FREE TO TEST

I have been making pots long enough now that I have inherited misc. supplies from various sources. While at Cleveland State the university co-op went under and they gave away a large amount of chemicals and clay. I got quite a bit of colorants, stains and glaze materials that I could use and squirrel away. After leaving CSU, I was lucky enough to get materials from various sources, potters retiring, leaving clay, etc. and I was able to put together a constant pool of usable materials and things I knew were no longer mined and a bit out of the ordinary. I still take every opportunity to get ‘free” stuff whenever the chance presents itself.

Back while at CSU, I used copper sulfate and cobalt sulfate on porcelain with some interesting results. Having recently inherited a small amount of cobalt sulfate I thought to try it out with my ash glaze and see what would happen. I mixed the cobalt sulfate with gerstley borate at 1:1 and mixed it up watercolor thin. I painted a small band around the lip of a teabowl and fired it along with the rest of my pots.

The results surprised me a bit. It ran with long tendrils down the bowl, nearly four inches. Considering the less that ¼” band I painted on the lip, I will need to keep in mind the potency of cobalt in general and the running qualities of the cobalt sulfate/gerstley borate mix. It does make for a rather fluid surface and definitely accentuates the vertical nature of the bowl.

A BOOK GLAZE

When I first decided to go and interview the local pottery professor in Plattsburgh, NY (Bill Klock) I stopped at the local used book store and bought the two pottery books they had; FINDING ONE’S WAY IN CLAY (1972) by Paulus Berensohn and MAKING POTTERY WITHOUT A WHEEL (1965) by F. Carlton Ball and Janice Lovoos. Though neither gave me any insight into wheel throwing, both we very illuminating as to the scope and possibilities of clay.

The other day, I was tooling around Amazon.com and stumbled on the MAKING POTTERY WITHOUT A WHEEL book and have to admit, I was somewhat surprised at one of the reviews of the book. It pointed out that the glaze section of the book was severely outdated. Not to sound argumentative, but how can any glazes, that work, be outdated.

I have been using several formulas, mostly that I have altered a bit, from this book for 20 years. What worked when the book came out in 1965, works today. In fact, one of the nicest blue-green celadons I have ever used came from this source and I continue to use it now and again some 45 years after it was published. Here is the formula exactly as it is in the book;

Choy Blue Celadon Cone10 (weight in grams)
Feldspar 1226
Whiting 150
Flint 496
Kaolin 96
Barium Carbonate 400
Red Iron Oxide 50

I have also illustrated the glaze on two teabowls I have made. The first one shows the glaze right out of the book. The pale yellow-green version was just tweaked a bit. Though most of my glazes started out as book glazes, most have been so altered that they bare little resemblance to the original formulas, but this Choy Blue Celadon is great, as is and I love this glaze and think it is absolutely timeless, many thanks to Ball and Lovoos!

KILN REPAIRS

I am currently without my bisque kiln, an electric kiln, while I wait on parts. This hiccup interfers with my cycle, no bisquing, no glazing. All part of making pots I guess. Over the years, I have rewired my kiln(s), put in new contacts, switches and elements and have done the necessary repairs to my wheel as well.

It occurs to me periodically, that most potters are the proverbial “jack of all trades”. In my arsenal is carpenter, electrician, plumber, chemist, mold maker, packing specialist, book keeper, inventory manager and more that I am probably missing or unaware of.

Of course these skills are mostly minimal and only as they apply to pottery, but it just amazes me how these skills develop out of necessity and economic restraints. Now all I have to do is wait patiently for the UPS truck to show up!

THE MARK OF THE POTTER

I have always liked the way Japanese potters glaze. They grab hold of a pot and dip it in the glaze using their fingers as a form of resist. Once fired, the fingerprints are forever apparent on the pot. To me, the Japanese are highly effective at this technique and plan it into the overall design and decoration of the pot. It is a casual and simple means of adding additional gesture to a piece. In this case, this truly is the mark of the potter.

Over the years I have seen a number of potters use this technique very well. Warren MacKenzie comes to mind. In my glazing, I occasionally use my fingers and even hands as a resist when using two glazes. It is a way of noting the process and that I was there.


Of all the people that do this, Arakawa Toyozo is among my favorite. I first saw his work back in 1982 and have studied his pottery at every opportunity. Arakawa was a Ningen Kokuho and his effortless, spontaneous and casual manner for decorating and glazing is the pinnacle of the art. His simple marks and fingerprints articulate his pots and create beauty out of timeless and classical simplicity.

(Photograph of an Arakawa Toyozo mizusashi with sparse plum blossom design and his fingerprints around the foot. Used with permission from a private collection)

SLIP TRAILING

I first tried my hand at slipware back in 1991. I had always loved the works of the early American redware potters and I especially loved the work of Michael Cardew, so I thought, why not give stoneware a break.

I started testing first earthenware and terra cotta clay bodies and finally found one that suited me. The next step was testing slips to meet up with the terra cotta I was making up. I got a good fit almost right away and set about making some redware style pieces with amber glazes. Though it was working, I was just not that enthused with the look.

