Money box magic.

I had a board full of money boxes to decorate today along with a workshop full of other things, two racks of mugs, a board of bowls, a large bowl, half a dozen plates, and more. I didn't get a half of it done but I did get enough to fill the kiln done, however then it started to rain so my speed drying couldn't happen. Hmmm. . . bisque needs to go on tomorrow.

There has been a lady who has stopped at my stand at Potfest for the last five years and always says "I bought a bird money box of yours when you were an apprentice. I love it, have you got any with you?" I always kick myself and then say no. So this year I hope she'll be there because I have finally remade some. Why have I not been doing these for so long, they're great fun.

Minimal decoration on the outside of the Ron inspired dish. Hmm, maybe I'll only glaze where there is slip too. Oh the options!

Tomorrow I'll be able to unpack a glaze firing and repack the kiln with a last load of bisque before Potfest. Fingers crossed for that. My Potfest competition piece will hopefully be in this bisque firing tomorrow too, not that I ever leave that till just a couple of weeks before the event to make it. It was a great idea when I started it but I soon discovered how stupid an idea it really was. Hopefully a photo to come. It tried my patience somewhat and it still might break in the kiln. I've lots of decorating of orders to be done over the weekend but they may wait till sunday. I'm hoping that the weekend will be a little drier than this evening is. I need to fix my tent too before Potfest. Best start another list I think.

Today I have this in my head all day! Shame about the no music on You Tube thing these days, maybe I could sing along for you instead.

Daisies with toes.

Well tomorrow is the deadline for voting in the Craft&Design awards so if you haven't already done so now is your last chance!

I've been trying to finish up things for Potfest which is coming up next week, Friday 7th, Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th August at Skirsgill Mart just off junction 40 of the M6 at Penrith. Easily accessible and it will be well sign posted. Come along and see lots of china in a bull shop. Open 10am till 5pm each day, over 100 potters with their work, trade stands and classes you can take. Hours of fun for anyone with an interest in clay.

A biggish bowl but the crazy daisies won't leave me alone now, they are everywhere. Looking at this picture I think them there daisies look like they have toes!

A Ron inspired not slipped all over squared dish.

I like the these tall jugs but I'm finding them less easy to decorate. Probably because I'm not used to the shape and it has a very different feel to the usual fat bellied pots that I make. Hollis was asking about what input I had into the decoration on the chalices that I had pictures up of the other day. These two were made using the same style and decoration as the ones I had made five years ago. I had put a sample together for them back then. It's hard to remember but I think they wanted something fairly plain but with a cross. I wanted to be able to make and decorate them fast enough to be able to make the quantity required in not a massive amount of time. Don't know if that helps you at all Hollis.

Glaze out bisque in.

The kiln is working hard at the moment for the last couple of weeks and the next 10 days or so it's in - on - up - cool- out - in - on - up - cool - out - in - on - up - cool - etc etc up until Potfest which I am looking forward to other than the fact that at this show I have gotten used to always having a helper but this year Paul is racing that same weekend so I am back to being on my own again.

The Christening bowl is out from it's glaze firing and I am really pleased with it. I hope the recipient likes it as much as I do.

The chalices and communion plate were also finished today and they have been collected and will be on their way to Uganda on thursday. International pots!

This little stack of boxes full of pots is awaiting a journey down south to the Dartington Cider Press Centre. Hopefully they will be there by the weekend. I managed to bang my nose on the splash tray of my wheel today, hurt quite a lot.

Weekend visitor.

Another lovely visitor this weekend, this time just the one though. I had a visit from Jess who has been learning to make pots with Doug down in Devon. It was a short visit but I enjoyed having you around Jess, you are welcome to come again anytime.

Watch out Doug I think she might want to slip trail your workshop. I've left my table top covered in all these drawings, seems a shame to wipe them off.

Visitors!

Last night we had a visit from the lovely Linda Bloomfield and her husband Henry and their three children who are all on their way north for their holidays. They all stayed in our little house and came down to visit the pottery this morning. It is always great to show off the fabulous area that we live in and always great to show another potter my workshop. Thanks for the sweet jug Linda and the slipware shard from the garden in London. Always good to see you.

Tall skinny jugs this week, only two out of the three survived to get necks but that's ok. More next time.

