Out Of The Kiln

It’s only when you become a potter yourself do you finally realise how much goes into making a pot. Of course most people know about the throwing and firing aspects, and some people also appreciate that there’s also a lot of designing, planning and preparation that goes on behind the scenes too. But I’m not sure for instance how many people know that even when a pot comes out of the kiln, the story isn’t over yet!

When my pots come out of their final firing (which is when they’ve been glazed) there’s still a couple of extra things I need to do before the pot can go out into the world. My pots are usually made of stoneware clay and fired in an electric kiln. This is quite a ‘clean’ way of firing (there’s no residue left on the pots like there is in raku for instance) but they still need a final check.

First I check that the glazes have all worked properly and there’s no cracks or faults in the body of the pot. Sometimes the glaze will ‘run off’ the pot for instance or a drip of glaze will stick onto the base. If this happens the pot is either a reject or sometimes can be saved by chipping the glaze off with a hammer and chisel. The angle has to be just right, and the tapping has to be ‘just so’, but if you’re lucky the drip of glaze will slice cleanly away without damaging the pot.

Next I check any pots with lids. I always fire my pots with their lids ‘in situ’ which means hopefully a lid will shrink to the same extent as the body of the pot during firing and be a perfect match. However, tight-fitting lids, like those on teapots for instance, do have a tendency to get stuck. The remedy is to hit them with a wooden stick: literally! The best way to release a stuck lid is to ‘tap’ (sometimes quite hard) the edge of the lid where it meets the body of the pot to encourage it to separate. Usually they come free after some patient thwacking, but if they don’t, then I try filling teapots via the spout (or submerging closed forms) with alternating hot and cold water. This usually does the trick.

Finally, I give all the bases of my pots a quick sanding over: and this is what I did today by the way. The bases of pots and any bare/non-glazed areas of exposed clay always feel a bit rough to the touch when straight out of the kiln. This is perfectly normal but when a pot is a functional item – like a jug – it needs to feel comfortable to hold. It’s also important that the base of a pot doesn’t scratch any surfaces when used every day. So I always check the base of my pots and smooth any sharp edges with sandpaper. I use normal medium-strength sandpaper to do this, which is just enough to take away the roughness without losing that rustic charm that stoneware has. Then I wipe the pots with a cloth to clean away any dust.

And that’s it! At least that’s the end of the ‘making’ part. The next stage is another blog post entirely…

Storage Jars - How To Make Flat Lids

At the moment life is getting in the way of making pots. This happens quite frequently of course: there’s always something popping up in life to interrupt potting plans. Recently it’s building work that’s causing disruption. We discovered the outside wall directly above my studio space was in danger of falling over in the next bad storm. And bearing in mind there’s been some pretty stormy, rainy and windy weather recently, we decided we’d better get it fixed pronto! All very boring, disruptive, noisy, dusty and stressful etc. And since it’s happening directly over my head, I’m having trouble concentrating on making pots.

However, in between the drilling and hammering and general crash of masonry falling around me, I’ve managed to do some reclaiming of clay at least and even made a few pots. As you can see in the photos, I’ve made some storage jars in the same style as my mustard pots. They have a simple cylinder design with a small ‘shelf’ area for the lid to sit on and little cut-out holes for a spoon.

The lids are thrown on the wheel from a small lump of clay. They’re made ‘right-way-up’ with the knobs included, which is a bit like making the opposite of a bowl. Instead of making a hole in the centre of the clay, you press down on the edge of the lump to create a flat lid around a central blob, which is shaped to become the knob. I’ve made this little diagram below to illustrate.

As long as you get the amount of clay right for your pot and you measure accurately when throwing, this is a very efficient design. No clay is wasted and it requires only a small amount of ‘clean-up’ when leatherhard: just a wipe over the base with a damp sponge. The holes have to be cut at the optimum time: the clay can’t be too soft or too hard or they won’t be nice and crisp. I used to use a round looped tool to make them but this time I discovered my small cookie cutter is the perfect size.

