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

Celebrating another TEXTURE TUESDAY! Adding some accents of colored flashing slip onto each stamp. This slip color will change to shades of orange when soda-fired!!!

Categories: glaze, mugs, stamped

HAPPY MUGSHOT MONDAY! And I’m pretty excited this Monday to share these two mugs. Part of my never-ending quest to find a few good glaze recipes that work well at both cone six oxidation & cone ten reduction. Looks like this one works… a bright lime green at cone 6, and a pretty grass green at cone 10. I would have a lot fewer buckets in my studio if I could get them all to do double-duty like this!!!

Any glaze recipe recommendations?

Categories: glaze, platters, stamped

A little fun with glaze… before & after! Loving how the green glaze pools & breaks really well on the hand-stamped texture & concentric circles!

Categories: bowls, glaze, pottery, stamped

Details. Stamps. Handles. Bowls… just a little visual “teaser” of the new basket bowls that have now all been glazed… and getting ready for a POP-UP SALE on my Fire When Ready Pottery Facebook pagecoming soon!!!

Limited colors & quantities… sorry, no dibs
Gotta wait for the sale!

Click here to go to my Facebook page!

Categories: classes, glaze, mugs, stamped

Last night in my Beginning & Advanced Beginning Wheelthrowing class, we did our last class “exchange-trading-stealing” game … this time with a theme of TWO mugs… “matching” if you’ve taken my class before! These bright green mugs… that were “kinda” matching… were my entries into the game… and I believe they happily went home with Kate & Kathleen!

Categories: classes, flowers, pottery, stamped

Tonight is the final class of our Monday Intermediate Wheelthrowing class. As with most of my classes, I like to do a little “trading-exchanging-stealing” game with my students. To celebrate Spring, the category for tonight is a wheelthrown flower pot with a plant growing inside. This is my entry in the game… blooming right on schedule!

FYI: We were supposed to end last week which would have been perfect for St. Patrick’s Day… but we got postponed a week do to the snowstorms that shut-down Lillstreet for two days! So we missed the holiday, but now they get flowers! HA!!!

Categories: mugs, soda-fired, stamped

Celebrating another MUGSHOT MONDAY with a little fresh air out on my front porch! It’s a little cloudy, but the warmer weather is much appreciated. Thank You Mother Nature!

Categories: pottery, production, soda-fired, stamped, textures

Fresh from the soda kiln… my first batch of crackled slip pots!!! I wasn’t totally sure how these were going to turn out as they’re a brand new technique for me! If you recall, it’s colored slip mixed with sodium silicate which crackles when you throw & bulge it out from the inside. They’re a little rustic & crunchy… but I guess that’s the point, right?

I will say they’re growing on me…

Categories: bowls, food, stamped

You gotta love when you make it into the studio… and your studio “neighbor” has deep-dish apple pancake leftovers to share!!! Thanks Lesley… such a yummy surprise treat!

Categories: classes, ornaments, pottery, process, production, stamped

As part of last week’s class demo of “throwing-off-the-hump” we tackled a few Christmas ornaments. It’s never too soon, right?!