And big fat jugs, I've caught Doug's jug addiction I think.

A very shallow one off random pie dish that I rather like.

Inside another pie dish, a bit of feathering.

Bowls for Potfest, that's coming up quickly. Potfest in the Park is this weekend, Potfest in the Pens is a couple of weeks away. I'm hopefully visiting the Park on Sunday all being well and also this weekend hopefully having another visitor but I'll tell you who later.

It's been a great week this week, I feel like I have got lots done and feel much less pressured than I have over the last few weeks. It's been good this week to have time to make some things that aren't on order alongside some things that are on order. Felt like a good balance this week.

The craft&design Selected Awards

"In recognition of the superb work of talented designer makers in Britain and Ireland, we are proud to announce our exciting new suite of Awards for 2009. This prestigious project is for everyone who enjoys crafts; makers are invited to enter and everyone is invited to vote!
Our craft&design Selected Awards are based around designer makers whose work has been accepted to be featured on our craft&design Selected website, our online gallery at http://www.craftmaker.co.uk/

There will be Awards with a total value of £17,500 presented for 6 categories of craft disciplines. Makers are automatically entered by craft&design into the most appropriate category:
Wood & Metal Crafts
Jewellery, Gold & Silversmiths
Pottery & Ceramics
Textiles & Needlecrafts
Glass Crafts
Specialist Media "

If you want to vote for your favourite make then click this link. You have to supply your email address and a password but Craftsman promise you won't be sent any junk mail and you don't have to sign up for any newsletters or anything like that.

Now of course there are many many fabulous makers listed on the site, however if you wished to find me I am listed under the ceramics category.

Pics of rocks and pots.

I like rocks. The coast round our way is like a scene straight from my geology text book. Mr Morrison would like it.

Wiggly see creatures I like too.

I like this bowl very very much, this is the outside of the one I pictured on the last post.

This is a sweetie I think, just a small bowl, about 6" diameter. Crazy daisies ahoy.

Full shelves again! Kiln full so no moving anything in there until I've moved things in the workshop first to make room for the things coming out of the kiln. That's part of tomorrows job. Well one of about a million trillion things on the list.

Friday Friday

A day of slipping pots. I've gotten a lot of things done today, feels good, made a big dent on the list. I even sieved my big bucket of glaze that I'd left soaking, well I sieved it through the 80 mesh, will need to put it through a smaller mesh tomorrow before I can glaze the pots that will hopefully come out of the bisque tomorrow. The bowl is pretty big for me, it's about 40cm diameter at the moment.

I have been decorating a couple of chalices today and I have a communion plate to do tomorrow too. These have been ordered by a couple who are going away to Uganda on a church exchange. Years ago when I was right at the beginning of making pots on my own I was commissioned by these same people to make I think there were 80 chalices for a festival. Although I completely undercharged for them at the time it was just what I needed, something to prove to myself that I could handle a slightly bigger than one mug type of project and a good sale even so. I still see the chalices when I am out and about, at Remembrance parade last year in Kells church there was one, and I saw another on the window of a church in Dumfries just the other week. It always feels good to be part of something bigger than just yourself.

Jugs have been slipped this afternoon.

And Paul has been playing with the turnings in the wheel head again - bless him.

Morning pot pic.

Pots on the worktop this morning while I was making breakfast. I've been meaning to put up a picture of the mug on the left from Matt for ages but it's always in the washing up bowl, tis my mug of choice at the moment.

Chaos.

Today has been silly. This last week or so as I'm getting more and more panicked the place gets more and more chaotic. I start to jig between jobs and not quite get one thing finished before worrying that I should be doing something else so things don't get tidied away properly or sorted out and I end up like this. I had to half pack the kiln this morning just because I'd run out of boards and space on my racks but before I could do that I had to unpack the glaze firing that has been sat there since sunday ready to unpack but I just haven't had the time. My desk was full of jugs needing handles so I had to move them before I could put the new pots anywhere. Usually I try to be really organised and the space I have I tend to have to be. Sometimes though it all runs away with me and this is one of those times.

I had pots outside just because I was out of space and it was sunny so they were drying nicely then it belted it down so I had to bring them in but then stood there like a nelly with a heavy board of pots and nowhere to put them.

