Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The "lid" for the teapot w/ built in infuser part 2

Teapot w/ built in infuser part 1

Testing my mobile blogging

Testing, testing...Sent from my iPhone
woo hoo, it worked!

Monday, May 24, 2010

Teapots

I spent the entire Victoria Day long weekend at the studio and came up with a way to build a tea strainer into the lid. I have tried this before and have never been successfull. I was inspired by an article in Ceramics Monthly about a year and a half ago. The potter (her name escapes me ) threw a tea strainer shaped somewhat like a cocoon and keyed it into the lid, so it was thrown as a seperate entity. I found it almost impossible to make this work, so I abandoned this and have let the idea steep so to speak, in the back of my mind. I kept thinking that the best way would be to throw the lid upside down as I normally would, but exagerate the flange of the lid in order to form the tea strainer from it by closing it in. The difficulty with this was how to open it up to be able to get the tea inside, but also have it act like a lid to keep the heat in. Well, I managed to come up with a solution yesterday. After the lid is trimmed and the knob established ( I trim my knobs from the excess clay left from throwing), I cut into the lid with a pin tool on a 45 around the knob to open it up. I save the knob and set aside. I then trim out the opening so the knob will sit into the central hole. Now the tricky bit. Invert the knob in the hole and push a ball of clay into it that will be large enough to throw into an upside down tear drop. When done, it looks kind of like a long skinny pacifier. The reason for this is to weight the knob so that it doesn't fall out when the pot is in use. Finally, I use a small drill bit to drill out the strainer holes. The holes can't be too large or the tea will go through them. I will take a picture tomorrow, I completely forgot to today.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010





These came out of the kiln today. These are the pint glasses I was talking about, as well as the chicken cooker. The chicken "stands up" on the central cylinder, and you put whatever steaming liquids you want in the centre (wine, lemon juice, water, beer, herbs etc...) and roast as normal.
This casserole was also in this load. Another load is firing tonight, so I will have more pictures soon.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Heinz 57 on the Pot


I really wish I could post images from my cell phone directly into my blog. However, I have yet to discover a method. If this were possible, I would post a heck of a lot more often. As it is, I have to e-mail the photos from my phone to myself, ONE AT A TIME (sound of disgust), then go to the hassle of going home, opening my computer, opening my e-mail, saving the images to my hard drive, and then posting them online. What a pain in the tookus.

Anyway, that is why I have only just posted this picture of the glaze that turned out really well on my little bowl. I have mixed up a batch of what I hope turns out to be the same glaze. What I glazed the bowl in was our Heinz 57 mix but from my test tiles, I think this recipe is really really close to the same result:

12.5% neph sy

12.5% Gerstly Borate

37.5% Ravenscrag*

37.5% Magnesium Carb.

2% copper carb

4% iron

*For those of you that don’t know what Ravenscrag is, it is a clay that is produced by Plainsman Clays in Medicine Hat Alberta. It is a clear glaze all by itself when fired to cone 10, and with a little bit of frit, it is a very nice clear at cone 6 (I don’t think you even need very much frit to get it to melt).
What I like about this glaze is the texture. It has a slight pebbleyness to it that forms when the glaze tries to crawl, but then heals over again. It creates a fine pattern of satin and gloss areas, kind of like islands of satin amongst rivers of gloss. This glaze takes stains and oxides well, and this combination of iron and copper creates a toasty warm glaze with iron speckles, but where it gets thicker it has almost a wood ash appearance, in that it takes on a greenish hue and the pebbleyness is accentuated. This tendency for the glaze to crawl can be accentuated even more by bumping up the magnesium just a little bit, and it becomes way more crackly. It still stays somewhat shiny though. This would then only be good for non functional ware, and the outsides of pots (see my test tiles in the previous posts)

The only problem I have with any of these glazes is that the magnesium carb makes the glaze want to start crawling and cracking before you fire it, so as it dries it starts shrinking and forms cracks. This is even more apparent if you dip it over the top of another glaze. It actually curls up and lifts the other glaze off the pot as well.

So, this is either something I have to live with, or try to eliminate. I am just not sure if I will lose the qualities that I LIKE by eliminating the qualities I don’t.

I think I need to add more clay, so perhaps a bit of ball clay, or maybe I just need to back off the mag carb and increase the ravenscrag content. I will have to play around and see what I get.

On another note, I was at the studio on the weekend (what else is new), and I threw some more “pint” glasses. I have been trying to throw a drinking vessel that would hold a thirst quenching quantity of iced tea, water, etc, and to make the shape appealing and elegant, but what I came up with (totally subconsciously) was a pint glass. It looks just like a pint of Guinness (mmmmm.....Guinness....droool). Not sure if they are elegant, but they sure will hold a pint. I also mixed a batch of my new glaze and dipped one pitcher to see how it turns out (fingers crossed), and then I threw a couple of chicken cookers (based on the beer can method, except the beer can is replaced by the ceramic cylinder thrown in the middle of the cooking dish). I will post the chicken cooker as soon as I trim it so you get a better idea

The “pint” glasses, by the way, are all made out of white stoneware, with a clear liner glaze and a blue hares fur on the outside. I have added a spiral sprig to the outside of each glass that I carved out of plaster, and each of those sprigs is dabbed with hot tamale stroke and coat, it looks really good as it melts into and runs down through the hares fur. I will post pics when I have a couple handy. I sold the first 2 that I made at the student sale, and sadly, I did not get any pics of them.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Just a formality?

Well, I believe that the temp job I have been goin to for the past 2.5 weeks will probably turn out to be a permanent position. I was given my own computer profile and e-mail address yesterday.they wouldn't do that if they weren't going to keep me, would they?
On another note, no pottery today  but I did go down to the studio and checked what came out of the kiln. Our Heinz 57 mix from the glaze class looks very nice. Very speckly and toasty yellow brown. I will take a pic on Friday.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Finally, the raku demo pictures

It's been over a month since the raku demo that I did for the SAIT Polytechnic chemistry class, but they finally sent me the pictures they took. There was video, but it was blocked by the SAIT server, go figure. Anyway, I really hope that the camera really does add 10 pounds....









Saturday, May 1, 2010

Gotta sell pots

The big sale is tomorrow morning. Gotta get up early and sell sell sell!
Still have to do some pricing, but I'll do that when I get there. Should be an interresting sale, as the community clean up day is going on at the same time and the parking lot is gong to be closed to everyone except our customers. We might get some increased foot traffic, but it might interfere with our regular customers if they think they can't get in. Oh well, we shall see how it goes.