THE ANACHRONISTIC JUG

When I first started making pots my sole intent was to “master” throwing the teabowl form. Once I allowed reason to prevail, I realized, best to learn to throw, then learn to throw a variety of forms and finally “master” the teabowl itself. During the early days I would sit and watch Bill Klock throw his masterful pitchers. A medium lump of clay would spring into an elegant, full and potent jug in what seemed an effortless instant. Try as I may, I could not figure out how to throw or form a pitcher. Not only was it beyond my fledgling throwing skills, but it dawned on me, I had not context or cultural relevance for the form itself.

Growing up, I remember only one pitcher in the house. I must have been 7 or 8 when the magical box appeared at our doorstep and out came the plastic, mass produced Kool-Aid pitcher and set of cups. For a number of Kool-Aid proof of purchase labels and $1.98, together with significant nagging, pleading and begging on my part, my parents mailed away for the first pitcher I can ever remember.

Over the years as first collector and then potter, I built up a better understanding of the jug and pitcher forms. Studying the historical and modern archetypes, I began to understand it’s use, form, volume, weight and the necessary handle. Armed with this new and continuing frame of reference, over the years I would make jugs and pitchers and measure them to those I knew as good examples always with a constant eye to how Bill made his pitchers.


As I make pots for a living, I found that the jug and pitcher is not that often ordered and is most likely not a staple of most households now days. Possibly a percent or two of my output is a jug or pitcher though I make them for any show or large sale I would be in. In terra cotta and stoneware these forms can take on a variety of forms and surfaces and this has allowed me to develop a personal approach to the jug and pitcher as both functional vessel and visual object. In time, I am hoping to match those jugs I saw Bill throw way back when and hope that someone will come along and use them as they were intended.

AND THE RESULTS ARE IN.......................

I opened the kiln this morning and it took a while to cool down and unload. The Minspar 200 results are the most promising. For my clear glaze a nearly 1 to 1 substitution worked out well. For the clear over other glaze it also worked out quite well, but when you put other glazes over the new Minspar 200 clear glaze, the glazes run quite badly. Not sure how bad it will be on a larger pot, that will remain to be seen. For now, the early test results seem to indicate the Minspar 200 is a good replacement with just a bit more Minspar 200 in the glaze than the old F-4. The rest of the kiln came out fine with the new “bloesem bowls” coming out rather well.

Further testing will have to wait until I make the trek to the pottery supply house. I just went to pick up clay and some other materials, so it will likely be 6 to 8 weeks before I do full scale trials on larger pots. I will keep you updated.

TEMPUS FUGIT

I spent yesterday prepping a small group of pots for glazing and then glazing them. Glaze, wax and more glaze as well as getting my group of new soda spar tests all lined up and on pods and rings. My glazes are a bit testy as the base glaze must be very dry prior to applying the second glaze. I think that is mostly due to the high clay content of the glaze. It has it’s issues, but in the end, I feel it is worth while. I have set up the tests for every conceivable use of the clear glaze, including uses I do not currently use and probably would not. I need to figure out if the Minspar 200 and the NC-4 will be a suitable substitute for the old F-4.

In the midst of trying to get everything done, phone calls, emails to answer, the wife comes home for lunch and I need to get a pot photographed to show a customer a time zone away. Though it has given the first glaze time to dry, things get rushed and time flies. It always seems to be the way, busy days get busier and down days are dreadfully slow.

I loaded the kiln last night and fired it off at a slow pace today. I am trying to control the cooling so it goes down as slow as I can make it for the best results. I hate this time, now the kiln has been fired and I can watch the intense fire color subside and I still have to wait until mid-morning tomorrow to see the test results as well as the pots and a small commission. Everyone says “patience is a virtue”, I would sooner have a ton of F-4!

MATERIAL WOES

When I first started ceramics in the late 80’s I was constantly regaled with stories of the incredible properties of various “extinct” materials. Kingman spar, colemenite, barnard, lepidolite and others. I just couldn’t relate until the demise of Albany Slip. I had early on found a variety of uses for Albany slip in my glaze palette and suddenly being without it was inconceivable. It is always really serious when it touches so close to home.

