Frustration

I am currently not meant to be 'playing with clay' due to prescribed 'rest' for de quervain's tenosynovitis in my right thumb, caused by over-enthusiastic use of secateurs back in March. I am finding it hard to not use my right hand and very frustrating not to be making things; so thought I would use some of my free time to update my blog with work that I managed to make before the pain really kicked in.

Over the Easter holidays we had a brilliant holiday on Islay and Jura which included lots of beach combing. One of my finds was a large flat scallop shell which I have had fun pressing into slabs of clay and then moulding the 'shells' to create some bowls.

Small shell bowl - h~8cm

Shell bowl with glass - d~25cm

Not surprisingly, I found a lot of broken shells which I like because the internal spiral structure of the shell is exposed creating very interesting shapes to draw...

...and then use as inspiration for clay

Broken shell form - h~12cm, l~18cm

One shell I would love to have is a nautilus (must put this on my wish list for birthday or Christmas), the form was the inspiration for this piece.

Nautilus form (burnished & smoked) - h~21cm, w~18cm

This piece won 'best in show' at West Forest Potters Annual Exhibition as part of the Henley Arts Trail and was sold at the show.

Another piece of recent burnished and smoked work, this time inspired by the Maori fishhook design.

Hei Matau - h~24cm, w~16cm

My little heart bowls are a great way of experimenting with different surface techniques; this trio had wax resist painted on when leatherhard and were then painted with slip. After bisque firing they were dipped in vellum off-white glaze and then fired to stoneware. Must have been successful since they have all sold.

little heart bowls

Salt pig - h~9cm

I used the same technique to finish this experiment at making a 'salt pig', instead of slip cobalt oxide was used, giving a stronger blue.













For this one I used copper oxide to give the green colour.

Finally, a salt pig based on a shell form.

To glaze or not to glaze?

I think it is fair to say that I have a love/hate relationship with glazes.
All too often I finish a piece of work feeling satisfied with the shape (and sometimes texture added) only to be disappointed when I have added a glaze - colour might not be as expected, texture often lost or the glaze run badly leaving large blobs of glaze on my kiln shelves!
However, there are times when I open the kiln and am pleasantly surprised with the results.
One of the glazes I love to hate is my marble green glaze. When it behaves itself and 'does what it says on the can' I get a beautiful 'marbled green', as in this yarn bowl.

Yarn bowl

BUT, this glaze is a great runner! You can see this in one of my latest pieces of work.

Double Koru - h~23cm

Admittedly I did increase the movement of this glaze by dribbling on some vellum off-white glaze which recent glazing experimentation has shown increases the range of colours. I had tried to leave a large area clear of glaze at the bottom, but obviously not enough, more grinding to remove glaze from my kiln shelf!

This piece of work was definitiely intended to be looked at from all angles; with different shapes, both positive and negative, appearing all the time.

One of my most dependable glazes has been 'blue-grey', giving a lovely matt finish as in this triple koru.

Triple Koru on yew base

I have found on some test pieces that cobalt oxide in textured areas under this glaze will turn green (not the blue that would be expected with cobalt oxide). I decided to use this to highlight the texture that I had added to the piece below; unfortunately the glaze covered the piece so well that most of the texturing was lost.

 Another dependable glaze has been 'vellum off-white', which I have discovered works well over cobalt oxide, so have used this over the bowl/vase below.

Bowl/vase - h~12cm, w~15cm

Still very mixed feelings about my glazing efforts, time for some more burnishing and smoking...

Stoned and smoking?

I am continuing to experiment with my own coloured slips in conjunction with burnishing and smoking; this resulted in two pieces which I felt were calling out for some different plinths, shiny black marble came to mind, not cheap!
Lots of searching on the internet and several emails later I had tracked down a local supplier of granite worktops who were willing to cut and prepare offcuts.
I was very excited to collect my first two plinths of black granite yesterday and rushed home to sit my work on their new bases...

Blue pod (burnished & smoked) on granite - h~13cm, l~16cm

Double Koru (burnished & smoked) on granite - h~16cm, w~16cm

I am delighted with the result, especially when Ken came home, noticed them and was complimentary!

Hard to believe that nearly 4 months have past since my last post; it has not been a very productive few months  as Christmas and home DIY took priority for a while. However, I am now getting back into my 'playing with clay' so time to add a few more photos of my recent efforts.

Burnished and smoked hearts

Double koru and Yew - h~24cm, w~30cm

Green 'zebra' vase (burnished & smoked) - h~23cm, w~18cm

 Smoked pebble stacks on yew bases

The kiln is on again with a stoneware glaze firing and several pieces are at varying stages of production, so watch this space...

(Hopefully it will not be another 4 months before I update my blog.)

 

Hot out of the kiln

Last firing of the kiln before the Thrive Christmas Fair on 5th and 6th December has given me some more small heart bowls

Heart bowls with sea glass

and two more platter and triple bowl sets.

This platter was textured using a lovely large pine cone found on a walk a couple of weeks ago.

This platter was textured using a piece of coral found on a beach in Fiji over 30 years ago! To keep the sea theme, I glazed the inside of the bowls with copper red glaze (it still amuses me that with red in the name of the glaze it fires blue!)








