Funnily enough while driving to Castle Douglas last week we found ourselves behind a car with a very large dog whose head was sticking out of the window sniffing the air and whose ears were fairly blowing in the wind.

I'll get back to the constructing my next batch of boats tomorrow now that I have got that one out of my system.

Meanwhile the Dalbeattie Hardrock Challenge mugs are not only underway but nearly finished. This year is the 10th, so there was even more slip trailed writing to squeeze in round the base.

Heat and Light

Here are are very old friends indeed - warming their tootsies by the barbeque. They are two of the smaller 'Russian doll' stacking knights which I made at college, and who still patrol the garden.

Rodger has been busy. We have truly brilliant workshop, in terms of space. The one thing I notice and probably because my eyes are getting past their prime, is how dark it can be. There are definite areas which always have to be illuminated by overhead lights. I have for a long time harped on about how a 'Velux' roof light would help, but now these much less expensive solar light tubes have come onto the market.

Rodger ordered a couple to try and has  taken on the installation. The utube video suggests that this can be done in two hours. That is if they are going into a flat felted roof.

But hey, a solid weekend and we have (at least one ) light!

Taken by the camera pointing straight up it looks like the moon.

And here as though I have forgotten to switch off the lights.  I am impressed!

An OctoPuss at Potfest in the Park

So, what has eight legs and comes 'From the sea'?

An OctoPuss!

The Potfest 'competition' theme this year was 'From the Sea'. I think the standard of pieces was the best ever. My OctoPuss looked very happy on the green lawn. Whether everyone 'got' it or not I don't know, but he had the company of several other word plays.

 It was a great show and I am always amazed by the high standard of work. Truly inspirational. It is such a treat to see the work of and meet so many international potters. All thanks to Chris and Geoff Cox whose brainchild it is and who beaver away, not only seeing to our every need but with their own stand and work on show as well, they are quite extraordinary. Thank you!

The sun shone and although there was a spell of torrential rain, it obligingly came overnight. Perhaps not so good for the potters camping. There were a few camping chairs which looked more like swimming pools on Sunday morning.

'Extra' was very much the model for OctoPuss's bottom - I never mentioned this in my last blog, but a few tears were shed while glazing him!

I would have liked to have photographed all the pieces. But they hopefully they will be on the Potfest website later on. Here are just a few which I managed to capture. This is 'Shellfish' by Richard Dewar. Made up of lots of ceramic shells.

 Garry Uttley's Plaice Mats

  Chis Cox's jelly fish.

 Guy Routledge's Coral fish.

Sue Dunne's waves which moved when you wound the handle.

Toon This's bowl of sharks

My Father has never missed a Potfest yet, and he certainly wasn't going to miss this one!

It was a treat being next to Wendy Kershaw, who shared my studio for this year's Spring Fling. It was Wendy's first year at Potfest in the Park and her illustrated ceramic pictures created a great interest, deservedly so.

We always do a rough plan of how we are going to set up the stand. It really helps on the day, especially when we can be rather tired and overwrought. As in-  just about to set off to find that the caravan lights aren't working! Yes, we were rather later to arrive than planned.

Back home now, unpacked and ready for action. It all takes time though, putting away boxes and re arranging the showroom. OctoPuss has a new home, looking out of the showroom window happily greeting our visitors.

We had a lovely visit from Japanese potter Fumihiro Fuyushiba and his wife Kaoru. They have a week between the Park and exhibiting at the Pens and used some of it to visit Wendy in Renfrewshire and us on the way home. Good to have time to get to know them better. It is hard at the show, when I am 'on duty' to give enough time to other potters and their work.

Well, that is Potfest in the Park over for this year, though Potfest in the Pens is this weekend for anyone who missed the Park.

An Extra special cat

She has been in our family for 15 years so to lose Extra this week has been very sad. It is barely over a month ago that she charmed us by tiptoeing into the workshop where the Feral Choir were running through their songs and sat down to listen to the harmonies with unusual feline interest.  She was called 'Extra' because she was extra to requirements at the time we got her, but soon became an essential part of family life. She was always around to meet us, a constant companion and reassuring presence. She was one of the best natured cats I have known and would play with velvet paws. Rugs were never flat for long, one of her passions was scrabbling them up. She spent her last week under her favourite bush in the rockery listening to the outside sounds. The garden seems very empty now - how we miss her!

Meanwhile in this heatwave Timbalada seems to have been too hot and ‘out for the count’  to notice that she is missing.

Ho-hot! Why oh why have I had so many kilns to fire over the last two weeks.  I have been firing the two kilns ( the small top loader and the big font loading kiln) back to back, only possible if I really push it, as in unloading with sweat trickling down me as was the case yesterday, and then glazing and repacking the same day! I must have managed to get through six weeks work in three. I have moved proceedings outside into the courtyard where there is a bit of shade - the workshop has been unbearable.

 But I am NOT complaining , it has been lovely, more vitamin D absorbed in the last few weeks than in the last three years. Meals outside and a few quick swims in the sea to cool off when the tide obliged.

 It is of course the big push for Potfest in the Park next weekend. I am just about there, though I don’t have quite as many new larger pieces as I would have liked - partly because people kept coming into the showroom and buying the ones I had mentally ‘put on one side’ for Potfest. In past years this hasn’t happened as I have stashed things away, but I have been a little short of pots all year (all the knock-on effect from that awful winter of illness), and have to keep the showroom looking good.

Mind you, three kins still to unpack has to help!

Riddle me riddle me riddle me re,

What has eight legs and comes From the sea?

You might hazard a guess - you may think that you know, 

Come to Potfest next weekend -its all at the show.