Over the years since I started, I have seen Albany slip and spodumene disappear, g-200 then there was the gerstley borate scare that sent many potters for a loop. Now the new entrant into the gone the way of the dinosaurs material is F-4 soda feldspar. Like most materials, I had become pretty dependant on it’s use in various glazes, but most specifically in my clear glaze.
My clear glaze is a very exacting and temperamental glaze and is the only glaze I currently need to measure to the exact gram. Over time, I have tried tweaking it for various reasons and ended up either clouding up the glaze, creating vast fields of micro-bubbles or just plain old crawling.

I am currently in the process of testing Minspar 200 and NC-4 as a replacement for the F-4. I am doing a series of line blends to see what happens with more and less of the new feldspars as options. Just starting this, so I will keep you informed.

ADDICTED TO GREEN

As a teen I had an unnatural fetish for all things bright yellow, right down to my size 13 Puma sneakers. So in my early 20’s, it came as quite a surprise as I became enthralled with the myriad of greens of medieval and modern Shigaraki and Iga. As I looked about, other enticing greens appeared; Oribe, Persian blue-greens, Fujina-yaki, medieval lead glazed pots and seiji/seihakuji glazes. I had to capitulate, I love green. I might as well face it, I’m addicted to green (thank you Robert Palmer).

In my late 20’s, I started making pottery and my mind ran to those greens I see when I close my eyes. Though I was neither faithful nor monogamous to those greens, but they played a large part in my developing glaze palette. Celadons, Oribe, Rob’s Green, Hamada Oribe, Seacrest glazes and many more. As I moved away from wood firing and into the “conventional” realm, I began to work on a variety of green glazes. Copper blues-greens, Oribe glazes, medieval green and than came the discovery of the extinct lepidolite. The green from lepidolite is like no other in this country. It’s surface, flow and iridescence is marvelous and the depth of it’s translucent nature is visually engaging and neither easily duplicated or forgotten.

A large part of my high-fire work now is dominated by greens together with clear and temmoku. It was a natural progression and the variety of uses is infinite. The translucent quality allows for slip and underglaze work along with my “rozome” style wax resist (ronuki) both under and over the glaze. I am constantly looking for new greens and uses for the ones I have. I am sure there is much more to do.

A DIALOGUE

“Make efforts not so much to sound your own voice as to incline your ear to the beauty in the voices of others.” Kitaoji Rosanjin

CLAY INTO GLAZE

As I throw, I tend to throw as close to the actual form I am after as is possible. What this has done, it allows me to minimize the amount of clay I trim off my pots, excepting inside the foot ring. I happen to love a pronounced and deep foot ring, so some scrap clay is inevitable.

After 20 years of throwing and making pottery in general, the process of reclaiming scrap clay has become both tiresome and troubling for my wrists. Enter a flash of inspired lunacy born of an over fired kiln. Back when I started learning pottery, I got to see first hand what happens when a terra cotta bisque goes up to cone 6 or so. The one time pots became a molten flood of attractive frozen liquid. This lead me to think about processing my scrap into glaze. I have always used my terra cotta and porcelain scrap to make slip, but this seemed like a simple way to lessen the amount of wedging I would have to do and a natural progression of things.

After a series of intensive tests and line blends, I ended up crafting a durable and attractive base glaze out of my terra cotta scrap and a small amount of frit. This base glaze has become my amber, temmoku, medieval green, haiyu ash and Ao glazes. I have further fine tuned the glaze and now calcine about 20% of the volume at 1600 degrees to stop crawling problems, which has all but gone away.

As for my porcelain scrap, I now use it to make my neriage base, based on a technique I learned from Judith Salomon at the Cleveland Institute of Art. In her hand building, she would pour out slip on plaster to make slabs. I used the same principle, I dried the scrap, slaked it down and poured it into old fruit juice bottles (plastic) and then added colorants to make colored clays to add to white porcelain and suddenly, easy neriage. I would pour the colored porcelain slip onto plaster, let firm up and then cut it into strips which I will later used wedged into the porcelain. Far less wedging involved.

