oldlady

shawnhar, spoon rests are a good thing to sell, they are not expensive and people using dishwashers need more than one. but, i do remember two men who were looking at a small tray about 6x10 and they planned to use it as a single spoon rest to hold 3 spoons at a time. kaching!

there are many, many pots in my house that i have collected since the 1970s. the first was from a small store in georgetown, DC. the price of $15 was a lot. it was made by a man who lived in the mountains of west virginia. a round lidded jar totally unglazed, brown clay rubbed with black and rio red slips. i still admire it, signed van nostrand. a local magazine featured him in a story and i visited his studio and home later. john glick lived a few miles from my sister. i have several of his things, bought during the visits i made to his plum tree pottery on ten mile road. there are some made by tom coleman, one that could have come from the first book written about him and a later one in the warm, toasty colors of the desert. i attended two workshops tom gave, more than two would have made me a groupie. the second was with tom and elaine. fabulous! a tiny town sits on the mantle and fills a bookcase. they are Windy Meadows hometown buildings, jan signed all of them. she lived across the river, only a few miles. there are lots more, some made by potters you may have heard of and some you have not. i watched seth cardew make the one in the corner during a workshop in maryland. i bought the cup i used in a visit to the michael cardew studio that seth inherited. many of michael's pots were still there. john leach did workshops for our guild for several years. i visited his studio with a friend. she bought a huge pot that she shipped home to los angeles and i got a few of the very small ones. i have a david leach and one not made by him but from his studio. i was fortunate to be in bovey tracey for a huge retrospective of his work and visited him in his studio. everywhere i look i see something beautiful made by a potter, some of which i use often were made by members of this group, it is a pleasure to be surrounded by handmade pieces made with love. they make me smile.

using a matte glaze can give you very subtle results as these pots show. i use a beautiful matte glaze on the exteriors of most of my bowls. if you are interested in making functional ware, please try using a spoon in or on a matte glazed bowl before you invest too heavily in the idea of it being ok as a liner glaze. you will find that the sound of your spoon scraping the bowl will remind you of chalk screeching on a blackboard. oh, wait. there haven't been blackboards in school in ages, you may not be familiar with that sound.

hello, kevin, i have been single firing for a number of years. i use the clay and glazes that anyone else would. i have not found any problems after i started spraying glaze instead of any other method. i do not even spray the "accepted" way. i can glaze a kiln load of my work in an afternoon. it is an L&L kiln about 23x 27 (or so). i always use the slow glaze that is built into the electronics. i figure the kiln manufacturer knows more than i do about how to use the kiln to my advantage. most of what i make is serving ware, flat, not much higher than an inch or two and not difficult to make. botanicals pressed into slabs and shaped using wood and foam rubber or pantyhose covered small bowls. cracker trays and butterdishes. they sell quickly and are so easy to make that i really do not do the things most throwers do. i can throw but at 82 my fingers do not have the same suppleness they did. an afternoon of throwing might result in waking up to throbbing fingers that night. the fun in what i make is the choice of botanicals, placement on the shape i use, lots of freeform stuff that dries inside old platters, bowls etc. you might look at my photo albums . click on my avatar and choose "my profile" and look for photos from 2016 holiday sale in november. each of us has an album space available to show our work or an idea to share. if you want to try single firing the absolute RULE is FIRE ONLY TOTALLY DRY PIECES, NOTHING THICK!

rae, here is one very impatient person.

yes, kids are the best. a mother had two daughters with her. all were dressed in sunday best clothes. the girls each had $10 to spend. one of them wasn't sure about the amount of money $10 actually was. she wanted a little bird that i had priced at $7 and when i gave her the change from her $10 i said she should ask her mother to explain the change back. i gave her 4 ones and 4 quarters and a wink at her mother to stay quiet and let the sisters buy the ice cream next door for $5. they had been talking about it when they came into my booth.

mkg, glad you like the results. may i suggest something that may not have occurred to you? i think the lines you drew were done with a sharp instrument like a needle tool. the raggedness of the lines indicate a sharpness to the pattern that could cut skin if someone rubbed it. the shape invites rubbing so someone may be cut on the edges. to avoid that, use a stylus with a ball end that is just the right size or look at Diamond Tools for their special cutting tools for carving and scraffito.

testing is very important so recording what you do is critical. i had a friend who kept each glaze to one page of a 3 ring notebook. she noted the base glaze by number on both the test and the page it was recorded on. she wrote the recipe and if she tested various mason stains to get other colors, each color got it's own page. i do something similar but often wish i had here more descriptive notes. some of mine say, never again! but not why. the reason for the never again is so if you find what looks like a nice color on someone else's clay, you will know it looks awful on yours because the recipe is right there to compare.

