Progress? Yes!

It's been a busy month, and it's only day 3? Holy goodnight!

Well, to be honest, I'd been working to get a new bunch of Supernatural cups and mugs finished before my annual Thanksgiving trip to Sacramento to get together with friends.

It was getting a little hard to get up and get things done before work. It's cold in the mornings, and it's been either foggy or damp, which adds to my discomfort and to the drying time for the work!

But you know me, if you've followed the blog for any amount of time. I don't let discomfort slow me down a whole lot! (Though I do admit to taking all the glazing inside that I can, so I can be comfy.)

I've been getting ideas for some more Castiel-themed, bee-related cups and mugs. So far, I just have the one, but the response has been so great, I plan on more like it! The first picture is the unfired cup, with the underglaze painted in. The others are after the first firing.

I always love how they look out of that first firing! The colors are so vibrant! But they need to have their clear glaze and a second firing if they're going to be food-safe, so there's another round of work to do for them: glazing!

I've been considering the last glaze failures and think I might have the issue solved with a new clay body. It's a nice, soft white, cone 5 clay. Although it's white like porcelain (without being as white or translucent as porcelain can be), it's a stoneware clay and a bit tougher. I managed to get a layer or two of glaze on some of them before I left for my trip. You can see I take my studio assistant with me everywhere, nowadays!

I saw my ceramics teacher while I was there and got a mini-lecture for some troubleshooting questions which, as always, was super helpful. I really miss the clay gang of folks I had available to me there. Maybe after this Covid-Omicron nonsense settles down, I'll get some classes here in LA.

 

I decided to do these cups a couple of different ways, to see what ends up working best. Some, I covered in black underglaze with the colored pattern and words and did the bisque firing. When I got them out of the bisque, I covered the words and patterns in wax resist, so that when they're dipped in glaze, the glaze will flow off the wax and keep the pattern and words clean. You can see the process on this video, at around 5:15, if you're interested.

Others, I just covered in a celadon glaze I kept from my old studio and just painted it on in layers. Because a good celadon glaze has a translucent quality to it, the deeper carving will show up in a darker pool of green and the higher points will be lighter in color. I think they're going to turn out really pretty, and the celadon gives it a bit of an Asian feel. The celadon, by the way, looks almost white before it's fired.

 

Finally, we have those medallion mugs! In playing with the design, I thought having a combination of colors would be fun to have on the cup and partially around the medallion. The picture below shows only one layer of glaze, which is actually going to be blue! You'd think it would be red, but that's not how the chemistry of the glaze works.

 

After all of that, and cleaning up the bottoms so they don't stick to the kiln shelves and get destroyed, and checking for overflow into the patterns, they were ready to get loaded into the kiln. When I left for work yesterday, the kiln temp had gone from 45°F to 97°F. When it's done, it will have gone up to around 2167°F with a twenty minute hold.

Now I get to spend some time getting all the other work into the shop that I haven't gotten to, yet!

FFS. The Last Test. Seriously!

This testing cycle, as you know, has been a major challenge! I have all these awesome cups, mugs and tankards made and they're just sitting and waiting to be finished because of all the damned failed tests! But I am blessed with belated intelligence! (Better late than never, I always say!)

I made an appointment with my ceramics studio to schlep a bunch of my new work over to use their glazes and their kilns to finish it. I brought along two new test cups which I wouldn't be completely heartbroken to lose, to do a glaze test with their cone 10 clear glaze. Since it's got all those colorful underglazes, the plan was to fire in oxidation (oxygen in the firing chamber) as opposed to reduction (reducing or removing a bunch of oxygen in the firing chamber), so the colors would be as bright as possible.

But they weren't going to be able to fire until the whole kiln could be filled. Which could take a while. Like another month.

So I swung by the studio today and picked up the two mugs I clear-glazed on Sunday. They're in my kiln right now, getting the cone 10 firing. This is the first and last time this kiln will be fired that high. I dread the electric bill, but if this test turns out alright, everything I glazed with the other glaze will get washed  and will be dried by Sunday, when I go back to the studio for another glazing session. I have a bunch of fans waiting ever-so-patiently for these, and I'll be damned if I'm going to disappoint them!

Of course, if they don't turn out right, all of the current crop will go into the kiln and then my shop as seconds. I hate that idea with a purple passion, because my conviction is that my work which goes out into the world without me should be as perfect as I can make it! I won't be there to make excuses for it, therefore, no excuses should have to be made.

God, the waiting sucks...

Today's the Day!

After all this waiting, today is the day I take a couple of my mugs into the ceramics studio to get the FINAL glaze test. Yes, I know I should be using test tiles instead of the actual mugs. I'm suicidally optimistic, though, and am planning for the long-awaited victory I so richly deserve!

Failure, of course, will result in tears and a glass or two of my special-occasion Bushmills. There may even be screaming and cursing. You never know.