This may seem like an insignificant achievement, but for me the 50% or more reduction of wedging has slowed the damage to my wrists and elbows as well as coming up with some interesting neriage, some great fitting slips and a handful of durable, practical and attractive glazes that compliment my forms. A win-win in my pottery book.

TUNED INTO THE 80’s

It occurs to me as I enter a new throwing cycle, how I am constantly playing the same music while throwing. I guess I am hopelessly stuck in the 80’s for my throwing tunes. I listen to the B-52s (their music right up to the present day), Devo, Adam Ant, Men Without Hats & Ivan and a host of compilation discs I have made. Occasionally I will put on other tunes to throw with, but the 80’s always seem to prevail. For thrown/altered work, making molded forms and hand building, I use an array of new age and ethnic music to set a different, less frenetic tone. For this, I listen to October Project,Dead Can Dance, Enigma, Natacha Atlas, Jarre, Vangelis and a few others. I also love Ennio Morricone and Masaru Sato for their soundtrack works and Vivaldi, Debussey and Copeland. If I am in the studio, the music is on setting a tempo.

The other day, it was beautiful day in the Mohawk Valley. I had the garage door wide open and was throwing yunomi and test cups off the hump (Japanese style) while listening to the B-52s anthology, Nudes On The Moon. Does it get any better than this (and yes, that is rhetorical)?

I am curious how do you orchestrate their days?

MINE (no) MOMIJI

I love chawan, the Japanese teabowls of Japan. Aside from being a potter for 20 years, I have been collecting since I was a teen. Chawan are a passion for me and among chawan, there is a true king, the MINE (no) MOMIJI (Summit maple Leaves). The Mine (no) Momiji chawan is a prize procession of the Goto Art Museum and is a product of an anonymous potter of the Momoyama Era. It is a nezumi-shino chawan that measures 13.6 cm across and is truly a macrocosm of pottery attributes. The posture of the bowl bespeak of a noble sense of the Japanese sensibility. The sparse decoration evokes an emotional response despite it’s abstract quality. The lift of the bowl begs out to pick it up and the roving lip brings the viewer, round and round until you slip into the interior and vastness of the bowl. Despite these attributes, the bowl is a piece of functional art, created to serve as the centerpiece of the chanoyu, Japanese tea ceremony. It has been manipulated, but unconsciously so as to seem to have spung out of a naive and thoughtless process, but it is so much more. It’s potency is palpable and it is the epitome of the complexity of simplicity.


The pottery of the Momoyama days has influenced the great potters of the 20th century like Kato Tokuro, Arakawa Toyozo and many more. One potter whose works spring from the blending of the Momoyama and ”the now”, is Suzuki Goro. This chawan bares a resemblance to the posture and casualness of the Mine (no) Momiji, but is thoroughly modern in it’s seemingly simple design and surface. Great pieces have the superfluousness of modernity and ego stripped away to reveal the honesty of the work. The movement of this chawan, like the Mine (no) Momiji ,seems eternal. (Used with the permission of a private collector)

(VISUAL) OPPORTUNITIES

Because I fire at several different temperature ranges, Cones 04, 03, 01, 4 and 6, and have tested within these ranges, I am able to constantly add new glazes to my palette. This of course goes hand in hand with a potter’s alchemy and constant testing.

I am particularly fond of various Persian raqqa style glazes, water blues, and variations of these glazes. I have been able to make transparent water blue glazes based on an alkaline base as well as opaque, vellum style glazes based on lithium base. These glazes are great over slip and underglazes and a variety of effects can be developed with some modifications and testing.



I am also able to play around with variations of neriage under a rich alkaline clear glaze or under my Ao glaze. I have simplified the surfaces and the neriage is now reminiscent of suminagashi ink traces.

Playing with the neriage, Persian blues, bronze glazes, ash glazes, etc. opens up a variety of surfaces for a multiplicity of forms. It is the constant playing with glazes and surfaces that keep making pots interesting and enjoyable. It allows me to go to bed thinking about pots and getting up the next day, ready to try something else.

