Many Hands Make Light Work

My Mum always said that many hands make light work (or something like that), turns out she was right. Yesterday was the Fairview Studios Semi Annual Scrub Down. 10-12 students showed up around 5:30 to scrub the floors until you could eat off them. OK, I wouldn’t eat off them, but they did get scrubbed, hosed and wet vac’d until you could see bare concrete.

On a side note: If you EVER want to build your own studio and decide to go the bare concrete floor route, I highly recommend sealing it. Concrete might be forgiving of spilled clay slop and other pottery studio messes, but it does not clean up well if it is not sealed. The previous tentant had used this space to park their vehicles in, so the floor was pretty well beyond sealing it when we moved in (residual oil drips, dirt, etc)

If you are a safety conscious person, this would probably make you cringe. We got the hose out and sprayed down the floor (after moving all the wheels and tables etc to one side), scrubbed with a deck brush and then sucked up the water with a shop vac. The cord for the vac did not reach far enough to get to all the nooks and crannies, so we plugged it into several long extension cords. The plug ends of said cords spent a lot of time in puddles of water. What’s wrong with a little full body electro shock treatment?

Since we did not manage to electrocute ourselves, we got out of the studio around 7:15. Most of us headed over to the Dog & Duck for a couple of pints and some food. This was to also be the wind up party for the Water Valley Celtic Music Festival that Dave has been putting on for the past 14 years. The music was good, the food was good and the Guinness was great. They even go to the effort of putting the shamrock on the head. Most places don’t as it is too much of a bother to pull a pint of G, much less decorate it.

Glazing, Firing & Drinking Irish Whiskey

Kiln is fixed! I should be ok to fire this weekend. So glazing/loading tonight and if I can fill the kiln, then I will fire it off tonight as well. That should not be an issue as I always have stuff kicking around that has been glazed, but not fired, and then there is that whack of stuff that needs to be re fired from the last time a kiln element blew.


So, that will be my evening. I don’t want to have to unload a kiln of mugs the same day that they are picking them up. That would be too nerve wracking.

We are having our 2nd semi annual studio clean up day next Wednesday. We have been in the space for 3 years, and have had difficulties cleaning and maintaining it. Because it is a privately owned recreational studio, with all different kinds of people, cleanliness can be an issue. Some people don’t feel that they should have to clean up things like wedging tables, plaster tables, the floor around their wheel etc as they pay to come here to get away from cleaning at home. They feel it is the ownerships responsibility. Others are just plain forgetful, and others are just lazy (I probably fall in that category to some degree)

One person can not maintain the space on their own. The floors are unsealed concrete and they do not clean up well. If this was a city run operation, then there would be a budget for cleaners etc. The bonus for coming in to clean the studio is that we will all be going out to the Dog & Duck for a wind up party for the Water Valley Celtic Music Festival. There will be some of the musicians from the festival in attendance and I am sure the music will be great, as usual.

In the discussion surrounding this clean up / wind up “party”, Dave, our fearless leader, was regaling stories from our trip to Ireland to anyone that would listen. Apparently I am an alcoholic, at least in his version of events (which get distorted with every telling). Yes, I was seen taste testing various scotches, bourbons & Irish whiskeys at the Middleton Distillery near Cork (they used to make Jameson’s there) and was a bit flushed in some of the post distillery pictures. You can’t visit and not do that. I learned several things that day. I learned why I don’t like scotch, and why I actually do like Irish whiskey best. I do not like the taste of burnt dirt (aka smoky peat). I also like it because it is triple distilled, unlike bourbon (aka corn whiskey) which is traditionally only distilled once.

Yes, I was also seen lifting a pint or 2 of Murphy’s Stout and Guinness on occasion. But to hear Dave tell it, I was sloshing everywhere we went. BTW, I like Murphy’s better than Guinness, but I don’t believe you can get it here in Canada, at least not this far west, but then I have not looked that hard either. I have to say, that with the amount of food we ate, and most of it being in the form of soda bread, spotted dick, more bread, breaded fish, chips, potatoes etc… it’s a wonder anyone can get drunk in Ireland. When we were at Marcus’s for the salt firing and other pottery related demos etc, we started our day with oatmeal, at 10:00 we stopped for a tea break that usually included scones, spotted dick, other assorted bready items etc. Then there was lunch, and the 2:00 tea break and then dinner at about 6. By then, I had consumed my carbohydrate allotment for the year. I should mention that just before we went on this wee adventure, I had been on the Atkins Diet which contains absolutely no refined or processed carbs of any kind. I fell off that carb wagon very fast. It didn’t hurt much as bread is soft and apparently I was drunk anyway.

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.