Anyhoo a few new pots out of the kiln, many of them for orders some from Spring Fling and some for the shop orders I'm working on.

Splat, and a forceful one at that.

I got really annoyed with myself this afternoon as I started losing handles on dishes and jugs, my own stupid fault too much to do, too little time so not waiting properly for that critical time and trying to "wing it!" I know I know I shouldn't have started decorating them but you know how it is when you're pushed. So when I saw the handle pulling away on this one I picked it up and hurled it. Very satisfying, then calmly threw the rest in the bin, cleaned the floor and went for a ride. I'll remake them tomorrow.

This morning though I was throwing, so much on the to do list it's ridiculous. It's good I know it's good, keeps me busy, keeps Paul in cheese, but at the moment I really want to have a play and I just don't have time. Anyway I need one bowl this size, they're three pound weight and it's just a pleasant size to throw, but liked it so much, the clay was right, the shapes just felt good and I could have made them all morning but I had to stop at three and get on with the other things. It felt damn good though.

This afternoon saw me and my pal Phil, above, driving through glorious sunshine and then torrential rain to visit our friend Linda who we are having a joint show with in August. August, did I just type that? Oh well it's not like another deadline will make any difference. We had a good chat and a catch up, Linda is about to embark on a new and exciting venture, I'm very jealous!

Linda's house is full of my pots! She was buying them even before she met me and still buys them now even though she knows what I'm really like. I think this jug was the first thing she bought but the house is full of them, I wouldn't like to hazard a guess at how many there are but more than there are of mine in my house for sure. We swapped a set of dinner plates for a quilt a few years back. I love the swapping game, blooming marvelous.

On another note, thanks for all the fabulous responses yesterday, all very heartfelt maybe we need to do some more educating of what we do. The bit that I failed to mention though is that the comment came from someone within the arts sector as a practitioner and working within an arts centre. Makes you wonder doesn't it.

To make a mug

Recently someone came into the workshop and picked up a mug, said it was nice but then told me that £20 was too much to charge for a mug. I think I might have mentioned it on here at the time. Anyway today I was throwing mugs and I got to thinking about why they are £20 and whether it was justified so here is what I thought about making a humble mug.

Where do you start? With beginning to learn to throw? Or with the ordering of clay? Clay that you've tried and tested previously and know will do what you want it to do? Well lets assume the clay is already delivered and a ton of it is stacked away in the barn awaiting transformation. So you open the bag and find that it isn't the right consistency so either wedge it with some reclaim to soften it or leave it soaking in wet rags for a few days until it is at suitable mug throwing hardness. OK so knead it, weigh it, knock it into balls, to put it simply and because I haven't got all night then you centre it, pull it up, belly it out, finish the rim, wire it off and remove it from the wheel. Leave it to dry to leather hard and then put it back on the wheel to turn a foot ring which I know isn't essential but I happen to like one on this particular mug shape. Pull the handles, a few extra just in case, let them toughen for a couple of hours, put the mug on the banding wheel, score it, slurry it and join the handle checking the size and shape and straightness and join and general look at the same time.

Oh and all this while keeping an eye on it making sure at every stage that it isn't too wet or too dry you know just having a quick feel each time you pass the shelves.

Let the body and the handle firm up together, probably overnight but in the summer they may need wrapping in plastic overnight to let the two parts even out. When the whole is leather hard, touch, check, touch, check again, stir a bucket of slip - previously weighed, soaked and sieved twice, dip the mug in the slip, shake off the excess, brush a swish of slip on the bottom. Mug heads back to the banding wheel to be decorated using a pre mixed and filled slip trailer with a design that may be completely individual or one developed for a range, trail the design into the wet slip, lift the mug, put it back on the shelf. Keep checking just in case the handle decides to part company with the body if you got the timing just a little out. When it's back to leather hard sgraffito signature into the slip brushed on the base and then leave it to dry- anything from a couple of days to a couple of weeks depending on the weather.

Once dry check the mug for any sneaky burrs or other such problem that may need dealing with. place in the kiln with many other pots working the kiln pack jigsaw puzzle as you go. All this and at this point it's nothing more than dry mud, add water and that's what you'll have left.