A Potter's Alchemy

When I first started making pots, I got some very sage advice from Bill Klock (at Plattsburgh State) and later from Dick Schneider at Cleveland State University, don’t be limited by technology. For me, this translated into understanding glazes and continuous testing of glazes and new materials. As the tech at Cleveland State, I had unlimited access to 2 updraft gas kilns and a bunch of electric kilns. The ranges varied from Cone 06, 01, 6 and 9/10 and at every opportunity, I had glaze pods or test bowls in each and every kiln. I was able to develop a palette of clay bodies, slips, underglazes and glazes for most temperature ranges and in oxidation and reduction.

Testing is the key to my moving forward. Having a wide range to draw from, I have been able to adapt to whatever clay body or temperature range that was available. This has been exceptionally important as we have moved all over and I have had seven studios and new suppliers each time. Adapting to what is at hand has been a mantra. In trying to adapt successfully to new clays and new suppliers, I have left 95% of my old recipes behind and have taken what little I have learned about formulas and materials and have come up with simple, few component recipes, many of which don’t need to be weighed to the gram.

Since my last move, I have concentrated on very simple glazes, preferring Oribe influenced glazes, temmoku and ash glazes. These are all 1/2/3 glazes and are simple to make. I work in a common cycle where I throw for a week, tool my pots, bisque and then glaze fire. I try to save at least a couple of hours a cycle to make up glaze tests to go in the glaze kiln when I fire it. The constant testing has resulted in my new “Karatsu” style glaze which uses unwashed soft wood ash without any colorants. It makes for an amber toned glaze when thin and a droozy greenish ash glaze when used thick. Both like to cool slowly. I am constantly testing new ash batches and trying to come up with new glazes that have a rich Japanese or Chinese appearance as well as those of medieval pottery.

LEPIDOLITE

I am always on the look out for lepidolite (ceramic grade powdered). Anyone that has any that they do not want, no matter how small the amount, I am interested in it. It is a key component to my favorite formula. I will trade for it, chemicals or pots or buy it outright. Let me know. What may just hanging around your studio as something taking up space, is a vital and sought after material for me.

Welcome, First Post an Intro

Welcome to my little corner of the web. My name is Craig Bird and I have been making handmade pottery since 1990. I have been fortunate to have studied with three Bernard Leach students (Wm. Henry Klock, Warren MacKenzie and Jeff Oestriech), numerous American potters, as well as Japanese master potter; Kohyama Yasuhisa. I have studied pots all over the US and abroad and consider myself a traditionalist at heart and a functional potter by choice. I am heavily influenced by potters such as Kawai Kanjiro and Michael Cardew, as well as Japanese pottery, English slipware, ancient pottery and Saturday morning cartoons.

My pottery springs from the concept of function and utility. It is further guided by a need to be narrative and tell a story.

I am a product of television, mostly cartoons and so began my fascination with form. I was raised by a television and I marveled at the images and would try to imagine them in my mind’s eye, creating a three dimensional form from the 2-D. Clay allows me to create a 3-D object from those old images locked away from television, books and drawings. I am able to work out the problems of three dimensions in not only the form, but the surface as well, through a series of multiples of an idea moving further toward an ideal. Through my experiences and encounters I have added numerous ideals and paragons to my vocabulary. Unified concepts and images go in and are vigorously blended coming out in new and intriguing ways.

I can see the influences of numerous works in each pot, but I work to keep from making copies of previous pottery works. My preferences for Japanese, Old English, Persian, Greek and Chinese pottery acts as stepping stones for my own vocabulary of form and surface and hopefully I have found my own voice. For me, the greatest challenge is to step out from the shadow cast by the two most important influences of my life, the work and thoughts of Kawai Kanjiro and Michael Cardew. By studying the past masters and masterpieces, I rely on the concept ONKO-CHISHIN (look at the old to learn the new) but have adapted it to my feelings about pottery; Look to the past to make pots in the moment as a foundation for the future.

Having sought out functional potters to study with, students of Bernard Leach and Japanese potters steeped in ancient tradition; my strongest focus in making pottery is the purpose and accommodation of the pot.
As long as I continue to make pottery, these are the goals that I will aspire too and the vocabulary I will constantly consider.