I’ve always liked storage jars, especially with lids and holes like these! And there’s something very satisfying about getting a lid to fit snugly onto a pot. Anyway, these pots are drying now and waiting to be bisque fired. In the meantime I’m hoping the building work will be over soon so I can get back to normal potting.

New 'Bird Bowl' Pouring Bowls

I’ve been making some new products recently and thought I’d blog about one of them: so above is a photo of my new ‘bird bowl’ pouring bowls. They’re an adaptation or variation on my ‘drizzle’ bowls, which is the name I gave for small bowls with a pouring lip. (You can see posts about them here and here.) The original ‘drizzle’ bowl design was a simple bowl small enough to hold in the palm of your hand – about 8cm across by 5cm high – with a slight pouring lip: perfect for drizzling oils, dressings and spices. Having run out of these I decided to make a new batch. However, on turning day I had the idea of making this batch with little handles…

At first I toyed with the idea of designing a ‘traditional’ looped handle with just enough space for one finger to go through. But the bowls are so low, this style of handle would have felt too cumbersome and heavy. It would also have upset their centre of gravity making them susceptible to knocking over too easily. So in the end I opted for a ‘thumb’ handle: a small addition to the rim of the bowl where your thumb naturally wants to rest when pouring from the palm. It was fun trying out little shapes that might work. In the end I chose a simple, rounded shape seen below. I also added a few lined impressions using a wooden tool to give the thumb grip and to add texture and interest.

While the handles were drying ready for attaching, they reminded me of little rabbit paws: but once they were fitted to the bowl, they seemed to look like stubby tails on a small bird! So straight away I knew they’d have to be called bird bowls. I think this design of handle has worked very well. It lifts up the form and gives the bowl a very sprightly quality and makes you want to pick them up. So it’s an interesting variation, which I hope people will like.

I tried out a variety of glazes with this shape to see how they would work. In the end I’m happy with all the colour combinations and plan to repeat them and maybe try others too. I’ve glazed each bowl by dipping the whole pot into the glaze leaving just the handle, which I’ve dipped in a contrasting glaze with some overlap. The combinations so far include: white with a black tail, brown with a blue/white tail, and a lovely tin based glaze which has a creamy brown fleck contrasted with a brown tail. See? I’ve called all the handles tails…!

All three glaze combinations of bird bowls are available now in my Folksy shop.

St Ives: Inspiration

I thought I’d do something new today. As you can see from my last blog post I recently went to St Ives for a week. I had a fantastic time and almost overdosed on inspiration. I wanted to blog about my trip some more, but couldn’t decide what to focus on. Should I talk about all the fantastic galleries I went to? Or my visit to the Barbara Hepworth museum? What about Alfred Wallis maybe (especially since I stayed in his cottage!) or something about the Tate…?

But as I was going through all the photos I took, I got distracted. Instead of picking some nice pictures to illustrate a blog post about what I’d seen, I started playing around with the images themselves.

I take lots of photos. In fact I will admit that I’m not really a fan of sketching. It’s probably an outrageous thing for an artist to say! But I’ve always found drawing outdoors a cumbersome way of retaining the ideas I get when walking around. Instead I take photos for reference, and having a digital camera (instead of my old ‘analogue’ SLR) allows me to take literally hundreds of photos without incurring costs. When I’m out and about I can click away, capturing colours, forms and ideas in a fraction of the time it takes to fuss about with pencils, numb fingers and sketchbook pages flapping in the wind.

Anyway, the point is, looking back over my St Ives photos today brought out some interesting ideas. I noticed recurring themes as well as some details which I quickly snapped at the time and moved on from, that now - after some time has passed - seem to stand out. I started putting these together into little groups and then decided to blog about these instead! Here's just a few of them. Because in an odd way these images capture something of what it was like walking around St Ives, soaking in the inspiration. Much better than me waffling on about it! I hope you enjoy them!

See more St Ives pictures on my Flickr Set.