oldlady

thank you, Lee! i never knew my tactile skill had a name. i remember that my sister and i used to play a game at bedtime when we could not sleep in the heat. taking turns, she would first write a letter on my back and i would say the word after she finished. i used to play on the floor with a bunch of marbles and close my eyes and guess how far they would roll. lots of other things taught me where i was in relation to the furniture, the fence, the stairway, etc. i can walk through the house without lights and not hit anything. hitting the trash can with paper wads and other silly games told me lots more about the science of movement in space. i am amazed at the number of people who cannot move correctly when i say "it is behind you". does that fit the definition of "haptic"?

my advice for that firing is to try as much variety as you can fit into your kiln, your schedule and your store of recipes, may have an interesting firing with many results. edit just realized i forgot to include this . if you are a worrier, try to do your test firing on one shelf of your kiln, you are probably not going to have any problems that affect anything else on a different shelf. that is only during the first test as i suggest in the first sentence above. later, you will have learned the difference between dry greenware and a piece not totally dry. experiment with application, dipping times, brushing, thicker brushing, whatever way you normally work.

try using two words, photogenic and phototecnique . some of those folks need a director to say, "get your big, fat hand out of the shot so people can see the work!!" or use 2 cameras and edit!

i am one of the folks happy to be once firing. i have not had any problems that could not be attributed to my own errors. very few over many years, maybe once a year one piece . i am absolutely NOT adjusting any firing. i have an L&L programmable kiln that i only fire to the standard cone 6 slow glaze. i do not know more than the manufacturer so i stick to simple. it works. i have one wonderful white clay, highwater little loafers that works on the wheel and as my favorite, slab serving pieces. my own errors have been twice i did not fully dry a piece that had an overlap. the design was new and i was just too impatient. so one thing blew up. it did hit a few other pieces but everything else survived. i never wedge, clay straight out of the bag is much more compacted than anything these old hands could wedge. to make a slab, i smash the slice of clay on the floor stretching it and compressing it at the same time. no bubbles and i never make anything as thick as the 1/4 inch beginners are told is necessary. why? i have refired pieces for changing a color or adding a second color detail and to adjust some pieces that did not get a deep enough sprayed layer. in any load there might be newly made greenware, totally dry. a piece that is glazed and has gone to cone 6 with insufficient color, or a glazed piece whose test on a smaller piece made it seem good color that i recovered in something else. have used many different glazes without problems. maybe being self taught has freed my head of the restrictions some people think are necessary and i have never considered myself an ARTIST so i don't look for DIFFERENT. try it, you might like it.

jeff. thank you for clarifying my clumsy attempt to say the same thing. some days are better than others and today was not a good one.

envy you moving near bailey, pye. i have a lot of bats made of Duron, a double sided masonite. i had a 4x8 sheet made into bats back in the 1990s. still going strong. i do not know the relationship of the business called masonite and the brand name Duron. it seems to have changed. there are still duron bats for sale but i do not like the holes. one is round and the other is a slot. i gave a bunch to mea, good elephant pottery several years ago, maybe she will chime in on durability.

since you have little experience in this, my suggestion is to look for a paint it yourself pottery store. they do all kinds of shapes and perhaps you could get some of the popular ones and ask for lessons from the manager in casting. i did a chess set years ago that became a popular sale item. just one of the experiments on the way to finding what kind of work i wanted to do. been thinking about this. you mention casting as something for the "more advanced students" though you also say this is your first year. how did you determine who is an advanced student? filling a studio with lots of slip handling equipment before you know if there is any serious interest in casting, sounds just a little questionable on a budget. do your plans include introducing the students to several ways of working? throwing, hand building, and casting or are you committed to only casting for the entire year? the difference in your expenses to go fully into casting as opposed to only featuring some time with casting as well as other methods. casual casting can be done with what you assemble as a "kit". several molds of various complexity and several bottles of slip ready to pour into them is not an unreasonable expense and does not require special equipment. i have never been a teacher but i would hesitate to provide teenagers with a slip "gun" that would tempt them to almost any kind of behavior that would flood the room with wet slip. pouring slip from a gallon bottle might be messy but the alternative is something to think about. what things do you think are so old that they need replacement? there are very experienced folks here who have been where you are now. could you provide a few photos of the classroom and the particular items you want to replace? i would bet that there will also be suggestions on moving stuff around to make it more useful. it is hard to be new and you will find that this group is wishing you success in everything you do, ask questions because there are experts in almost every subject and willing to help. read the entries in this subject and learn a lot about what can happen.

