How does this always sneak up on us?

 As much as we try to get ahead, somehow we always end up in a production crunch.

I was so glad to have both Rowan and my son Morgan helping today.
Rowan unloaded the bisc kiln, cleaned and waxed everything, then helped to finish the mugs by adding the necessary medallions, while I pulled handle after handle.
When Morgan showed up he wedged up 450 lbs of clay for the next round of throwing.
We then took a pizza break and gathered ourselves for second shift. I threw 15 plates, 2 large serving bowls and 2 medium serving bowls. Morgan and Rowan mixed up 4
batches of glazes, 75,000 grams of materials mixed..that's impressive. The plan was to load a bisc kiln and a glaze kiln before bed, but we ran out of energy. As a compromise, Rowan sent me for a chocolate milkshake treat for her and she went back and loaded a bisc kiln just before midnight. It was an amazingly productive day.
I still have another 40 mugs to throw to complete all the orders, but that won't take as much time and effort now that the bulk of these are finished. I am looking forward to switching to pieces that don't require handles for a while. Maybe 100 bowls would be nice..yeah..bowls.

She's slipping me little notes all the time.

I like getting notes!

Sometimes when we have a lot of special orders, it's difficult to keep track of how each piece should be glazed. Rowan started keeping detailed special order forms about two years ago which has helped a But even that left some confusion as the pieces progressed through the firing process.

 Recently we began wholesaling and as part of our catalog Rowan put together this awesome color chart. So now I get post it notes attached to the clusters of pieces with the color combination number and any special notes that I should pay attention too. Like "just on the rim" or "as far down the piece as you can manage" So far the system is working out well.

New Tools for working smarter

Sometimes, when you learn how to make a new thing, it just takes as long as it takes. That's OK most of the time, but when you have need to reproduce an item, sometimes you have to develop new tools to make the job flow a little faster.
For the last few years we have been making more and more of our Oak and Acorn pieces and we make them in a tedious way. We collect actual Oak leaves from trees we come across and trace them. Then apply them to the pieces and sculpt them onto the surface adding the details in a very individual way. Actual leaves will only last so long, so one of the first things we do is make and  keep a ceramic leaf from the first generation of leaves in each size to use as a template. This gets tedious...really tedious. So we needed a solution.

Initially, we wistfully looked at cookie cutters, but cookie cutters are not so individual, they are mass produced by machines in the thousands. Everyone can have the exact same one. We rejected the notion, but still needed a solution.

Eventually we decided that a mass manufactured cutter wouldn't do but maybe we could find a place to make some that are exactly, and I really mean exactly like the leaves. bumps, curves and all. I didn't have too much hope for such precision, but we started searching the internet and finally came across a guy who seemed to be able to do what we needed.

So we found Frank and Frankencutters LLC It looked like Frank was doing the small detailed kind of work we were looking for, so we sent him drawings, he gave us a quote and we sent him a check. 2 weeks later, we got these in the mail.

They're strong, have handles and are spot on. We couldn't be happier, and it should make the Oak and Acorn line much easier to make without sacrificing any of the details we want to include in each piece.
We're going to get started this week :)