Theme and Variation

It's amazing how a surface can make the same thing look so different.

These pears were made to be purely decorative. 

Sometimes, I make these to use as salt and peppers. (However, salt and peppers have a totally  different interior construction.)


The white pear glaze is just pure white with an iron-based stem glaze that was encouraged to run.

The matt black was a smoke fired piece which feels wonderful in your hand.

And the shiny black was a glaze test for this delightful glaze.

The smallest pear is a multiple finish:  A basic white with a pumpkin glaze and touches of turquoise glaze. An oxide was applied and then an adhesive for random additions of gold foil.  (Sometimes it's good to go 'way out on a limb.)

It garnered a prize in a Seattle show.

I like pears so much, I even make velvet pincushions. 

Oops!

This just cracks me up.

wink wink nudge nudge

Click on the picture to get the gag.

The Almost-Final Kitchen Pictures

It was cloudy and gloomy out the other day. Just the kind of day to get good interior shots with all the LED lights on yet to also capture glimpses of the outdoors. So, I charged my camera up and took these shots of the kitchen.

I say Almost-Final because I haven't gotten shades up yet. I'm thinking Roman blinds (since they will be open most of the time) with broad black and white stripes. Pottery Barn has something that would almost work, but they don't make them wide enough.

Here are the shots going around the room from the sink that faces South. The cabinet on the far side of the refrigerator is a large pull-out pantry with steel basket shelves. I can store nearly all my canned goods in there plus the bottom section is for recycle and bag storage.

Behind that large cabinet unit is the old porch which is not a walk-in pantry.

I can't believe how much more room I've gained!

The basket collection comes from all over. Left to right:  Bamboo purse, backpack from the hill tribes of Bagio in the Philippines, apple picker back basket, another tiny backpack from unknown region, Filipino fish trap in the corner, pie basket from Missouri, an egg basket that I made, and a Mexican market basket. 

The two tall cabinets from Renovation Hardware and the "Guds Frid" sign has been remounted over the doorway. The cabinet on the left holds baking supplies, extra pans, booze and flower vases. 

The cabinet shown here holds serving dishes, everyday dishes, cookbooks and oversized serving pieces. 

I LOVE this commercial grade prep table. It works as an island, but is much more. It's movable on wheels. It's handy for hot foods from the oven, cold things from the fridge, for staging things out of the dishwasher, and as a buffet table. It's great to work on and cleans up beautifully. Great for storing oversized steel pans and items. 

The table in front of the windows provide great views of the bay. (Note the binoculars for ogling boats and birds, to say nothing of the occasional eagle, geese, great blue heron, or kingfisher.) We also see sea otters and seals lounging on the docks. My Currier and Ives sloop prints are perfect here. 

Knowing how you cook and use a kitchen helps tremendously in renovating a space. 

I now have everything centered at the back of the room leaving the front for the eating and enjoying the view, clearing a traffic lane for going in and out and creating a new relationship for the dishwasher/silverware/dish storage. ie. dishes come out of the dishwasher, got to the table, sorted. They are put away in the tall cabinet to the left, ready for the next table setting. The silverware is stored in the top drawer next to the dishwasher. This model dishwasher has a silverware sorting tray in the top, so the transfer from dishwasher to storage trays in the drawer is an absolute snap. 

Funny Little Pot

So here's a variation on two themes:  Surface treatment and the handbuilt pot.

I used a sea shell, a shred of some kind of plastic car-light part picked up in a parking lot, a wooden stamp, a piece of styrofoam packing and the end of a dowel.


The handbuilding was intentionally un-square.

It was okay to overlap the celadon glaze.

I have no idea what it could be used for.  But that's for the buyer to figure out.

How to put a Wine Glass on a Ray Gun

I made this Ray Gun........

It is porcelain with assembled wheel-thrown components, a hand made grip, fired to cone 6 with a clear glaze.

I added a piece of glass into the end. But somehow, it still just didn't have any punch.....

I thought about adding a cold glaze finish, but decided to wait because somehow, that wasn't the solution either.

So one day, I was cleaning out my wine storage cellar in the basement........

And I saw these disposable wine glasses. The cup halves were all stacked together, one inside the other and the bases were all snapped together. The cup part and the stem base pieces are supposed to join together to make a whole wine glass.

I kept thinking I liked the appearance of all the bases stuck together. They looked like something entirely different than wine glass bottoms.

I had another ray gun out in my studio in three pieces, waiting to be assembled.

This ray gun had been fired in three pieces because I wanted to experiment with adding other components.

I took the wine glass bases out to the studio.

I held the ray gun together in my hand and tried the bases in several configurations.

I liked the way the wine glass bases and the sectioned ray gun looked when it was all assembled.