So kiln packed, slow rise in temperature letting the chemically combined water be driven off safely at around 600 degrees then up to 950 which takes around 15 hours in my kiln. Slow cool over a couple of days back to room temperature.

They survived? Good next stage, dust it, wax the foot ring, stir the glaze oh yes you got it already mixed and soaked and sieved at least twice, dip the mug and set to dry just the minute or so this time, wipe the foot ring, touch up where you held it and back into the kiln again. This pack though being more careful not to let the pots be close enough to kiss, and not too dense a pack and not having pots too near the elements. Up we go again to 1055 with an hours soak at the top and slowly slowly down again, a couple of days cooling and unpack the mug.

Finally you get to see if it has made it, is the glaze fully melted? Is it shiny? Smooth? Still on the pot? Not boiled? No debris dropped and stuck in it?

If it got through all that and I'm happy with it and it will work, it will hold liquid, you can hold it comfortably, drink from it and it looks good - marvelous!

And someone has the cheek to tell me my mugs are too expensive!

Today's mission. . .

To have fewer pots under plastic at the end of the day that at the beginning, as simple as that.

Some in the sun to dry, and some clay to dry in preparation for glaze mixing tomorrow.

Some slipped and tasty looking.

Mission accomplished! Still more to do but it's better than it was.

Sunny day bright flowers

Phil and Louise and the boys brought me these flowers the other day when they visited. They've been beautiful today.

It's been a very busy day. Trying to get lots of things to a point where they will keep over the weekend though I think I will probably go into work on sunday at some point. Threw a whole lot of oval dishes, turned and slipped the outsides of some of those big bowls from the other day. Unpacked a bisque, glazed it all and repacked and got the kiln on. I only just had enough glaze which is frustrating so though I'd get some soaking straight away but didn't have enough dry clay to weigh out for it. Grrrr, even more frustrating. So clay is drying out now so that I can hopefully mix it early next week.

Hazel's lilies, beautiful aren't they. She has a way with plants that I do not have at all. The first thing being that she remembers to water them while I often forget, if I could do that I think my fingers would seem distinctly more green.

Here come the birdies.

This year has been interesting in the fact that I think the pots that I am making at the moment for orders are the first biggish batch that I have made with the Birdie design on them since before Christmas. I have been making a conscious effort to try to make new shapes and decorate them with new designs, and I have obviously been fulfilling this criteria to some extent if the first sentence of this post is true. I still enjoy my little Birdie and he still gets a lot of comments and has many admirers and I enjoy having him around, he's like an old friend.
Just thought I'd share that with you. Off to eat birthday cake with Paul now.

Poor baby bird

This daft beggar flew into my closed window this morning at the workshop. That was the third thump of the morning, not sure what they are all playing at. I think he may have been trying to copy the swallows who fly in the kitchen door through the one that opens into mine and out of my front door. He failed miserably. So miserably that he sat there on the bench for an hour and even let me stroke him and no I didn't nibble his ears cos you can't see then and I refrained from nibbling his feet too.

Been having a bowl throwing time in the workshop. I'm trying to get a couple of shop orders together in the next couple of weeks and some commissions finished and get some making done for Potfest in the Pens which is coming up fast swiftly followed by an exhibition in Kirkcudbright with my good friends Linda Woodfield and Phil McMenemy.

Off for a massage tomorrow as I have a sore back and don't recall hurting it. Then back to do some decorating of bowls and home in time to bake a cake for Paul because he gets home tomorrow and it's his birthday tomorrow too.

Jugs and Jury

Last week I finally finished decorating this jug, I've really enjoyed it, I have another two to do to make up a set of three. There is a lot of text on the back and I had to put my name on there too, that's under the handle.

I was called to perform jury service this week, we got dismissed after a couple of hours following a guilty plea but with the message that we would probably be recalled before the end of the year. It was a bit of a scary experience really.

The weather here today has been all over the place, it was raining hard this morning, then glorious all day and then as I rode home I watched the clouds gather over the hills and rush in towards me at some speed and I only just got home in time. Paul was cycling home from the opposite direction and got drenched!

We went out for a lovely meal on saturday evening, I can highly recommend The Selkirk Arms in Kirkcudbright if you happen to be in that area. Ginger cake oh my!