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Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Icy Doom

The title pretty much sums it up. That's what we have going on outside right now. It snowed this morning, it sleeted this afternoon, then it rained and then it froze while raining. I suspect we'll see some snow on top of all this ice by morning, then we'll really have some exciting things going on! It makes me glad we have 4 feet of plowed snow as a guardrail since we live at a downhill T intersection.

So what do do on days like this? Lock myself into the studio and fill the tables all while enjoying the residual heat from the kiln that fired overnight.

All those mugs are for our own stock. We have no big wholesale orders just yet, but I expect about 1/2 way through March we'll start getting requests. In the meantime I'm trying to build up stock on our best sellers and offset the rush I am sure we'll be feeling a little later in the year when the north thaws out and folks start traveling again.

After doing so many textured pots for the Forest Spirit pots last month I can't seem to leave the texture tool alone. I am using it, then making the pots I need to, then going back for more texture. I'm having a lot of fun!

Those bigger pieces on the table are fun too. They're going to end up as special bowls for allowing bread dough to rise. It's a special request from a customer, and while I normally don't work too far outside our standard catalog these looked kind of fun. They're going to end up about 10" wide and 10" deep plus a bit of a foot. the inside of the bottom is curved like any bowl would be. I hope they work out well.

I'm really enjoying doing some bigger work and I keep drifting into fantasies of starting to work really large on a regular basis. I'm really excited when I see big pots from folks like Daniel Johnston , Mark Hewitt, and Svend Bayer but I'm afraid to shake things up too far. I'm more or less a mug maker..I can't make enough mugs and even my regular retail customers keep coming back for more year after year, but I think I may start doing some larger pitchers, Ive always had a love for pitchers and I really have neglected them over the years.

What do you think? Go big or go home? Will my customers still love me?