GEP
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Posts posted by GEP
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I mentioned a couple of months ago that I was working on this blog post. This is my response to those artists who express confusion or bother when they see my nearly (or completely) empty booth at the end of a show. I am happy to explain exactly what I’m doing. I also point out common mistakes I see other artists making. Buckle in, this is a long post. I tried to be as thorough and honest as possible. This went up yesterday and I’m getting tons of traffic and lots of good reaction to it.
https://www.goodelephant.com/blog/ill-tell-you-exactly-how-i-did-it
- Chilly, neilestrick, LeeU and 8 others
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I fully endorse this method. Space is a limited resource so don’t waste it. Pack as tightly as you can! When you are transporting pots in your own car, you can get away with it.
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There are questions that require a long answer. And then there are answers that are long because the answerer did not really take the time to understand the question. and is just dumping information, relevant or not. Then there are long answers that don’t actually contain much information, just a lot of words. I appreciate the first kind but not the second or third.
My favorite answers are the ones that are both useful and concise.
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You can probably resell it for list price. Buy a new one when you are settled in your new location.
- Babs, Callie Beller Diesel, Mark C. and 1 other
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My answer is no, after learning the hard way early on! And I've learned that it's best to not try to explain why. Because if someone doesn't take no the first time, they probably aren't going to understand the explanations.
However, on very rare occasions, I have said yes to people who are long time customers who not only have bought a lot of my work, but I have spent enough time talking to them to know they understand what I'm doing. These requests are always made within parameters that make sense, because like I said these people understand what I'm doing. For me it makes sense to differentiate a select handful of customers into a VIP category, and to do my best to make them happy.
Here's an example. Some long time customers of mine got married, and asked me to adapt my elephant figurines into a "bride + groom" version for their cake topper. I was happy to do this!
- Callie Beller Diesel, Min, shawnhar and 4 others
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Could you post a photo of the item you wish to slipcast? The answer depends on whether the design has distinctive and original features that would be recognizable as somebody else’s work. For example, is it a simple straight sided cylinder, and you think it’s perfect due to its proportions? Then this would be fine to replicate. Or, does the piece have a bas relief sculpture of an animal? Then this is not something you can replicate and sell. Simply making small modifications to it would not put you in the clear. That’s considered a “derivation” which is just as illegal as a copy. The lack of a manufacturer’s mark also doesn’t matter. You can take inspiration from other person’s work, but only if you incorporate the idea into a substantially new idea. Slipcasting is already a technique meant for “copying” so a copyright violation is far more likely, compared to handbuilding or wheelthrowing where it becomes really difficult to successfully copy.
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There are two things that intrigue me. I get excited when I see a pot that looks highly functional, and I can picture myself using it all the time. And I get excited when I see someone doing something truly original. It doesn't need to be strange or avant garde to be original. I just like seeing evidence of someone pursuing their own vision, and not just trying to emulate known styles. Like others I'm having a hard time deciding if form or surface are more important. Functionality and originality require both elements. .
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26 minutes ago, shawnhar said:
I made the handle by slapping the clay down like you would if you were going to make a slab without a roller, but it results in a pretty random set of ridges and valleys.
I am willing to bet that the customer is attached to the large and “strappy” shape, which is a very comfortable shape for a handle, rather than the specific ridges and valleys. Shape is something you can control, so I would focus on reproducing that aspect. “Strappy” meaning wide and flat.
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My replacement policy depends on a case by case basis. If a pot failed due to a defect, the customer gets a free replacement. This has happened a handful of times, when boiling water caused a pot to crack along a weak spot. This is how I learned that mugs and teapots should not be trimmed to be super thin. If a pot is damaged due to an accident, no replacement or discount is offered. That’s part of the natural life of a pot, sometimes they get dropped or banged on something. Not the customer’s “fault” but still their “responsibility.”
In one case, I split the difference with a customer. She put a tray into the oven right under a broiler, and it cracked. This is how I learned to tell customers to keep my pots on a middle rack in the oven. Before then I didn’t know that customers need to be advised of this, so not totally her fault. She was happy with the half-price replacement, and even bought another nice pot while she was at it.
Attempting to recreate this handle presents many possible problems, for both the potter and the customer. I agree with @Rae Reich that a better solution is to give the customer a “store credit,” then let them pick from your existing stock. Who knows, they might find a new mug that they like even better.
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I agree with @Russ that bark is essential for developing ash. However, your wood source will depend on what you can get near you, and cheaply. You need a lot of wood, so “cheap and available” are more important than “specific.”
Wood that is processed to be clean is good for developing heat, but not great at providing ash. I fired several times at a wood kiln that used old pallets as the heat source (very processed wood) so we supplemented it with bark mulch from the hardware store, to create more ash.
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Great question, Pres. I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot lately.
I do not share my exact glaze recipes, because I feel that keeping them to myself is necessary when running a business. If you have some aspect of your work that makes you stand out as individual and original, that’s a very valuable asset. However I will freely tell people that my main glaze is a modified version of a semi-matte base recipe from MC6G, and that they can figure out their own modification. I also share all of my glazing techniques (though not for free).
I agree with Denise that it would be impossible for anyone to copy another person’s pottery, but that doesn’t stop people from trying.
In recent years I’ve been leaving most of my shows with very few pots, and one time with no pots, and I can (sometimes) see other artists looking at my near empty booth with some confusion about how I managed to do it. Most of the answer to that is shared freely on my blog, for those who care to read it. But it is scattered around, and some of the most important bits are in videos that are not free. So I am planning to write an in-depth blog post soon, where I consolidate all of it into one place. This is the kind of stuff that I don’t mind sharing.
