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.

January Fire

The weather is still unseasonably warm here. There is no snow and the warm days have me thinking of yard and outdoor projects that can't be worked on until spring. We did take advantage of the warmer nights and built a fire on the deck -- one of my favorite things in the world. I could live by the fire on the deck. It is so awesome to me to look at the mountains, listen to music, watch the fire and drink a little wine with my sweetie. He isn't always up for my fire obsession -- but I usually end up convincing him.

The kiln is now fixed so pot production is slowly getting back to the regular schedule. Our test fire went well, so I re-fired the pots that didn't get finished when the kiln died. That didn't turn out so well. The colors were dull and some of the

glaze was grainy. Mcki was disappointed because she had been waiting so long for her cups and now it will be at least a week or so before I get new ones done. A couple of them turned out okay so at least I won't have to make as many.

Today we will get another glaze going and trim the pots that are drying. We are hoping to have enough pots to do our annual Valentine's show which is coming upon us very quickly. We are also doing some prototype cups for a local business that we hope will carry our pottery in their store.

My daughter, Amy, who gave us the best Christmas gift this year, baby Noah, needs to have surgery this week to have her gall bladder out. I am planning yet another trip to Idaho Falls to help her and also put together her baby shower with my daughter-in-law, Taunya. Because Taunya has already printed and sealed the invitations, we are hoping that we don't end up having a shower without the guest of honor!

January started a little slow but is being quickly filled with the chaos we are used to with our pottery business and growing family. We are so blessed that we have beautiful, happy (most of the time) children, a growing business and our little sanctuary in the beautiful mountains of Montana.

Weird weather and other random stuff

It is January 3, 2012. Arne and Mcki are both back at work and school and things feel like they are getting back to normal after a whirlwind holiday season. Except for the weather. It is a little unsettling that the temperatures are in the mid 40s and are expected to stay that way for the week.

It was a beautiful sunny, warm (for Montana winter) day yesterday and it put me into spring cleaning and purging mode, which is unsettling in itself to Arne who is always worried about what treasures I have thrown away. I now know to bury them deep in the garbage so he won't see them until he goes to the dump and empties the trash. When he finally does see them it is too late to dig them out of the landfill in front of the workers. :-) When I got tired of cleaning, I thought about skiing or snowshoeing but there is NO snow. How weird. I almost got my bike out. I went down to the studio instead.

The studio is still torn apart because our kiln needs a relay switch. Now the kiln is a person to me. Her name is Ursula and I talk to her all the time when I am in the studio about pots and the glazes they will be covered in. It is a little sad to see her laying there in need of attention (along with the pots that need to be re-fired) and our hands are tied because the Bray won't be open until Thursday. In addition, I have been thinking about changing the clay I use and it is driving me crazy. I want to use a lighter color to get some truer glaze colors, but because I primarily throw baking ware I am hesitant to change to a potentially weaker clay body. Nobody can tell me if the clay I want to use is a true stoneware.

In the end, I went upstairs to find new glaze recipes to see if I can find that perfect green that I am always searching for that will work on the dark stoneware I am using. Maybe today will be the day I find it.

Blessed Year

2011 has been a blessed year for Wiebe Pottery. We have made so many new friends and have put our pottery in lots of new hands. We have also learned some painful lessons, me especially.

Since quitting my job in June to do this full time, I have had to learn to manage my own time much more carefully. I had visions of making wonderful pottery, cleaning the house, baking cookies and having dinner ready for Mcki and Arne at night. It was all very June Cleaverish in my head. The reality was that many days I was covered in mud, tired from throwing and sleep deprived because I would think about new glazes, pot shapes, textures and marketing ideas instead of sleeping. So instead of a sparkling clean house, organized meals and fabulous pots, I was often just a hot mess wondering how this new business adventure had gotten away from me. I had to stop and figure out how to make everything work.

I am happy to say that while I still have my days, I am figuring things out. Wiebe Pottery was able to buy a small slab roller this year and we will end the year purchasing a clay extruder that will allow me to hand build and feed my creative side. We learned a lot about making and testing our own glazes (a place we never imagined we would be), and we learned that we will always be learning and it will never be perfect.

I am excited to start the new year as a business owner and for the new projects that Wiebe Pottery has planned. A small gallery off of the studio, a raku kiln, and some new venues to sell our beautiful pots to name a few.

And finally, I am very grateful to my husband who believed in us and our business enough to take this giant leap into the unknown. I honestly wouldn't be the person I am today without his patience, love and gentle guidance.

Happy New Year!

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!