What I ended up deciding on was a blending of Cardew and Juan Miro. I opted to use a background of black slip over the terra cotta and then used white sliptrail designs under a nearly crystal clear glaze. Though I didn’t know it,that was the look I was going for. The new slipware became my first body of work the galleries accepted (I had only been making pots for about 18 months) and has continued to be 30% of my sales up until the present day.

I have developed a large group of designs based on both traditional slipware and my own newer style designs. I am forever using the ubiquitous spiral as well as my “landscape men” and a cast of thousands. The real love of slip trailing is that you have one shot, you can’t hesitate or it shows. The designs are instantaneous and in some distant way related to the immediacy of Zen painting. Besides, how can you go wrong with black and white?

LIGHT

"Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful." Ralph Waldo Emerson

(A carved porcelain covered box by Japanese potter Kano Mitsuo)

WOOD FIRED

When I first started making pots, my intentions were clear, I wanted to wood fire. For nearly a decade prior to making pots, I collected pots. I was fascinated by the surfaces of Bizen, Shigaraki and Iga pots in particular. As I began to make pots, I had those surfaces in mind and threw pots to best take advantage of wood firing.

My first problem was I needed to learn to throw, that aside, I also needed access to a wood kiln. As I showed some rudimentary skills, Bill Klock took pity on me and invited me to wood fire at his conventional western wood kiln. Despite the surfaces not looking like drippy Iga, I was hooked. Wood firing was for me.

The whole process of preparing pots to be wood fired, setting up wood for firing and the whole firing process were just magical and intense. I was built for this style of work. I was fortunate to wood fire at a number of places including with Kirk Mangus and with Kohyama Yasuhisa in Asanomiya (Shigaraki), Japan.

Though it has been a number of years since I have wood fired, I would drop everything to go and be part of a wood firing. It is one of those things, you either love the fire or you don’t. I think it is in my blood and I am always ready.

POTTER'S MARK

Having made pottery for about 20 years, I have gone through several different pottery marks. My first exposure to pottery marks was from years of studying and collecting Japanese pottery. Working with Bill Klock exposed me to his use of a personal stamp based on the Leach tradition. I made my first stamp while my first pots were still wet.

The mark I have used the longest is the small seal mark of a small sickle moon that represents the Albedo concept. I started using that mark back in the mid-90’s long before there was an Albedo Studio. Along the way, I have used various incarnations of the CB mark and the current mark is based on my life prior to making pots. Back when I was in college, I ran a coin store, as I have always been interested in US type coins and ancient coins. The coin shop gave me a great opportunity to handle and examine all kinds of coins as well as buying/selling gold and silver scrap.

My current mark, used since about 2002, is meant to look like a hard-stuck ancient coin with the letter type based on ancient Greek coinage. It seemed a fitting way to consolidate my life pre-pottery and post pottery. There are still several variations of the pottery stamp, but it is the stamp I use on most pieces of enough size to stamp with a coin size stamp. I used the smaller Albedo stamp on smaller pieces including some teabowls, teacups, sake bottles and the like.

HI-IRO

One of the most incredible features of yakishime (refering to the the natural and unglazed pottery of Shigaraki, Iga, Bizen, Echizen, Tamba and Tokoname as well as others) is when the surface appears caught in a moment of time. The ash or flame makes for a keshiki landscape of frozen motion. The drip of ash suspended in time or the hi-iro (fire color) showing the shadows of other pots and pads, these make these potteries visually alive.

When I think of hi-iro, my mind often wanders to the pot illustrated, a large tsubo by a member of one of the large Tamba families, Ichino Etsuo (市野 悦夫). It is thrown from a fine grained clay and the form is precise and noble and the hi-iro decoration shows the pathway of the flames as they licked this pot during the firing. It resembles the wispy pathways of a planetary storm of some alien world. The hi-iro is caused by volatizing fumes within the flame and they lay on accidental, incidental decoration of where the velocity of the fire caresses the pot. Though somewhat serendipitous, the potter must know his clay and kiln and how to fire the kiln for the pot to come out so lively. The beauty of yakishime pottery is the evidence of the flame that says something different to every pot and every viewer, a symphony in flame, burned onto the pot.

(Ichino Etsuo Tamba tsubo used with permission from a private collection)

TEXTURE

A friend recently asked me about my use of texture on my pots. The paddled and impressed texture in particular, but also the use of hakeme and thick kushime combed slip as well. At first I was unsure what they wanted me to say and wasn’t honestly sure how to respond.

After thinking about it for a moment, the answer was very obvious to me and in fact, right in the palm of my hand. I love texture, the tactile interaction between pot and person, I love the exceptionally tactile sense of a pot. This coupled with the historical antecedents where texture was some of pottery’s earliest “artistic” expression reinforced my use of texture

In the making, there is a variety of different textures you experience from wedging to throwing to handling a leatherhard pot. A bisque pot is unlike no other texture I can explain. The use of texture to decorate and articulate a form seems only natural since it is the pot in hand that interests me as much as the visual of the object.

The use of a variety of textures, as decoration, makes the tactile experience richer and the sensory input from various 3-dimensional surfaces allows for a nearly infinite interaction between each pot and it’s user.