New Glaze Tests

Glazing is the one pottery task that I have struggled to embrace.  I am always worried that I have messed up a beautiful piece and there is not much you can do about it.  In addition, waiting 24 hours to see if you did screw up is excruciatingly painful for a person not blessed with patience.  I have found that documenting my tests is making the process more bearable, even fun.  The tests below are done on a medium dark stoneware clay.  Some of the colors we use regularly and others are new.  As always, if you have questions or want recipes, just ask!

This is one of our favorites.  It is Celestial Blue over Red Gold.  It is drippy and runny often drips on our shelves.  But, if we are careful it makes beautiful pots.

 Red painted over Red Gold.  This combination is pretty stable and doesn't run.  It does vary in the redness.

 I was pretty excited to try this combination and a little disappointed in the results.  This is Moss painted over Red Gold.  It started as a stripe of paint, and as you can see, ended up a blob of color because it ran so bad.

 This tile is Celestial Blue.  We use this as an accent color a lot.  It is nice alone or on top of other colors.

 This is Tom Grey Red.  We love it alone or with other colors layered on top.

 Scapes.  This is a glaze combo that starts with Tom Grey Red as a base and has orange, red and blue layered on top.  It is slightly unpredictable as it can turn out with very vibrant colors or muted with lots of gold like the tile on the left.

 This is the most interesting test I did.  I think we may have mixed the glaze wrong.  This is called Field Mouse Brown.  It looks very black except for where the glaze broke over the number.  We will be mixing and testing this again.

 Spearmint with some alterations.  I love this color but it didn't photograph very well.  It has some hints of blue green in it.  I think we will be mixing another batch and see if we can lighten it up just a little bit.





This is Everglade.  It looks a lot like the Gun Metal Green that we already use.





I am already working on the tiles for my next glaze.   I am hoping in the next month or so we will have some new colors to put in our Etsy shop.

First Glaze of 2012

Our first glaze went well. The kiln fired perfectly after being repaired and the studio is getting back to normal. I have decided that as we expand we need to document our glazes better. Arne and I are always trying new glazes and we don't always remember which recipes we have tried and if we like them because we usually sell the little pots we test on.

I can spend hours looking for new glaze colors and it is hard to find pictures of glaze tests done

on the dark stoneware we use. I hope the tests I post will help other potters in search of glaze recipes with pictures. We use a combination of our own mixed and purchased glazes and fire to a true cone six. If you have questions about the glazes or recipes, just ask. We are happy to share.

This is Muted Gold. It is a stable glaze and doesn't run much. It is rich and we don't use it as

much as we should so I will be doing tests with this layered with other glazes.

Ron Roy's Sapphire Blue. Beautiful glaze

that is runny if applied too thick. I have

been experimenting with this glaze

as I have had requests for pieces

in this color. I have struggled

with it, but for some reason

it behaved perfectly in this firing and

I think I have figured out the trick

to using it!

Eggshell. This has a blue tint to it

and looks thin on our dark clay. It is not one of my favorites and now I remember why!

Antique Iron. I love this glaze because it breaks to a rusty brown and there are hints of green and blue. It is nice layered with other glazes (sometimes runny) and this picture does not do it justice.

Autumn Frost. You can't tell in this picture but this is a little iridescent. I wanted a base tile for this as I am going to experiment layering this with other colors.

Tile was dipped in Autumn Frost, dried and then dipped in Due's White. I wasn't impressed with the results.

This one is interesting and I am going to experiment with it more. It was dipped in Tom Grey's Red, dried and then dipped in Antique Iron. It isn't the honey color I was hoping for but I like it.

I tried a variation of this on a cup in an attempt to get a rustic looking red. It turned out almost gold. I haven't decided if I like it or not. The tile was dipped in Licorice, dried and then dipped in Tom Grey's Red.

The base on this tile is Shino. We use it a lot. I dipped this one in Shino and put a strip of Moss Green across the middle. Again, I was not impressed with the result.

Moss Green. I love this glaze and I will be doing more tests with it.

Eggplant. It has some interesting blue, purple and green in it. I am going to try layering it over some other glazes.

