THIS FIRING

I cracked the kiln early on Saturday morning, but it took until 4pm to actually unload the kiln. I had a few problems with crawling on two of the carved porcelain bowls, the glaze just dried to slowly, leading to the eventual crawling. Everything else came out fine and the cap jars exceeded my expectations. It is always nice when that happens.

It is not my intension to regal any reader with the daily minutia and travails of each of my work cycles, I just wanted to give a glimpse as to how I work. I do not plan to make this a regular thing. A new week now and a new cycle of work, the life of a potter.

(Illustrated, a cap jar and wall bowl from this firing, together with a close up of the bowl. The bowl is about 15” in diameter for scale.)

FIRED

I finished up glazing on Thursday; got the pots all cleaned off and spent quite a while loading the kiln. It took some real fancy moves, but I ended up getting everything except one of the wall bowls loaded into the kiln. It is packed without any room to spare.

Though the kiln is off now, I can’t help but think about what has happened to all those glazed pots. Because of how I glaze, glazing right up to the foot ring, running is always a real threat. Overall, very little runs and my shelves are in relatively good shape given the years of use they have seen. In every firing though, there are always some close calls with drips poised to come off the pot, suspended on the very bottoms. There is always glaze runs, glaze rolls and near drips, but that is the fun of using clay and ash glazes.


A “runner” from a previous firing.

ITS GLAZE DAY (1)

I got the bisque unloaded and everything cleaned off early this morning. Everything made it and from there, got the jars/lids waxed and what ever else needed waxing, waxed as well. Glazes are all mixed, overglazes all ready and I was off and running.

I glazed the wall bowls first as I need to pour the glaze into a wide container, they are about 17” across and the glaze buckets are a bit narrow. I have the porcelain bowls in the bisque kiln on low, heating them up a bit. I throw my porcelain on the thin side and unless you heat the bowls up so the glaze dries fast, you run into a myriad of problems. I get the wall bowls, the porcelain carved bowls, some bottles, a group of large cap jars, soup bowls and some teabowls all glazed in their primary glaze and need them to dry before putting a second or third glaze on them. The clear glazed bowls are cleaned and put aside, at least those are completed.

Tomorrow is another day of glaze fun. I need to get secondary glazes on 80% of the pots. Once dry, some get third glazes, but most get cleaned off and set aside, ready to load in the kiln, which I hope to do tomorrow evening at the latest. Though it seems unbelievable, I am actually still on track to fire on Friday, though I won’t count my pots before they are fired.

(Picture is of one of 4 tables I use when glazing)

THIS & THAT

As Fred Schneider may say, “it’s a dreary downtown day”, overcast, occasionally raining and a hard day to get motivated. Everything is thrown now and sanded and I just finished loading the kiln for a bisque. My original estimate of there being 20% too much for a glaze firing was way off especially considering I kept throwing. I now have at least enough for a kiln and a half and together with some large pitchers I’ll throw next week, well on to a quick turn around bisque/glaze firing. I’ll glaze this Weds. And Thursday, load and hopefully glaze fire on Friday. Makes for a busy week.
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One of the interesting things about the internet is the number of individuals I have met over the last decade because of pottery, mine and Japanese pots. I am constantly carrying on conversations that can last weeks with individuals half way around the world or in differing time zones of the US. A conversation I have been having was about the nature of simplicity in pottery. There would seem to be an exceedingly fine line between an exciting kohiki chawan and a dull bowl. Most styles of pottery can be exciting and complex in their simplicity, but the truth is the simpler the pot, the greater the potter must be to articulate simple form and surface to engage the viewer.


Illustrated is a Shino chawan by master Japanese potter Okabe Mineo. At first glance it may almost seem innocuous in its appearance, but as you begin to study the form and the posture of the bowl, the undulation of the lip, the simple and abstract iron brush work under the glaze and the casually placed finger print in the glaze, you realize, this is no simple chawan. I have seen a number of Okabe Mineo pieces, and what is ever apparent, is that he has mastered the complex art of simplicity.