This firing also included my second attempt at making a large shallow bowl with a spiral of glass in the bottom. Careful drying of the bowl had enabled me to produce a bowl without distortion to the bisque stage of the process. However, the stoneware firing has once again distorted the shape (currently not sure how I can stop this happening). Also, I left on too much copper carbonate in the texture of the bowl which has dominated the glaze, hmm....

Preparation and Experimentation

I have been busy over the past 2 months trying to get a balance of making work to sell in the build up to Christmas whilst still trying to push myself and experiment with new ideas and techniques.
I feel that I have been fairly successful with this, as I hope this posting will show.
 
Firstly, work for selling has required the production of 7 more planters to satisfy an order for 6 and still give me some stock to sell (I had 4 already made). Here are the results of my labours:-

 

My smoked hearts have been popular, so I have also been making more of these. To add a little more interest and include my love of ferns, I have been experimenting using ferns as a 'resist' to the slurry before smoking in the incinerator.

A selection of work prepared for smoking

Smoked heart with fern

Smoking happily in the incinerator

Burnished heart with blue slip

Another experiment has been to make my own coloured slip to give some subtle colour before burnishing and smoking. I have tried making two blue slips using the Ashraf Hanna clay with either cobalt oxide or  a turquoise blue body stain. Only firing the work up to 950 C did not bring out the blue of the cobalt oxide, but the body stain has worked very well.








 

My 'rattle stones' have sold well, so I have made some more of these in both natural colour and pale blue (which reminds me of the pebbles I collected on the beach at Durdle Door).

I have spent many a happy hour stacking pebbles on various beaches (how sad is that?). Time to stack some of my ceramic pebbles on a base from some of Meir's lovely yew.

Smoked pebble stack on yew base

I have used more of my supply of wood to mount more pebble inspired work.

Smoked standing pebbles on beech

Blue smoked standing pebbles on yew

With Christmas rapidly approaching and two events to sell at I wanted to make some Christmas tree decorations that were unique to me. I hope that I have achieved this by texturing the slabbed clay with a pine cone before using cutters with some Christmassy shapes. Prior to bisque firing, I carved out a hollow in the shapes ready for some glass to be placed before stoneware firing. Since these were small shapes I bought some coloured glass frit and experimented with different oxide/frit combinations (so my decorations doubled up as test tiles, much less boring).

To my surprise the red frit came clear after firing, perhaps the turquoise and green frits would have done without oxide underneath, something to test out after Christmas. With some touches of gold and silver paints and glittery thread, these have been turned into a pleasing selection of Christmas decorations. I glued on red beads to all my Christmas trees and some red heart beads to the two hearts which were supposed to have red centres.

Wall hanging with green glass

I have played around more with the turquiose and green frits in both tiles and bowls, still very much work in progress, but here are a couple of results.

Bowl with green glass

The large bowl was made in a mould; however, I took the bowl out of the mould too early and it distorted as it dried. Also, it was not possible to keep the glass on the sides of the bowl (something to do with gravity?).
I have just put a more circular bowl in the kiln with the spiral of glass in the bottom of the bowl, fingers crossed.





Congratulations if you have made it to the end of this looong posting!
Still not covered all my work from the past 2 months, but will leave that for another day.
Time to go and make myself a well earned cup of tea.

First glaze firing in ages

This morning I anxiously opened the kiln to see the results of my first glaze firing in three months. I have been busy working on burnished and smoked work recently and have also been making the most of the good summer to head to the hills or the coast, hence no work to glaze for quite a while.

It was time to get back to working with my white St Thomas clay to replace stock and experiment with some new ideas.

Glazing is not my favourite part of the ceramics process, but a necessary evil to produce desired results (if the glazing works). Hence it is always with some trepidation that I open the kiln; will the glaze have run and welded my pots to the kiln shelves or each other? Will I have the glaze colours that I anticipated?

I was relieved when I opened the kiln this morning, everything intact and only one small glaze run. Stupidly ran my thumb over the blob of glaze left on one of my shelves resulting in much blood and a lesson learnt ( I hope!) Glaze is glass and can be very sharp...

Stock replacement included some of my small heart bowls.

small heart bowls (various glazes) ~ 8cm diameter

I also made some more yarn bowls (hoping to keep one for myself this time).

Experimentation with some of the new ideas filling my sketchbook gave the following results.

Shallow heart bowl ~12cm

I textured the slab by rolling onto textured wallpaper before cutting out and shaping the heart. When the clay was leather hard I cut the grooves. After bisque firing the grooves were filled with marble green glaze then covered with wax resist. Copper oxide was brushed into the texture and edges of bowl, then dipped into off white glaze. A process which I plan to repeat with larger bowls.

Teardrop vase h~17cm, d~14cm

This vase was glazed first with Tenmoku, then shiny white tin was poured/dotted on and gave the desired speckled effect - very happy (especially since the vase also holds water).

Teardrop vase h~14cm, d~13cm

Dipped part of vase in marble-green glaze and top in copper red, then dotted on both galzes in the unglazed band. Pleased with the colour of the dots, but in the top section the glaze was not thick enough, resulting in not enough colour. Also unglazed area is too large; I think that I may experiment trying to add more glaze and re-fire?

Once the cut on my thumb has healed enough I can go back to playing with some more clay.