Tonight I started glazing… and I have a LONG road ahead of me.

I need to have everything glazed & wadded by Friday so I can load the soda kiln. I’m starting with inlaying some temoku glaze into the stamped impressions. Once they are “covered” with glaze, I will carefully wipe off the top surface to reveal the glaze-filled stamp.

Tonight I loaded the last bisque kiln before this weekend’s soda kiln. Okay, sure, it may not be the best & well-loaded kiln ever… but at this point, I just need to get ’em fired so I can glaze ’em.

Kiln Layer #1 – large stamped bowls and wall pocket vases.

Kiln Layer #2 – textured tiles.

Kiln Layer #3 – stamped vases, wall pocket vases and the textured slab vases I made last night. Of course, they’re still a little more damp than I would like, so I’m going for a couple hours of pre-heating with my fingers crossed.

More stamping & trimming last night. Trying to finish up some of my last pieces before I need to switch to drying, firing, glazing & firing again!

Bowl #1 –

Bowl #2 –

Bowl #3 –

Bowl #4 –

Those who really pay attention to my blog might remember that there were six large bowls in this latest batch. Where are the other two one may ask?! Well… there’s a very god chance they might show up in a video format some time soon. Allegedly…

Just adding some last-minute slip accents to the latest batch of stamped vases. I’ve painted the top “smooth” area with a colored flashing slip… and then a tiny touch of slip in the center, raised area of each stamp. During the soda firing, the color of the flashing slip will become more apparent.

Tonight I tackled my newest batch of vases. I threw them on Sunday and they’ve been wrapped up since then. Tonight I stamped them for some great surface decoration. Some with “banded” patterns on the shoulder of the vase. Others with a full texture all the way down to the bottom.

Vase #1 

Vase #2

Vase #3

Vase #4

Vase #5

Vase #6

Vase #7

Vase #8

So for now they’re stamped and wrapped.
Tomorrow I’ll do some trimming and adding of colored slip accents.

Tonight I continued working some decorative “details” onto the bowls that I threw for my class Tuesday night. As a quick reminder, we started the class demo with a tutorial on how to make a nice bowl “on purpose” instead of a cylinder gone bad. I then threw fourteen more bowls and then had the students rejoin the demo for some quick altering & decorating tricks. What started out as 15 very basic round bowls quickly gets transformed into 15 unique bowls with just a few alterations.

So you know I sometimes have ‘trouble” deciding when something is done. You may have noticed that I have a slight tendency to continue embellishing well beyond the norm. With that said, I continued decorating tonight in my studio. The blog post prior to this will show you what the bowls looked like before this evening’s festivities!!! While this post shows you the bowls after stamping, as well as the stamp that did the “magic” impressions!

Bowl #1 –

Bowl #2 –

Bowl #3 –

Bowl #4 –

Bowl #5 –

Bowl #6 –

Bowl #7 –

Bowl #9 –

Bowl #10 –

Bowl #10 –

And now they’re “done”… at least for tonight. Under wraps…
hoping to trim them and do a bit of final detailing tomorrow night.

Trimming done.
Handles… not so much.
And it’s already time to go teach class! Giddy-up!

While I’m still trying to “trim” my taxes, I had some real trimming to do
in my studio tonight before teaching class!!!

And boy, do I love my Giffin Grip!!!

Today in the studio I spent couple hours with a pile of gooey clay. My pile of reclaim clay has been drying out on a large plaster bat for a few days. The top layer and edges were getting pretty dry. So I started by shaving them off and wedging them back in with some wetter clay.

At my wedging table I pounded the mess of clay into blocks. Then I took those blocks and shaved off thin slices, layering them into new piles. Mixing the clay a bit more in the process.

But when I got to the “center” of my reclaim pile, it was still a LOT wetter & gooier than the rest. But of course I was impatient… and not ready to stop in the middle of the project. Instead, I cut the clay into thinner slices and stood them up with a fan on them. Hoping the breeze would speed up the process a bit… I’m not sure that it did?! But it felt like the right thing…

While I was slicing & layering, mixing & homogenizing the clay, I sliced into something hard. What?

Oh… so THAT’s where my yellow rib had disappeared to.
Inside my reclaim bucket with lots of clay scraps!!!
Good thing the “slicing into thin layers” trick found it before I tried to wedge it back in.

More pounding. More stacking. More layering. More pounding again. Block after block.

Soon enough, I had pounded up all of my reclaim clay.
Still a little gooey in some places, but layered & blocked up just the same.

I put all of the blocks into thick plastic bags where it will stay for a few weeks. Then I’ll start using the new reclaim clay… doing a “real” wedging as I go. Until then… it’s just free clay!!! And you know how I LOVE FREE CLAY!!!

And now

It seems like I go through this every session…
I’ve got a lot of class demo pots to glaze. And I keep putting it off.
So tonight I pulled them all off my Teacher Shelf and planned on glazing them all.
I had the best intentions… really I did…

I dusted them all off and waxed all the bottoms. I started “planning” on what colors & glazes I was going to use. Then I started chatting with my friend (and brilliant painter/sculptor) Martin and soon enough… voila’… motivation gone!

So once again, much like every session, I packed up my bowls, layered them with newspaper and back they went onto my Teacher’s Shelf. Maybe I’ll try it again tomorrow night?!

I hate glazing.