My mailing list has grown largely due to these cups, and my focus is to make them the best they can possibly be for the fandom. If this test fails, many have said they'll buy the ^6 (that's cone 6, or 2320° F), even if there's a little pitting. They sounded shocked that I'd toss the whole lot in the trash, and I suppose they're right! But I'm glad they seem to still want them, as it will help to offset the cost of glazes and other materials. I don't think I'll actually be able to show a profit this year, but I'm surely going to try!

Meanwhile, I have a ton of "regular" ceramics to go into the ^10 (2345° F) firing. Some will be in oxidation, some will be in reduction. After this firing, I'll stick to ^6 for my stoneware for a while, until I can afford to pay for a couple of good reduction firings of some porcelain, which I'd like to expand to in the next few years.

Well, time to pack up the car! Wish me luck, y'all!

Almost There!

 

Y'all are probably wondering if I'm incapable of making anything but Supernatural drinking vessels, anymore, since that's all I seem to be posting, lately. The answer is, of course, yes! But there are a multitude of these to finish before my Sunday morning kiln-loading deadline.

Because "Assbutt" is classier in this font, that's why!

Throwing. A little drying. Trimming. A little drying. Pulling the handle. Attaching the handle. A little more drying so the handle can firm up properly. Carving the design and text. 

Then on to underglazing, sometimes with one color on the interior of the mug (three coats) and another on the outside (three coats) and then matching the inlay color with the interior when painting in the carved part of the design (three coats). And then they get to dry the rest of the way until they're what potters call "bone dry." Pretty important for them to be as dry as they can be before firing, otherwise they'll "explode" in the kiln as soon as the temperature hits 212°, the boiling point of water. The steam coming out of a damp piece will cause that area or areas to "explode."

Those are just the initial stages they need to go through before the first (bisque) firing. After that 24-hour firing cycle (slow up, hold target temperature, then slow cooling), they come out get all the dust blown off or washed off and are allowed to dry completely before the clear glaze is applied, either by brushing (again, the magical three coats) or by dipping.

It's time-consuming, of course. And it's honestly satisfying for me to know I'm making for a fandom which will appreciate all the time and effort. It's satisfying to know that no one else is dumb enough to put all this blood, sweat, and tears into a cup.

I've commented before in these pages that I'm passionate about everyday things being beautiful as well as functional. When you use them, they should, to quote Marie Kondo, "spark joy." For me, there's more joy in a handmade item than in something generic, made by a corporation for practical purposes, only. Yes, there are mass-market mugs with pithy sayings on them, and yes, they have their place, certainly! Even I have a few. (Somewhere in storage, I still have a mug from Klagenfurt, Austria, which I visited with my grandmother way back when. It always reminds me of her!)

 

But even so, I prefer the handmade.

Months of work, waiting to get packed!

Next is the very complex and nervous work of packing all these babies into bins to take to the ceramics place.

Nervous because they're at a point where knocking them the wrong way will cause an irreparable break, like the one below.

There's just no method I've been able to find which will reliably repair bone-dry clay and keep it together through all the processes so it can be a durable, functional piece. 

So into the trash this one went! Normally I'd throw it into my slop bucket and reconstitute it, but I had already underglazed it, and I can't mix the underglaze with the clay.

The good news is, there's still plenty to go to the studio!

But back to "complex and nervous."

 

Loading the bins is complex because packing unfired ceramics is actually a game of Tetris. If you have large bowls to pack, everything around them must be far enough away to not chip or break the rims, even when the intervening space is occupied by bubble wrap. If you have underglazed clay pieces, they should be put it with other items the same color so there's no cross-contamination with other colors or unglazed ware.

I use smaller bins because unfired ware is heavy and I can better manage them on my own, both for this purpose and for shows.

I started packing last Sunday, because the process always takes me longer than I think it will, and I really hate stressing myself out at the last minute! There's nothing like having a deadline and realizing, too late, that you need another bin or two and there's no time left to go buy them!

Well, alright, kids! I have another layer of underglaze to put on before I start inlaying, so that's all for now!

Wish me luck! 

Racing towards Goal #1

I've been so busy juggling life, work, side jobs and making Supernatural mugs! I mean, holy goodnight! It's been stressful, but in the best of possible ways!

I've had varied success in adding words so that they're legible. I tried carving, but the grog in the clay keeps messing things up, so I'm back to using letter stamps and inlaying color into the words. It's a pretty painstaking process!

I've been waiting to hear back from the ceramics center regarding firing costs for both the bisque firing and the subsequent glaze firing, as well as when they can fit me in. Now, I actually have a date! Hooray!

I get to go load their kiln on the 25th, first thing in the morning! It'll be the first time I'll be loading a kiln, myself, since I left Folsom, and I'm really looking forward to it! At long last, I feel like things are getting back to a steady normal!

More news coming soon!