Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: platters, stamped, stamps, surface decoration, textures

Stamping another large platter for another Texture Tuesday! With just two handmade stamps doing all of the hard work. One-by-one pressed in while the clay is leatherhard… creating a groovy textured pattern for the glaze to play with later!

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

Getting back to basics… throwing cylinders…
making textured impressions one-by-one, stamp-by-stamp!
You know how I love making mugs… always a good place to start up again!

Mug 1

Mug 2

Mug 3

Mug 4

Mug 5

Mug 6

Mug 7

Mug 8

Mug 9

Mug 10

Mug 11

Mug 12

And for now they’re back under wraps drying a bit to leatherhard… at which point I’ll be able to trim the bottoms and then add handles! Back to making mugs again!

Categories: platters, stamped, stamps, surface decoration, textures

Stamping a large platter… adding a textured border around the edge using just two stamps! Each one pressed in one-at-a-time! Making single impressions that add-up to a beautiful textured surface. Perfect for another Texture Tuesday!

Categories: process, production, stamped, stamps, vases

Feels great to be getting back into “production mode”…
starting off with some smaller vases with some smaller stamps!
Gotta start somewhere, right???

Categories: stamps

After a bit of an extended holiday-hiatus, it felt great to slowly get back into the studio… watering plants… checking on projects still under wraps… spritzing… spraying… and making a new batch of handmade clay stamps for some of this year’s new textures & patterns!

Kickin’ off the New Year with some New Stamps!!!

Categories: classes, stamps

Both of my classes have been busy making batches of stamps to use on future pots… they still need to be bisqued before the can use them. I wonder where they got this fantastic idea???

Categories: platters, stamped, stamps, textures

Just did a bit of stamping on another plate before heading downstairs to teach class again tonight! One single stamp used over & over again to get the repetitive pattern all the way around the rim.

Categories: artists, handbuilding, stamps, textures

Just received a new carved rolling pin from Elaine Diamond at Vermont Pottery Works @epdiamond! Ready to give it a test run!!! It worked great… with nice crisp lines & patterns. But I kinda like the overlapping & interaction of patterns… so I embellished a bit more with two other rollers. More is more, right?!

For more about these carved rolling pins, click here to check out Elaine’s website!

Categories: platters, process, production, stamped, stamps, textures

Working in the studio tonight after Summer Camp. Trying to get caught-up on a bunch of pieces that have been sitting around under plastic for awhile. Finally got around to stamping this platter that was a class demo piece last week. It”s always amazing to me to see how just one handmade stamp can make such a difference!

Categories: stamps

As part of the commission project, the request was to make the stamped patterns be geometric shapes chosen by the eventual recipients of the mugs! They’re going to go to the Groom’s bridal party & friends… so they each got to choose their own “favorite” geometric shape. To make that happen, I needed to make some new stamps! Circle. Triangle. Line. Sphere. Hexagon. Circle & Line. Tetrahedron. Shamrock. Toroid… wait, what’s that???