THE POT

Over a number of years I have had the privilege of teaching at a variety of locations as well as giving workshops. One of my maxims of pottery sanity is to never get too attached to any single pot. Work in a series and if one bites the dust, there are others to work with. I have always found this to be sound and profitable advice.

Well, despite my own best advice and my “zen like” approach to clay, there is periodically a pot, the pot, that I am far more invested in than is healthy. It can be a teabowl, covered jar or what have you, it just speaks a bit louder than others in the series. Such was just the case with a bottle vase I was decorating. In using wax to help define the design, it just didn’t come out the way I wanted it to and it just ruined the pot to my eye.

So what to do, for a day and a half I obsessed on the pot and the decoration that ruined it. Should I fire it, should I scrap it, it is just greenware after all. No, not I, I pick door #3. In what can only be described as a herculean effort to salvage the situation and the pot, I scraped, sanded, reslipped, rewaxed and redecorated what would only take 15 minutes to throw and tool all over again. An hour invested in a pot that on a good day will fetch $40. I have saved the pot and what is life without the occasional quixotic pursuit?

THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION

Quite a few years back, a very good friend of mine was packing up a really good chawan he had recently sold. He had it set on strips of bubble wrap and as he reached for one, the bowl tumbled to the ground and shattered. The loss of any great pot is a tragedy in my eyes and a financial loss to the dealer as well.

Recently, I was moving things around on a storage shelf and out of the corner of my eye I caught a falling shadow. A teabowl, I had made, fell and broke against the cement floor. I had been saving the bowl for a show and my action had an equal reaction. What sprung to mind was a wry “psuedo-haiku” I had sent to my friend Dan those few years back, as a means of consoling him;

“A Fine chawan,
What is Zen?
100 Pieces”

For years I have been trying to add an abundance of hydrogen molecules to my glazes to make them lighter than air, but to no avail. It is probably the distraction of my work to turn lead into gold that has impeded my progress. Considering gravity is a law we must all contend with, doesn’t humor makes it just a bit easier to live with?

WORKING

“When you are doing your work, you and your work are two different things. But when you become the work itself, and do the work, or in other words, when the work is itself doing the work, true work becomes possible.”

From THE UNKNOWN CRAFTSMAN by Soetsu Yanagi

NEW CYCLE; PART TWO

I have managed to throw what I need for my next kiln firing. Everything is thrown, trimmed and slipped if needed. Even though I know there is enough to fill the kiln, since I am already planning out my next firing, to include larger pitchers, I am compelled to keep throwing. Once I get in the groove and things are going well, I just want to throw.

Way back, just out of CSU and in my first studio, I had a partner. This made things exactly as I wanted. Besides making my own pottery, I throw a variety of forms for her to paint on. That was heaven; I could make more pots than I could deal with and throw all day long. This didn’t last but a couple of years, but it was in some sense, an excellent arrangement. The conclusion, I really rather be throwing and a partnership was just not for me.

This current cycle, I have thrown a group of wall bowls, carved porcelain bowls, some bottle forms, a group of larger cap jars, soup bowls and various teabowls. There is about 20% too much for the firing, but, as usual, I just couldn’t stop. All but the teabowls and soup bowls were the reason behind the firing, so those pieces may have to wait. I will try to squeeze them into the firing, but I think it is already planned pretty tight and the pots are all still wet. Oh well, there is always the next firing.


(The chawn illustrated is a Shigaraki bowl by Otani Shiro. It has nothing to do with my post, but it is Friday and I love that green……….)

CIRCLE/SQUARE/TRIANGLE

I may have mentioned that I consider the circle/square/triangle design used by the Zen calligraphers to be the Zen equivalent of a physics formula in which it represent the universe. The simplicity and the variety in which it can be manifest in 2-D and 3-D are seemingly infinite. Among my favorite is the version popularized by Gibon Sengai. His version was seen and ingested by Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline and many others of the abstract expressionist movement.

