My carved green bowl fresh out of the kiln…
just in time for this weekend’s HOLIDAY HOME SHOW!!!

A great combination… an empty soda kiln & my studio cart FULL of glazed & wadded pots. Late Friday night I loaded the kiln with a LOT of pots to be soda-fired on Saturday. My rolling cart has to travel from my second floor studio down to the first floor kiln room… on a very rickety freight elevator. So I always add some “seat belt” straps of masking tape to help keep pots in their place on the trip down!

So now the stamps have their inlaid glazed… and a liner glaze too! The outside stays basically unglazed as the soda-firing process will finish & “glaze” the outsides for me! Now to start wadding all of them…

Filling all of my stamped impressions with a dark tenmoku glaze. And then wiping away the top surface leaving glaze only in the indentations. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but he darker inlaid glaze always seems to make my stamped patterns “pop” more!

Lots of mugs… looks like I’ve got a LOT of glazing to get done tonight!!! ugh… definitely not my favorite part of the process!

So here’s a little glaze dilemma!!!

One of my Intermediate Wheel students is working on an installation piece with multiple platters on the wall. She’s been working on them for awhile… but brought this one to me asking what happened to her glaze there in the middle?! Maya didn’t do anything different here… so why this rectangular blemish in the middle of her platter???

Anyone… anyone?… Bueller, Bueller???

So this platter had a crack around the footring. Maya asked me if she could still glaze fire it as a glaze test… to make sure she likes the combo for the replacement platter she’s going to make. I said sure, but maybe you should put a note on it so the kiln loaders don’t reject it because of the crack.

Looks like the fired the platter WITH THE NOTE STILL ON IT!!!
You can practically see the lines of her handwriting “fused” into the glaze!!! I guess maybe next time her note should also remind them to remove the note BEFORE firing the piece?!

But then again, not everyone loves purple… so there will also be a couple stamped plates & platters in other fun colors at ART IN THE GARDEN too! Remember, homemade food always tastes better on handmade pottery!

For all you “Purple Lovers” out there… there’s only ONE of these large stamped platters in purple for ART IN THE GARDEN this weekend. No pre-sales, no calling dibs… we’re just going old-school with first-come, first-served. You might want to come early tomorrow if you really love purple?!!!

While some of you may have missed it in last night’s ikebana post… it was indeed PURPLE!!! And yes, that means I have a new glaze in my pottery repertoire!!! It’s nice shade of purple that highlights my stamping textures. ART IN THE GARDEN will be the “big debut” of my new purple glaze… and it might just be a small batch, limited quantities situation. We’ll see how it’s received at the art fair?!

Well THIS can’t be good?!!!

While I was glazing a bunch of class demo pieces, I went to dunk this flower pot into the glaze bucket using the tongs. And when I pulled it back out, I saw THIS!!! Sure, flower pots should have some good drainage holes, but this is ridiculous. I guess the area where the stamped impressions are was a bit too thin for the pressure of the tongs lifting the pot out of the bucket?!

Shoulda stayed away from that part apparently… well, maybe next time?!