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

Got a little “Clayhenge” popping up on my studio table… little nuggets of clay pressed & compressed into carrot-shapes getting ready to turn them into mug handles!

Categories: color, process, production

Feeling a little ROUGE inspired… and painting some RED accents on these pots tonight for my next soda firing!!!

Categories: platters, process, production, stamped, stamps

Stamping up another platter… one handmade stamp pressed in over & over again… one by one by one… So much more fun that a plain, smooth plate!

Categories: glaze, mugs, process, production, stamped

Now a quick “liner glaze” on the insides of the mugs. These still need a bit of cleaning up… as there are a few drips around the rims. Plus, I want a nice, clean even line of glaze right around the rim. None of this willy-nilly randomness for me!!!

Categories: glaze, process, production, stamped

Started glazing some mugs today… adding some tenmoku glaze into the stamped impressions. These mugs will be in my next soda kiln firing, so they don’t need a lot of glaze. The soda kiln atmosphere will take care of “glazing” the exterior!

Categories: mugs, process, production, stamped, studio

Score, slip, attach, repeat… repeat.. repeat… Another batch of mugs assembled… now they just need some colored flashing slip accents & details! Just hoping to get them all done before I go down to teach class tonight!!

Happy Mugshot Monday!!!

Categories: mugs, process, production

Handles pulled the old-fashioned way… curled over & standing up so that they can stiffen up a bit before I start attaching them to my stamped & trimmed mug cylinders!

Categories: process, production, studio

Just spending a little “quality time” with my diamond grinding disc from DiamondCore Tools !!! Cleaning off a few drippy soda-fired. bottoms. Notice the mug bottom before & after… plus a few more to come!

Just put the grinding bat on the wheel, wet the disc, wet the pot, press… spin… grind… CLEAN!!! Thank you DiamondCore Tools for making this ugly task so much easier & smoother!!!

Categories: kiln firing, process, production

After a couple hours of loading the kiln last night, it’s always great to get to the end & brick up the door. One by one, brick by brick. Hiding the pots… knowing that we won’t see them again until after the soda-firing process works its “magic”… fingers crossed.

Categories: glaze, process, production

It was pretty late last night when I finally finished glazing in my studio… lots of pots, lots of wadding! So I packed both sides of my studio cart and put some masking tape “seat belts” on it so none of the pots would jump off as I rolled everything downstairs on the rickety freight elevator!