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On 5/5/2022 at 10:33 PM, neilestrick said:
although they tend to apologize.
People apologize for using a credit card? I’m a little jealous. Here on the east coast it is totally taken for granted. Maybe a few times per year, a customer will ask if I prefer a check, because they know about credit card fees. I’ve done two shows this year so far, and like I said in a different thread, cash usage is coming back, up from 0 last fall. At one show it was 6.6%, and the other show was 1.5%. I’ve just accepted that I have to pay to use Square.
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When using L&L’s Easy-Fire programs, the final temperature will vary depending on how long the firing takes. If for example you have a loose-ish kiln load and the firing goes faster than expected, the controller will add more temperature to the end in order to compensate for the shorter time. In my experience these compensations are not all that accurate, and will result in overfirings and underfirings. In other words, there’s nothing wrong with your kiln, it’s doing what it was programmed to do, just not doing it very well. The way to get more accurate firings is to follow Neil’s suggestion #3 above.
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I have a pugger only, and I can control the moisture level of the clay by combining new bagged clay (which is often too hard for my liking) with reclaimed slop that I can dry to whatever softness I like. It’s a process that requires some daily attention (keeping an eye on my slop bucket) but once you get into a routine it’s easy to do.
I’m with you about not wasting materials, even before we started having supply shortages in the past year. I reclaim about 600# of clay per year. Throwing away that much “free” clay seems unthinkable. And adding it to a landfill feels wrong. I am the type of person who puts my trash can on the curb every 4 or 5 weeks, because it’s really important to me to generate as little trash as possible.
I have a Bluebird but it is definitely not designed for easy cleaning. I only use one clay body, so not an issue for me. But the company is great and the few times I have needed spare parts, it wasn’t a problem. This might not appeal to you, but would you consider limiting yourself to one main claybody? If you want to try others here and there, you can hand wedge on occasion. There is a lot of artistic growth that can happen when you make commitments like this, rather than always switching around with new materials and directions. Being able to work with clay is a huge reward all by itself. All of the different clay colors an temperatures are relatively unimportant. In my mind, the trade off between wedging and frequently cleaning a pugmill doesn’t seem like a gain.
- Pyewackette and kswan
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1 hour ago, smith said:
Noob here. Is this with oxidation firing? If so, where do I buy manganese?
Yes, I am firing in oxidation. Check first with your local supplier. Mine did not carry granular manganese, but I found several places that sell it online. I ended up buying it from Brackers.
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I think I’ve figured out what I’m going to do. I used 60-80 mesh granulated manganese, in the percentages shown below. Interesting that the speckles are sometimes larger depending on the glaze, because the glaze can cause them to spread out a bit. The 0.2% test looks the closest to my previous claybody. But there have been times in the past when I wished they were a bit more sparse. 0.1% is too sparse though, so I think the right answer for me is 0.15%.
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I’m having issues with my wrists and elbows. I will choose to retire before I cause any permanent injury. I think I can be happy doing other things that aren’t as physically demanding. Same thing goes with materials like clay. If these supply issues start to look permanent, I think I’d rather pivot to something else. There’s only so much hassle I’m willing to deal with. I want to spend my older years relaxing!
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44 minutes ago, JohnnyK said:
Have you thought of splattering the black spots onto your last glaze layer with a stiff toothbrush? With some practice you could come pretty close to your example and you wouldn't have to add anything to your clay...
Yup, I’m considering this possibility too. I’m taking a couple of months off after the holidays, and will spend this time testing several options. Or, if my current clay supplier recovers from its current issues, I may end up sticking with the current clay. Just need to have a plan in case they don’t.
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Thanks everybody! I went looking for more information about my current clay, and there it was right in the description “granular manganese.” I also found some good tips about adding it to clay on DigitalFire. Time to buy some and do some tests.
Sometimes the speckles in my current clay are unreasonably huge. I’ve even put some pots in the seconds pile because of weirdly large speckle splotches. So it might be nice improvement to have some control over the particle size now.
- Rae Reich, blackthorn, Roberta12 and 1 other
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I am trying to decide whether to switch claybodies, to one from a manufacturer that isn’t having supply issues right now. The new one is the right color, and otherwise performs the same as the current one. The only thing missing are the speckles. Is it possible to add speckles to a non-speckled claybody? I actually use two different clays, and pug them together in a pugmill, so adding another ingredient to the pugging would not be hard. I’m looking for guidance on materials to try, and how much. I want it to look like the following photo:
My last out of state Art show
in Business, Marketing, and Accounting
Posted · Edited by GEP
Online selling is definitely not “less work” than doing shows. That’s a misconception. Maybe it’s less physical heavy lifting, but that gets cancelled out by the amount of packing and shipping. Also, setting up a shop update can take more hours than setting up a booth at a fair. Sure, you do it by sitting at a desk, rather than lifting heavy boxes, but it’s incredibly tedious. Online selling is easier in terms of having much lower barriers for entry, which is why it seems more attractive to someone who is starting out.
And then there’s the issue with social media platforms changing their algorithms when they feel like it. Take Instagram for example, they recently decided that they want us to post more videos and fewer photos. I guess they’re trying to be TikTok now? In recent weeks, I’ve seen a few potters whom I follow on Instagram complaining that their engagement has dropped steeply due to the changing algorithms. For potters who were actually selling well online, suddenly a big chunk of their audience was pulled out from under them, after spending a whole lot of time and energy building that audience. This is a problem that an email list and in-person shows do not present.
Who has time to make a video everyday?? Posting an interesting photo everyday is already a lot of work. Making videos all the time means you won’t have enough time to make pots. I’m not changing how I use social media, just doing the same as before. It doesn’t matter if my engagement drops, because that’s not where my audience is.