I glued the whole ray gun together with Goop.

So next,I took the wine glass top pieces out to the studio.

I stuck one on the front of the first ray gun.

It looked great.

But how do you glue a wine glass to a ray gun so it looks 'finished'?.

First, I drew the outline of the cup. Then I squeezed glue onto the outline.

I put the lip of the cup over the glue to make a 'marriage' of the plastic cup and the porcelain flange.

I lined the flange with a continuous line of glue and placed the wine cup over the end of the ray gun.

I held it together.

For a long time.

It Worked!

Don't tell anybody it's a plastic wine glass, okay?

P.S.

Remember the Racer?

 Here's what it looked like prefire.

I like the way the edges ran down the corners and pooled in the corners of the small square. I'll remember that the next time I make this form.

The mold for this is an el chipo plastic 1960s dish I found at the thrift store. Great place to look for clay forms. The good thing about this is I can lay a slab down on the plastic which I line with damp strips of newsprint, and just let it dry. The recessed center makes a good foot on the dish.

Mr. DeMille, Oh, Mr. DeMille

I'm ready for my close-up.


What is it with camera lenses?

This little "Viking" bowl just doesn't photograph well. Somehow, the camera distorts it. It's body is so much more rounded than it appears in shots. The has more of a smooth transition from flare to the tilted up points.

I've tried to take a good photo of this piece several times and so far, this is the best it has shown. I've set it up with a paper drape backdrop, used special full spectrum lights, tried every angle.

These shots are done just on my kitchen table with natural light from the adjacent window. Sheesh!

The glaze is a shino, fired in oxidation at between a cone 5 and 6. The glaze is from Coyote.

The bowl was thrown on a batt made from a sink off-cut --the piece that has been cut out of a kitchen counter for the sink. Or at least that's how the batts started to be made. I think now, they are just made as batts in the first place.

The slick finish on the batt allows me to let the porcelain dry on the batt. If I trim the outer edge of the foot at the time of throwing, I only have to burnish the bottom for a nice, smooth finish.

Logo Variation

Now that I have a new logo design and business cards set up, I can morph that into any kind of other card.

By removing the text under the logo, I can add "Thanks" and add an address, phone number, website address; virtually anything then create a new master for duplication.

I like to tape a note card to the bottoms of my bakeware that say things "Place in a cool oven" or "Microwave Safe", "Lead-free glaze" or "Microwave Safe - contains iron glaze; may be warm to the touch." And sometimes, "Not suitable for food".

Logo Experiments

I've been trying out some new logo ideas.  I need tags for my pots for an upcoming show and my old tags need to be refreshed, design-wise.

Since I did my last batch, I've changed computers and graphics programs.  What a pain! It required some redesigning to get a design resource sheet like this one done. I can take one of these rows and convert it into multiple repeats as a one-design master sheet. This sheet was done to see how new ideas would work out.

I started off this series by scanning one of the old hangtags and using that image, manipulated it around for a while trying different designs.  When I get something I like, I'll run off a couple of master sheets and put them into a dedicated folder so I can reprint different cards and tags as I need them.

On the sheet above, the first and third rows will probably be used for price tags because they will be printed in large batches and they take less ink to make.

The darker design will be used for more expensive items or for contact info cards, thank yous, or other special printing.

I will take each one of these 4 variations and make a master sheet of each.  That will give me 4 different logos to duplicate.

For a hangtag, I can run off a sheet and punch holes in the top, put in some black embroidery thread for the tie and attach them to the pots. The design must take into account that a hole will be punched in the top, so room has to be left for that. I want to see how the would look on a pot. There's a lot of difference in how they look on a sheet of paper in a row and how they will look individually.

A blaring, dark row will look entirely different as single tags. Likewise, a lighter design might turn out to be wimpy.  We'll see.










I like to use a creamy heavy paper for my printing. With a strong black and white design, you can print the cards off on any color paper.

It gets complicated, but there's lots you can do between a simple graphics program, a scanner and a good printer. Oh, and a big paper-cutter.

A "Racer"

In every kiln firing, there is usually one piece that comes out better than you dreamed. Some people call them "Racers". 

Here's my racer.

This thing has been setting around on a shelf waiting to be fired for a long time. It's big. There hasn't been a firing that allowed a free shelf, so this piece got put off and putt off. 

But this guy made it into the OVERFIRE kiln. Yikes. All these glazes are supposed to be good up to cone 6. I don't know how hot the last kiln got because the thermocouple malfunctioned. The chances of duplication? almost nil.

I do know that this is celadon and iron applied over it.

 

It did blister a bit, but no explosions or craters. 

I just love it. It's a keeper.