The use of this visual also pops up on traditional and modern pottery. This Nezumi-Shino chawan has the circle/square/triangle carved through a rich iron slip and then glazed over in a wonderful feldspatic Shino glaze. The illustrated chawan is by Mino veteran potter Mizuno Takuzo. I am particularly fond of this style of Shino glaze and the development of thick glaze cells moving in a diagonal indicating the direction the bowl was thrown. Overall, a very sober and engaging bowl with a design that brings the viewer around the bowl and into its interior.

ITS JUST WARM

I never like throwing and especially slipping pots when it is this warm and humid. But, I persevere; turn on some tunes, turn on the fan and think of one of our trips to Japan in late Nov. 1991. We were in Kyoto at the Kinkakuji in the early morning, snowflakes were in the air and the roof of the golden pavilion was blanketed in a thin layer of snow. When it gets this warm, I think of that day and even if it doesn’t cool me off, it certainly makes me feel better!

(Detail of a Japanese scroll painting; “Pavilion in Snow” by Hirai Baisen, 1889-1969, a painter from Kyoto)

EASILY DISTRACTED

At the beginning of each new cycle, I have a hand written list of everything I need to do for the eventual firing ( a tip borrowed from the Iron Chef). It serves as a road map, though the exact pieces I throw vary depending on mood and ideas. What inevitably happens to each plan is that life gets in the way. At the end of this first week, in theory, I prefer to have 70% or more of the pots thrown and tooled. This week like every other has its distraction.

First I needed to pack/ship and order, than a routine trip to the eye doctor, several errands, some house stuff that needed doing and lots of emails to catch up with and hours are gone from the precious schedule. I made up my slips first thing as well as some haiyu glaze. I then managed to throw a group of 16” wall bowls, porcelain and stoneware teabowls, soup bowls and bottles as filler, as tests and stuff I like to throw. I also throw a group of porcelain bowls which I black slipped and carved. There is the real time killer, carving. I spent better part of a day carving the bowls.

As Calvin would say; “the days are just packed!”.

BIDORO 2

In my opinion there would seem to be very little not to like about wood fired pots. The beauty of bidoro and tombo (no) me in particular are for me, what anagama and noborigama firing is all about. Very few other types of pottery lock a moment in time like the frozen cascade of ash. Ware like Bizen, Shigaraki and Iga speak to me the best, when they are pulled out of the firing kiln (hikidashi) and suspend the action and intent of the potter, clay, glaze and fire.

This cylindrical vase illustrated is by Kojima Kenji and shows the violence and velocity of his Iga anagama. The pot clearly indicates how it was fired and how it was positioned in the kiln. The fluid motion of the molten glass shows off the process and signature style of the potter.

The second anonymous photo is an image a friend sent to me. It clearly shows the convergence of multiple flows of ash that culminate in a group of tombo (no) me hanging off the belly of the pot. If one “kiln tear” is great, what are a group? Unexpected and most welcome……………………..

A NEW CYCLE, A NEW MONTH

I am beginning a new cycle today and will be throwing a group of porcelain and stoneware pieces. The porcelain will mostly be to black slip and carve and the stoneware for a variety of techniques. I carefully plan out what to throw in advance to maximize use of the kiln space. This group will be composed of carved bowls, shallow wall bowls, covered jars and a few teabowls and using bowls.

A new cycle also means needing to make up white and black slips and several glazes. All part and parcel of making pots. I normally clean my wheel and throw the porcelain first and then move on to stoneware to avoid contaminating the porcelain as best I can in a studio that uses porcelain, stoneware and terra cotta. I usually throw the covered pieces last. Not sure why, just out of habit.

This kiln load is all spec work, in other words, no orders for this firing. This gives me a certain flexibility with how I decorate, though I tend to have a set group of styles and unless some new test glaze becomes a game changer, I stick to what I know and like. I am also going to use my old amber glaze (Funky Amber) again for the first time in a while. Following the lead of calcining some of the material in my other glazes, I reworked the FA amber glaze recipe to include calcining and added a pinch more frit and it would seem 99% of the crawling has been eliminated. We will see how it responds in an actual firing on something more than a test cup. I always keep my fingers crossed when it comes to glazing, but first I need to throw, trim and bisque before I can get there.