Tankards, Handles and Bowls

As I sit here and 12:30AM contemplating what to write down in today's pottery blog I am finding it difficult to remember when the day started and what I accomplished. It's been a long day and this time I dragged Rowan into the middle of it. She's laying beside me in bed right now trying to read her latest Bitch Magazine, but I am guessing she will pass out before she gets too far.

She got up early this morning and washed all the biscware in hopes that we'd be able to glaze by tonight, but the weather outside is wet and our basement studio is almost always wet.It will have to wait for tomorrow.

I rolled out of bed about 9:30 and feeling guilty for sleeping in jumped right into packing all the orders and getting the customs paperwork ready for our Canadian order and our military base order. We got everything sent off and decided we'd treat ourselves to a little Olive Garden lunch. Soup, Salad and Bread sticks. Such a good deal, and not absolutely awful for you. Olive Garden Minestrone is actually quite tasty. After a nice lunch I jumped right into production. I trimmed tankard and added handles while Ro caught a snooze. She joined me later and added Oak Leaves and Acorns to 8 plates and 2 tankards. I mixed a glaze and put together a materials order. A quick break for another indulgence..a pizza from Brother's. I don't know what got into us today..2 meals out..we've been so good about cooking at home, but I think today we needed someone else to take care of us.
After dinner we got back to work. We finished up at midnight. I had made 6 big bowls and she had just finished the decoration. Quite a long day.

On the agenda for tomorrow; glaze pottery, unload and wash more biscware. Load a glaze kiln, load a bisc kiln and somewhere in there I want to wedge and throw 60 more round mugs. I think I will run out of day before I run out of agenda :)

BTW it's 15 minutes later now and She is still awake. Apparently it's a really good issue.

Soup Mugs

I love making soup mugs. They're like an extension of a cereal bowl, which I also love making. Center, enter, open, finger sweep once, twice, compress the rim, set the edge, hit it with the corner of the metal rib , make sure the profile is correct, wet trim, wire under and move with one pot-lifter and my hand onto the waiting board. They are a pleasure to make and I could do it most of the day.

It took me a long time to settle on the form for these. I made deep bowls, short bowls, bowls with defined rims, bowls without defined rims. Flat wide rims, delicate tapered rims. These are the end result of about 18 years of fiddling with the details. Adding the handle to make them a soup mug was another adventure entirely. The form of the bowl lends itself to proper handle placement. The trouble with deep bowls is that in cross section the bowls are often a softened V shape, with the bottom of the handle being placed so far in that to attach any handle, an awkward and easily broken long handle must be used to be able to hold the thing properly. The design of this bowl creates a space for a perfect shorter handle that is still easily grasped and creates a nice tight profile. I love them.

I now feel like I have a great round mug, a great tankard, a great soup mug and cereal bowl. Next I want to bring together the perfect pitcher. At least one that suits me. It seems the perfection of my craft will take a lifetime. Don't get me wrong, I think the pieces I am making now are good, people tell me they love them and they are beautiful, but I think in another 20 years the depth of beauty inherent in these mud pies will be better yet. It's fulfilling for me to know that after nearly 2 decades of clay work I continue to learn and grow and develop my ideas. At the same time I know that my work is really simple compared to the full scope of the possibilities of the craft.

So all that was me saying I had a good day in the studio. I finished these 6 soup mugs and threw 18 more bowls to trim and handle tomorrow.

Friday

Friday, the end of the work week. Or not.

Today was a very nicely focused day of throwing. I started out by finishing the mugs and handles from the day before. Ro cleaned the greenware and loaded a kiln and a half. The other one isn't quite full yet. When I started throwing I started with some shallow trays someone who stopped by the house was interested in having me make, the I made a bunch of plates to receive Oak Leaves and Acorns, AND a couple of plates for War of the Roses.
I started on some more bowls to make into soup mugs, but then got hungry, came upstairs..ate a little and fell asleep, the woke up and fell asleep again..then I woke up and ate some more and gave up for the night. The bowls will wait until tomorrow.

Today's entertainment was again a Ken Burns Documentary, I went through the Civil War a couple days ago and today I watched part of his National Parks documentary. Interesting story and some beautiful imagery. I am so glad for streaming Netflix.