lots of questions about this particular kiln. the word automatic has a totally different meaning today. back then it meant "this kiln has an automatic shut off device called a kiln sitter, like a baby sitter. you do not have to watch the heat color any more to know when to turn it off, it turns off by itself automatically." just follow any kiln manual, they are basically the same.

in case anyone wants to try bab's suggestion about carpet, be sure to use something from the thin but strong commercial stuff. you do not even need wax if you do foot rings on the wet carpet, just slide the whole piece across the carpet, the excess glaze will wash off instantly. keep it pretty clean, especially if the glaze is a dark one.

gosh, i just read all these posts and mine again. realized that what i said did not include this line "i do find flaws, maybe one in two or three firings" those are the ones i was talking about. the original post sounded like they happen every day. not so.

contact similar businesses in other cities to ask what you need to know. other cities so you do not irritate the competition where you live. those businesses had the same questions you do so they should be helpful. first ask if you can make an appointment to speak to them by phone at their convenience. plan your questions in advance and have a space to write an answer so you can refer to the replies later.

i have sold things with very minimum flaws, reducing the price if it is one of several standard shapes and sizes. there is always a label next to the flaw with an arrow pointing out a less than half inch crack that does not go through or a small blister that did not heal if it is not in a critical area. if it is a $22 butter dish and has anything i can see, it gets a flaw notice and a price of $19. they always go. anything worse meets mr hammer or goes into my kitchen.

congrats on getting a kiln,angela. you will need a stand for the kiln. is there a sheet of thin metal on the bottom? there may not be. ask neil what size stand you need and where to get something that fits.

to catch the spinning glaze Pres and i get when using a drill to mix glaze, i use a paper bag with my smaller size test bottles. usually a one quart plastic jar that comes with hot soup from the chinese restaurant. i approached the owner and he allowed me to buy a bunch of them for 50 cents each. they have tight lids and last for many years. the very thin ones are not much good. there is no restaurant supply store for 30 miles or i would buy a sleeve of them with lids. very inexpensive.

amazing!

we differ in the fact that jack made his pots very wet and i do not at all.

callie, they are woven, not leather.

we have some kiln experts here but they would like to see photos of the kiln and thermocouples and anything else that might be printed on the label. i have never heard of that brand name and wonder if anyone else has. the more info you give, the better the answer.

our guild holiday show was last weekend, the saturday and sunday after thanksgiving. we set our stuff up early on saturday instead of friday as in the past. started at 7, all of a sudden there were strangers all over the place. i asked another potter where they came from and she said it is 10:15. doors opened to the public at 10. i left through a crowd. got down the road a little way and realized my wallet was under the table so i returned. crowd at the front door, i went to the side and a customer let me in after a dozen of them pointed to the front door. the crowd was thick and i had to squeeze through . my purse was 10 feet away and i must have answered 10 questions before i reached it. our customers mostly know what they see and what they want. if not, they know that if they ask they will get a full discussion if they like. and yet, there was some young girl who looked at my display while her mother asked a question. the daughter's eyes opened at some point and she said "you made all this by yourself?" i want to think she just realized she could do stuff on her own and her mother would let her.

you might look for a totally different job, starting today. and report the business to whatever health organization controls such places. you do not want the next person to be affected by this ridiculously wrong ignorance. the employers need to be stopped.

so glad it will work! my problem with that small space for lifting is that when i empty the kiln, i need the gloves that came with my kiln. i think they are kevlar? anyway, they make my fingers so fat that only the tips can reach under the shelf and lift it to the edge of the kiln. rest a second or so, grab the shelf properly and pivot it into the stack of shelves. yes, lee, i really would like advancers or some other brand of the same thing. at 82 i am not sure i will be working for many years to come and their cost would not be an investment, just a price. kswan, glad to know you cut the shelves you have easily. one of these days when the 6 months of ignored housework is done, i will find the grinder and whatever disc cuts shelves. power tools are wonderfully fast and i have only drilled into the palm of my hand once, years ago and cannot even find the scar now.

just to be clear, if someone is going to print from newspaper PAPER, use a clean, never touched pad of paper not some printed stories already inked onto the paper by the newspaper presses. that paper is called newsprint BUT it has not been inked.

thank you peter! sorry to hear the pics are gone. i still have the originals but i guess that over time, things just get trashed. found a youtube of kim and just sat here, hungry and cold, to watch 40 minutes in which she showed how she builds her striking pieces. she mentioned several other videos in the series so i am going to search for them. it is finally time for breakfast and turning up the thermostat thank you for finding more info, ii watched the other pieces you listed, still hungry, going to eat now. thank you again, 11:40 am, breakfast or lunch?