Work has been constant wich is great but I never seem to have enough room to make all the processes a comfortable one. We all probably need that extra bit of room at times, even after a clean up bits and pieces seem to organise themselves into the gaps in my studio and it's full again.
I worked in a large pottery for a couple of years with the luxury of organised space. A gallery at the front, polished wood floors with air conditioning and constatnt low volume light music in the background, 270Degree glass walls looking into the Australian bush. Directly behind the gallery through a linking doorway was the glazing, kiln and bisque storage area(the boss's domain), directly behind in the next area, again a seperate room linked by a doorway was the moulding room, linked again was the wheel throwing and packaging, storage area. The ability to not have to pack up or squeeze into areas to do a new/next process is sadly missed.
My experiments with a wheel throwing clay body is in the last stages, the first production piece is in the system, a porcelaneous white cone9 body. A modified version made into a casting slip is also at this stage. A drawback with the throwing body is the time element to manufacture it, especiall if the process is going to be in quantity(100Kg), again we have a space problem.
I will put a link here to the urns, there are some pics and a link to a video on part of the process. URNS LINK
Thought I had better add an entry as it's been a while. The studio is cruising along nicely, all major orders have been finished and sent. Half way through a big order on urns to a new client but this is still giving me time to experiment.
I have been creating a color board with the stain powders I have and have a nice range of different shades and some new colors as well.
With the problem we are having with clay supply now, freight being a major component as well as the major supplier closing up and moving to Bendigo I am now making up various clay bodies for wheel throwing. Slip casting body for earthenware to stoneware was done 2 years ago, as well as a translucent porcelain so a wheel throwing body won't take to long to get right. Des Howard from "LUE POTTERY" has given me his old faithfull to start as my base for glaze, shrinkage and absorbtion testing, with any luck it should work first time.
Creating some art pieces is emerging as a "need to", two exhibitions before christmas are a must to be in.
cold and raining, The life of the potter goes on. 2 full weeks spent in the studio thanks to student holidays at TAFE. 135kg of gas up the flue's of 2 kilns and the studio is in a mess. Don't you just luv it, the hollow whistle of burners ever pumping into a near white hot atmosphere, a fire that roars in silence, what are the cones doing, god it,s hot in there
A look at the life and art of Native American craft artist and potter Maria Martinez, of San Ildefonso Pueblo. Few craft artists, Native American or otherwise, can claim worldwide fame and appreciation like Maria Martinez. Through her hard work and generous sharing of her pottery techniques, Maria reintroduced the art of pottery making to her people, providing them with a means of artistic expression and for retaining traditional aspects of the pueblo way of life.
For nearly one hundred years, until her death in 1980, Maria was always eager to greet visitors and share her craft. Maria and her family have been and continue to be ambassadors from San Ildefonso Pueblo sharing the rich culture and heritage with the rest of the world. In this documentary, Maria's grandchildren and great grand children share their memories and appreciation for the work and legacy of this notable New Mexican.
Getting plenty of work done at the moment because of the TAFE holidays, I have all but caught up with my orders, 3 more basins to glaze fire and im there.
I have decided to do some tests on wheel throwing clay. Tests that are made from raw materials I have in my studio. The initial paper work has been done and I will be mixing the materials today, i have a possible 3 clay bodies that will be cone9 compatable.
Cone6 glazes are half way there, I am down to 2 glazes both giving different results with the same oxides/stains so there is more work going to have to happen here. The clay body is working fine, porosity tests from earthenware(1100) to stoneware are all below 3.84%
Well it,s hectic as usuall. Just finished a cone9 reduction gas firing in my studio. Havn't done a reduction firing for a while but all has come out perfect and the client has taken posession of the load.
8 pots packed and ready to send to the New England Regional Arts Museum in Armidale(NSW)NERAM. Porcelain and stoneware art pieces.
Some low life got into my web server and stole a heap of bandwidith, just lucky I caught it in time.
I have been accepted as a moderator at All Experts for ceramics Allexperts
The next module at UNI for my degree is "Contempory Aboriginal Art" and I am lookin forward to it.
Two more pics for updates on the majolica tests and the tile tests.