Hell is being a gardener in Montana

The weather has been decent here for a couple of days which means it hasn't rained and our property is not flooded. Because it has been so nice I decide I would plant some more cucumbers in my raised bed for the THIRD time. They have frozen twice now and I have woke to tiny shriveled plants that were, the night before, tasty fresh cucumber salads and fabulous pickles. As I am planting these tiny plants of hope, I realize that I am humming "Hell is for children" by Pat Benatar, only in my head it is "Hell for gardeners". Then I remember the pictures my Mom posted of her garden and the words become "Hell is for Montana gardeners". (Mom, I love your garden pictures so please don't take this to heart!)

When I moved into my boyfriend's (now my wonderful husband) house, it looked like the picture below.

There was nothing. I didn't understand why you would have that much space and not plant a single thing in six years. I understand now. It breaks your heart. All the hope and anticipation is wiped out in one night by a hard frost on the Fou

rth of July, a herd of deer or a tiny bunny that you once thought was cute but now only wish your air pump gun would shoot harder and farther.

The really sad part of this story is that no one told me that my heart would be broken. When I talked of planting beautiful flowers and tasty vegetables the locals just nodded their heads and gave me that "poor, poor girl" look. It is only recently that I realized it was the same look my husband gave me as I was buying plants at the nursery to create my garden wonderland.

I have managed to get some things to grow as the after picture below shows. But my little gardening heart is still broken in this mountain climate every year, and I still have not managed to get a single cucumber plant to grow here.

Pottery Snobs

Last night the hubs and I were part of the Archie Bray ceramic stroll. It was a blast and we met potters from all over the world. Some had some very kind words and others not so much.

I very much admire the potters who work and live at the Archie Bray. They have helped us artistically and also technically with our pottery woes. Because we are such newbies to the pottery world it isn't uncommon for us to take a piece of pottery to the Bray and ask what went wrong (thanks Josh!) or to ask about chemicals and why we can't get a color right. Most of the potters at the Bray are true artists, love their work and are humble about their own fabulous pieces. Their works are meant to be statements about society, fantasy, personal torture and other various topics important to the artist as stated in their bios. Some of the work is so beautiful that you get lost in the piece but is often too beautiful to fit into and survive my mountain life and some of the other work is, well, difficult to interpret. However, whatever the clay becomes, I always look at the work, ask questions and try to soak up as much "artistic" mojo as I can.

Because the Bray walk brought so many people from all over the word, I encountered my very first pottery snobs. Elitists in the pottery world who believe that if you do not have the correct education or have not studied under the right master your work is crap and you have no right to share it. A woman actually came into our display last night and picked up a mug that my husband worked so hard on and said "can you believe this "tourist pottery"". I was stunned and felt bad for the hubs who was very proud of his mug and actually did have some tourists asking to buy it. Correct me if I am wrong -- but people have been making mud pots for hundreds of years --functional pots that hold water and food and I am pretty sure that none of them were eating out of a sculpture of a human with a rat head holding a spear.

So there it is. Maybe I am the pottery snob. I want to hold my pottery and use it in my everyday life. And while I will never purchase the human rat sculpture, I will admire it for the artistic statement and the work that went into creating the piece. I would never walk into someone's space and dismiss the work they created and were brave enough to share with the world. Maybe it all just comes down to good manners and being polite and wondering who raised these rude people anyway!

February 2011

It is already February--wow! I am looking out the window at the snow covered mountains as I write this -- so ready for spring! I have been looking at seed catalogs and online sites planning my garden -- the more I look the more anxious I am getting. I hope to talk the hubs into going to the hardware store to check out a green house kit that a friend told me about.

We did our first show this weekend and didn't get the people out that we expected. The weather was miserable and people were just staying home. We did see some of our regular customers who added to their collection. It is so fun to talk to someone who has several of our pottery pieces and came to the show to add to their collection.

We made four vases thinking that they would be good sellers for the Valentine themed show. We filled the vases with flowers -- and much to our surprise they didn't get much attention. We sold one of the four. Just goes to show that you can never predict what people are in the mood for! We did sell a lot of wine cups -- my personal favorite that we make and we sold some jewelry bowls. It is funny that when we have the jewelry bowls displayed how everyone looks at the jewelry and I have to tell them it is just for display. I wonder if we should start making jewelry?

At the end of the day -- we had a good time, paid for our booth and had a little left over.