i have used rio to color the clay i used for a birdbath. it was years ago and i just tossed a bunch of rio into some soft clay and wedged it in. made places for the birds to stand in a very large slab that i hung over a trash can on cloth. came out great, the birds loved it while it lived. i went to texas and heard it would freeze that night at home so i asked my daughter to bring it in. she didn't.

pye, i am very sorry to have read your comment on that "british guy" you think is a hoot. Michael Casson was a very famous and televised Welsh potter who brought clay work to the masses. very like the painter who did "happy, little clouds" in this country. that is all i have to say.

the pot will leak, period.

great news that you will be close to bailey. maybe you can then change your location below your avatar to a real place. to learn to throw a cylinder by pulling toward the center, think you are making a flower pot upside down. always complete every pull without changing the pressure. do not lift your hand until you reach the very top of the clay and then hold a finger down on top for at least a few revolutions. your hands are made of steel, rigid, not floppy. unless you are not opening at the very center, pulling walls toward the center should become easier with practice. remember, you are learning a skill, not producing work. if you smack down and stretch the wet clay onto a piece of 5/8 drywall, you might dry it out enough to use the same day.

when looking for a vehicle, take your largest piece of display with you to make sure it will work inside whatever you buy. i always used clay boxes for pots. they are from standard clay and 6 of them fit in the foot space behind my seat and the passenger seat. i know some folks use those big rubber tubs but they are much too heavy and take up a lot of room. i do not use standard clay, the nearby shared studio buys a lot and i get the empty boxes. i loved my 02 ford escape because i removed the back seats and fitted a carpet remnant all the way across the back. i got a prius hatchback last summer and found it worked also. though i do miss the places on the side wall that i used to bungee cord the wire shelf supports so they stood upright. the front passenger foot space holds the large round basket of quick sellers. it can hold 100 pieces and a bath towel keeps them very quiet while i drive to the show.

just a question. to me, the ashtray looks like glass. is it something you have actually handled or only seen in he photo?

i checked the map and found that the building has changed names. i last saw it before covid so it may have been like so many other business during that time. it is now called Creative Art Studios At 400. the address is 426 23rd st south. the Morean address is 420 22nd st south. i do not see a website with info but i am a total computer idiot so do your own search from here to get the details.

the kiln was located in a shared studio called Brick Street Studio in st petersburg. it is in the warehouse arts district and there are other pottery centers there. i cannot find a phone number for brick street so i tried the Morean Center for clay. formerly known as the Train Station. it is only 2 blocks from brick street. there is a third one on first street south at 20th called the Clay Center. i left a message at the Morean but nobody has called back. same thing at the Clay center. i will keep trying but you might do a search and get better results. the area is full of potters. the train station has a history of fantastic workshops using many of their fuel burning kilns. it is an ever-growing area for artists of all kinds. the city is supportive.

that photo should be preserved as the best example of black coring photos. any way to insert it into one of the resources mentioned for future searchers?

thank you, babs. will check it out. i do not buy online but have a neighbor who might find it.

yes, i know where it was but ownership of the building may have changed. i will make a couple of calls tomorrow and get you the best number to call.

sorry carissman, this is a hard lesson. the first thing you should read when looking at a post is the DATE the post was written.

sorry, i do know of a shallow, 18 inches high or so, (i did not measure it) round electric kiln that was made by the manufacturer to a sculptor's design. he sold it later to a group who made ceramic crosses and had a very large customer base. the sorry part is that it is just about as far from seattle as you can get, st petersburg florida. you are near skutt, ask about a custom design. just be sure you will need it for a long time and have a place to put it.

if you heat the pot just before you glaze it, it probably will work. if you brush on glaze be careful, a brush may just stick to the spot and need washing off. it does not have to be super hot, just uncomfortable to hold without a potholder, funny, i think that would be you. heating with hot tap water can help, just dry the spot by dabbing a towel on the unglazed spot.

congrats, dick. where do you buy the equipment you are allowed to buy? i ask because jim bailey gives discounts on shipping and is very happy to help a large purchase. call him and ask before the figures are set in stone. or bricks.

i have such a glaze. it originated with Charles Counts. he worked with standard clay 112. i started with that clay but changed about 3 times before finding little loafers by highwater. i do not know what kind of clay is available in amsterdam but if it as rough as the clay used in the bowls, i would try it only on the exterior. matte glazes and rough clay make very poor eating surfaces. the noise of a utensil scraping in a bowl is very irritating. it can be seen on the avatar and several blue slipped bowls in my albums. the pieces do not seem to have a white glaze over the slip but they do. i have a small mug in standard 112 somewhere in my photo collection, i will look for it.

do you have adequate liability insurance for those buyers who get cut on imperfect, crappy, pots you sell? imagine someone with a mug full of boiling coffee when the handle falls off.