Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: mugs, process, production, stamped, stamps

Another night of stamping. Another night of making mugs… my favorite.
Lots of stamping. Lots of patterns. Lots of repetition!!!
So now they’re stamped… tomorrow I plan on adding handles & colored flashing slip!

Mug One

Mug Two

Mug Three

Mug Four

Mug Five

Mug Six

Mug Seven

Mug Eight

Mug Nine

Mug Ten … whoops, I forgot to get a shot of the stamps???

 

Mug Eleven … again, really???…  I forgot to get a shot of the stamps again???

And then to make matters even worse… I forgot to take photos of Mug Twelve all together!!!

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Categories: mugs, process, production, stamped

Adding colored flashing slip accents to my latest batch of mugs
to celebrate another MUGSHOT MONDAY!

Categories: mugs, process, production, studio

Celebrating another MUGSHOT MONDAY with another batch of mugs. This time with some dramatic light & shadows… “thanks” again to my ongoing studio lighting dilemma!

Categories: mugs, soda-fired, stamped

Another mug. Another Monday!

Categories: mugs, soda-fired, stamped

A little more subtle… not too flashy… just a little soda flashing slip & a few little stamps for this MUGSHOT MONDAY.

Categories: classes, mugs

So my THROWDOWN students had about 90 minutes to extrude their clay and assemble two matching mugs. Seems like a long time… except it took quite awhile for everyone to get through the extruding process as we only have two extruders.  Also keep in mind that the clay was a little bit wetter & squishier than we may have wanted… so many of them were struggling with gooey clay as well.

Claire kept her hexagon tubes intact and added thin handles to her mugs… although we discussed my concern that her handles might be a little too thin to support the weight of her mugs if filled with coffee?!

Jon extruded his tubes and then “fudged” with them to make them more organic, smoothed, concaved and sweeping. Unfortunately… he forgot that “mugs” need handles!!!

Dave extruded slabs and handbuilt these pentagonal mugs with a matching geometric-shaped handle.

Molly added handles and little round feet to her square mugs.

Ryan combined a trio of tubes all sharing one central “container” vessel area. That way you can lift the “mug” with any of the tubes, and drink out of another one! Clever idea… although I’m not too sure it will work?

Donna extruded thin tubes, and then stacked them to be her mug walls!

Tatiana added trees & branches to her mugs… complete with twig-branch handles!

And then we got down to our TOP TWO winners…

Theresa who went very clean & simple, perfectly matching… with beautifully darted and beveled bottoms. Unfortunately, my photos don’t quite show the bottoms as well as I had hoped.

Susan played with her extruded tubes to give them a bit more of an organic feel… complete with leaves, berries and a lady bug!

Oh yeah…
And Taylor‘s entry into the game… as she decided to squish hers up and recycle the clay before I had a chance to get a photo!

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Categories: mugs, soda-fired, stamped

Same mug as seen by the right-handers… and the left-handers!

For the right-handers…

For the left-handers…

Categories: mugs, porcelain, process, production, stamped

Back in the studio making my favorite thing… MORE MUGS!!!
Finally getting around to finishing up the porcelain cylinders & threw & stamped last week. So I started by trimming the stamped cylinders now that they are leatherhard. After trimming, I put them back under plastic so they don’t dry out too much.

Then I pulled handles for all of them with some more porcelain. I like to set them up with the handle-curve already established.

When the handles set-up enough to work with them, and they’re no longer squishy,
I cut out the section of the handle I want to use.
A bit of scoring & slipping for the top attachment… score both sides, slip on one.

A little smoosh.. a little smudge… and a little wiggle to get it to attach well.

After smoothing the top of the handle into the mug, I then do the same to the bottom
attachment of the handle. I like to do the top one first so I can actually “see”
the curves & proportions of the handle as I attach the bottom…
cutting, altering and changing things along the way.

A little blending… a little smoothing…
until it looks like it part of the mug, and not just slapped on the side!

Score… Slip… Attach… Smooth… Repeat…
Score… Slip… Attach… Smooth… Repeat…
Score… Slip… Attach… Smooth… Repeat…

Soon enough the batch of mugs was complete.
All cylinders stamped, trimmed and now well-handled!

Even better from the side… at least I think so…

And for now they’re under wraps for the night…
so that the moisture levels can even-out a bit before I open them up to dry!

 

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Categories: mugs, porcelain, process, production, stamped, stamps

Stamping… leaving an impression…
or two, or three, or more in the porcelain!

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Categories: mugs, porcelain, process, production, stamps