Mugs are a pleasure when you finally get some that feel right, that don't suffer from odd-handle-itis (see prior post about my first run mugs).  And I have a few that I like. I want to make more.  I'd better get rid of them quick because the more I think about them the more I see things I'd like to do differently next time, so I'd better send them away before I decide they are really seriously not worth a damn and thus better kept out of sight. (Actually, I don't think that would happen: these are mugs that I'm not unhappy with, that taught me stuff, and that I don't hate: more on that later).

So, a teapot is a daunting thing for a tyro potter.  But after throwing my lack of self confidence into the skutt bucket and putting my eyes on a YouTube video by that Simon Leach fellow who makes everything look so off-hand and easy (and it isn't, of course), I dove in and stared throwing.  There were going to be three, but I mucked up the first one on the wheel.  The other two pot-bodies came out reasonably okay.


They were fun to build and looked pretty shiny in greenware.  They were fun to glaze and didn't look ugly glazed, either, which is odd.  The lids are the simple kind, nothing fancy at all.  And one of them has a nifty clay bale handle that was hand-built and squared off on the table and laid onto the pot, and then some lugs pushed on to make it look, well, to make it look different.

I poured the glaze inside but tried a spray-job on the outside.  I really don't like spraying.  I can never get the stuff on thick enough.  But it worked out okay, and tea dust is a very forgiving glaze.
But then there is the matter of the handle.


Those lugs for the handle on the one that is to get a reed or bamboo or wood handle just don't quite do what I had expected.  I had not really planned where the front one would go.  I had sketched these out a bit, but when I was putting the spout on, I realized it had to go up on the wall of the pot a bit higher, thus making it impossible to put both lugs on the main body of the pot.  No matter.  That spout is as thick as the business end of a porn star's wanker, so there's nothing wrong, architecturally.  The front one sits higher.  The standard off-the-shelf bamboo and reed handles just look too small.

I'm going to the second hand store to find some ladies purses or handbags that have interesting strap-handles on them.  We'll see what I can put together.
(That handle solution is not my own idea, its Eduardo Lerma's idea. In fact; I steal ideas with impunity  and have none of my own.  If something original happens while I'm throwing it sure isn't me working on the clay, its more like the other way around. And the teapot is a beginner's clone of a Simon Leach sorta pot, by the way.)

I'd better hurry.  We have a show in two weeks.

Did I mention I threw and glazed a couple kick-ass mugs?  Briody is getting these.  That's Elizabeth, the author and anthropologist.  She thinks they'll go with her dinnerware but I don't know how she knows that.  I think she's being kind; she hasn't seen these things yet.  Okay, later, something about falling in love with the shape of a mug (or was it something I smoked?) and something about making strong rims on pots.  But not tonight.

\

Celadon and Cookies

It took a while to get those white slipped on red clay bowls into the fire.  And the results were, em, not what I expected.  Delusions abound.

Faceted, incised, and ordinary bowls

Celadon makes for a nice glaze.  But over a white slip, everything gets muted.  The red clay just greys out.  A real potter would have done some testing.  The fun scraffito that was so full of contrast, the white slip against the red clay, has toned down.

 Derrek said, "Wow.  How Korean."  I had no idea.  But then, people say I don't look Mexican until I open my mouth, then they aren't so sure.

Didn't expect the warp, either.  Expectations can be a trap.  I tend to listen with my eyes, and watch with my ears, and that's not always the best idea.  Perception, like pots, is a rather empty business until you fill it up with some stuff—usually delusion, but sometimes: cookies.

I also find that taking pictures of pots is not easy.  Those pros on Etsy, the really good potters, spend a lot of time taking smart, clear pictures of their pots.  The mobile phone is handy, but it doesn't quite get the job done.

Tall Forms, Small Details

I was standing up at the wheel, and Tim came over and glared at me.

"Hey.  If you were in the Tim D. class, you'd be in deep trouble, now."

"Oh.  Standing at the wheel?" I didn't have to try to sound sheepish.  I really was blushing.

"Yeah.  A couple reasons.  One, that cement weight is spinning; you could fall.  The other thing is that there are better ways to throw big forms."

Now, where the heck did I get the idea that I had to stand to get my arm into a tall cylender?  Around here, no one ever stands up.  Well, Gene might, but not at a kickweel, for certain.

So, I got a tutorial in tall-form throwing.  My hand position was off.  I was in contact with too much clay, I'm throwing a bit too wet, and my rib technique needed a serious update.  Necking in the pot is something I thought I could do, but again, too much hand in contact with the pot when finger tips do the job much better.

I had the cylender up high enough, but walls were uneven.  Tim helped me clean it up, got me to lighten up on my rib and think about what my inside-the-pot hand is really doing, in there.

I'd be happier if the sides didn't have a slight bulge at the bottom, but I can trim that clean, later, if I'm careful.

The next three or four of these bigger jars will be better than this one.  Eventually.  And I won't be standing at the wheel any more, or a certain instructor will have me sweeping floors all week.  There are worse things than sweeping floors, but I'd rather be throwing taller forms.