The platter(360mm) is all majolica base glazes on Keans 37 earthenware clay fired to 1120DegC, the traditional being white due to the use of zircon or tin. With these colors here(including the zircon) I added "SKSBLYTHE" glaze stain, there is also a blue. So I now have 5 majolica base glazes to do design and decoration on with 20 different majolica onglaze/inglaze colors.
The tile is a completed test of screen printing to the tile surface, straight on top of the unfired glaze, the process was a success using a screen printing medium I mixed up, the ball clay component being a major part of ease of application and viscosity of the ink.
We fired the wood kiln on Tuesday at TAFE, our 4th salt firng in this new "Burry-Box" salt-glaze kiln. Two pics of head fireman Nigel(not all will agree with this title, Rob!), a student who put in a 100% effort on the day, including breaky.
A short video of the fireing can be seen on my YouTube page. Kiln Fire
Majolica is a success, I will upload a picture as soon as I can. I am also going to write a small paper on the process with glaze recepie etc. and will make it avalable for download as a PDF. It isn't anything flash however someone may find a use for it.
I have put 2 videos up on You Tube with regards to scales used for weighing ingredents in the potters studio and the mixing of glaze recepie's giving a clear cone 9 glaze as the example. there is a new category called Sam'd Video's with this blog, videos will be posted there but for some reason theuy also show up in the default main category
Everything seems to be coming together at once, majolica test's are finished and the first piece that will be for sale will be in the kiln today. I developed 3 base glazes to go with the good old standard white majolica and a set of the overglaze colours used on these bases. An easy project and one most potters who make thier own glazes would be able to do.
Because of winter the basin's are taking weeks to dry ought enough to bisque fire, even if they look dry they arn't, impatients resulted in blown to pieces bottom at 236degC, I was beside the kiln when it went off.
Wall tiles for a bathroom have dominated work for the last few days. A client has asked for the possibility of hand made tiles to be supplied for an house/interior designer. Looking through the web and making phone calls for current suppliers has proven useless, there arn,t any. Google was no help either was the yellow pages, I phoned major tile retailers in 3 states and two major pottery suppliers with no results for Australian pottery hand made tiles. The only ones found were those making thier individual feature tiles wich were up to 6 20cm by 20cm tiles with a pictorial or abstract art scene and the one of feature tile, both very expensive.
So the process has begun to see if a viable process can be done to supply at a square meter rate bathroom/kitchen wall tiles 20cm by 20cm. Clay is easy, it has to be highly vitrified so it's stoneware or porcelain, glazes I have what has been asked for, the firing process is standard but we have a problem, anything flat like a tile doesn't like to remain exactly flat at a high fire. contacting the client has revealed that perfection in flatness is not a necessity, its an indication that the tiles havn't come from a sausage like production factory from Asia.
Not having an indication of compairing a wholesale price with already established retailer/makers means it's going to have to be bench marked against current imports. Italian, UK tiles etc. give the impression of being hand crafted but those avaliable are not, and arn't much dearer than those from Asia. The Asian tiles upper market comes in at $29 a square meter, UK tiles sold through an outlet in Byron Bay retail at $40. Minimum and probably impossible to be profitable would be $5 a tile for me which is 25 tiles to the square meter equating to $125 at wholesale, unless it can be done at $8 a tile it,s not viable to set up for it, the process begins.
Well i have had the total week-end off, closed up shop and did some cruising about. I went out to Glenreagh to visit a mate who is a full time potter, drank coffee in the sun and talked pot's. Stopped in on the way back and visited a pottery at Coramba, got some local info on the pottery scene from a successful retailer of crystaline glaze pots.
Back into it yesterday(Queens Birthday) and the kiln's just hit 210DegC as I write this. I am still enjoying making domestic and exhibition pieces, yesterday i just weighed out clay, mainly between 2 and 4 kilo and just went for it, bowls, beer mugs vases etc. it was great just to sit down and throw.
Basins are coming along fine, making at least 1 every two days, sometimes one a day just to build up some bisqued stock. I have (at a request) tested and fired 10 hard colours for them, red, orange, yellow,black etc, seems the retro thing in Melbourne is alive and well.
I am in front with the urns so it's good to have a beak from them, I have bisqued a hundred or so which means for while it's glaze, fire and pack when required.