In Which Paul Bellardo Does Julia Child

Paul Bellardo is eighty something which is certainly, absolutely, the new forty, at least in Paul's case.

Paul comes to work nearly every day at about nine in the morning and stays until one.  Since I've been hanging around the studio, he's been sculpting big pieces that start with big cylinders that are thrown by his assistant (and one heck of a fine potter, too), Gene.

Gene has arms as big as my thighs.  I have biker's legs (but no ass: hence occasional use of suspenders, a family trait) which is to say that Gene has big, strong arms, which are needed for throwing 25 or 30 pounds of clay into big cylinders that rest on top of one another to create a structure for Paul to sculpt upon.

But I digress.  (Gene's arms are a little distracting, sometimes).

Handsome Bellardo teaching in New Orleans Army Airbase, 1945.
Photo used without permission from Paul's website.

Paul used to run a studio and a shop in the West Village in New York.  He taught GIs about pottery during the Second World War, when he served as a teacher, and, it seems, when he cut quite a fine figure in an army uniform.  He still cuts a fine figure, in fact.   Paul is one hell of an artist, throws a mean-ass pot, and completely loves what he does.

Paul, I discovered, also does shtick.

The other day, Paul was glazing pots.  He was at the glaze-table, stirring up some glaze that he'd soon apply to one of his sculpted  heads, the sculptures, the pieces he's been making for some time, like the ones in the gallery window from the big show a few weeks ago.

January 18, Palm Springs Galleria.  

I watched Paul work at the glaze table for a while, and while appreciating his focus, I gave him this opening:

"You remind me of Julia Child," I said.

Paul's eyes were all sparkling (which is the way Bellardo eyes always look, anyhow).

"Yes.  I'm Julia!" he sang out, in a crackling-good imitation of the Bostonian matron.

"I am going to cut off the head of this chicken, here; and then I'm going to stuff sausage up its woo-hoo-hoo!"

And Gene wonder's why I do little dance steps, from time to time, when moving about the studio.  Its the Bellardo-aura.

Better Looking is Not Better

Pots sometimes look better after they are thrown but before they are bisqued, glazed, and fired up white hot to 2,300 degrees F (more or less cone 10).

After glazing, well, I guess if you've lived in Maine or rural Western Kansas in the spring when things are melting and wondered if you are driving a truck or a ball of sludge, then you have some idea what things look like after they are glazed but before they are fired.

Rarely does a piece of future stoneware look good after coming out of a bisque fire.  It just looks dead, no matter how strong the shape.  But no bisque fire before the high fire, and you got no stoneware.  It has to dry out, firm up, and find out if it wants to crack or explode (which can happen).

So shiny.  So seductive.  So delusion-inducing? I had a boyfriend like that, once.

Bisque stuff, and a failed attempt at off-kilter little bowls that I won't do again, I promise.

But all shiny and right off the wheel, you can fall in love.  Later on, you might change your mind.

"Look at us! We're taller than a Chapstick!  Slick and shiny!" said the pots, sitting on their bats, posing for photos.

A siren-song. Don't believe a word.  

Ugly Brushwork, Handy Pot

I was not going to show these to anyone, since the brushwork is cringe-inducing.  But it turns out that the shape and size are perfect for cereal in the morning, or a bowl of rice and tofu and assorted vegetables and whatever meat sneaks in for seasoning, in the evening.

I need to make more of these.  But I need to figure out something a little less awkward for the decoration. I seem to do better with slips, since they mean carving (and you can take your time with that) or doing whatever its called when you drag something across it, comb it or incise it, while its wet, which is fun and less likely to make a frigging mess.  When I think I can really do brush work, I need to think again, and just slap it on and quit thinking about it.

There it is.  Quit thinking about it.  Its that practice-realization thing, maybe.

Glazed and Waiting

I'm getting a little more comfortable with a few things.  Throwing, for example.  Tim D. has been helping with that.

When I made some noise about wanting to work on some basics, he answered with a question:

"How would you teach someone to make a bowl?"

I muttered something, I don't remember what.  Tim said:

"I guess there are two ways.  Let me draw you one of 'em."

He did that.  Then sat me down, had me throw a cylinder, and had me use a stick to open it into a trumpet and then from there, into a bowl.  

He never did get around to showing me the second way.  This way seemed to work well enough.

Here are some faceted bowls, with a little mucking around with a wax-resist brush before the second coat of the tenmoku-like glaze I laid on 'em.  And the rice bowls are celadon on the outside over a slapped-on-with-a-big-calligraphy-brush brown slip.  Inside is an opaque, non-shiny yellow they have under the glaze table that I rather like.  

I have this odd feeling that they looked better before I glazed them.  The faceted bowls, I mean.  (The larger scrafitto bowls, well, we'll see what happens.  They look lumpy, sitting all glazed and waiting.) 

Kiln gods are doing whatever kiln gods do while I wait for the stuff to get into the kiln.