November 23 & 24th is the Artisan Show and Sale at Mark St. United Church in Peterborough. This isn’t strictly a pottery show, but has all different types of art and craft available to buy. It’s at 90 Hunter Street.
Between our show and these upcoming shows, you may have your Christmas gift giving all sewn up!
On October 21st, our speaker for the evening was Ron Roy, the guru of cone 6 glazes. The talk was very interesting and we had been asked to send him any glazes that we were having issues with. So a few guild members did this and he first went through the components of glazes and how reducing the amount of one element will affect the glaze in a certain way. For example, one of the issues a potter had, was that her glaze should be shinier, so he did an analysis of the glaze and came up with a new configuration. Another said that their glaze wouldn’t stay “stirred” long enough to dip her pots, and he recommended mixing a solution 2 tbsp of Epsom Salts in a cup of water and adding 3 drops to the glaze. Mix it up and leave it half an hour to see how it mixed. If it was still too dense, try again and leave it. Continue until the glaze kept it’s mix better.
Ron has a new edition of his book available at his website: ronroy.net
All in all a wonderful meeting and very informative. Below are some images from the meeting.
This is the chart of the original glaze and his two new versions
Karen’s glaze was the one on the chart and she discusses what she was aiming for.
We are so excited to announce a new addition to our guild. We have bought a brand new programmable kiln! It is shiny and new, and we hope to be more efficient with electricity now by being able to firing over night and come in when it is about to turn off. This will mean that we are using the cheapest electricity rates and because it is a BIG kiln, we can fit even more student work into it.
This is also a pretty important milestone for the Guild. When we discussed going ahead last summer with renting a premises and taking our guild to the “next level” there was a lot of dissension among the group as to whether we could do this. We passed our 1st year in our new home and now we’ve made a major purchase. We are all happy to see this working.
Thanks once again to our tireless volunteers (members) who spent a couple of days clearing out the kiln/pugging room to make room for our new arrival. Check out the pictures below! The fellow in the one picture is Mike from PSH who delivered and set it up. Today we have electricians in to wire it in, and soon we will have an extractor vent as well, so all the fumes exit the building (just like Elvis).
This is Mike from PSH. He is putting the kiln together for us. It had to be delivered in parts to be able to get through the door.
Here is the pugging area all neat and tidy. We are finally getting to grips with the tricky attitude of the pugmill.
And here it is, our new kiln. This is more than a kiln, it is proof that the guild is flourishing, and we are thrilled!
A few members got together over the past week or so to give the guild a bit more organization. When you have to work with so many different members, and teach classes and have so much work to fire, it can all get a bit chaotic. We are also introducing a few new instructors over the coming months and we need a teaching space that is easy for everyone to use and feel comfortable with. So with that in mind, we took the space that we had been saving for rental and re-purposed it as a our new glazing area. Out is the hodge-podge of containers in a cluttered hallway and in came some semblance of order.
June went out and purchased buckets for dry ingredient, Carolyn dragged her husband with her to buy heavy shelves and bring them to the guild, and Karina brought her lovely husband with her to do some of the building work. Then the rest of us there helped dismantle, move, sweep, fetch , carry and with satisfaction start to see the back area of bedlam suddenly start to make sense. It is nowhere near finished yet, but we have a direction and as we are all volunteers, it is so wonderful the time everyone has been putting into this job. Thank you to everyone who has helped and given their time to this transformation.
Now when classes start in the next few weeks, there is a dedicated area to glaze, clear areas for work that is waiting to be fired, and it will help everyone keep things in the right place.
Well, we have just reached a milestone at our new location today. While we have been around for a few years now as a guild, today marks our first year in our new location. It’s been a busy and productive year and we are so pleased that we took the plunge and moved into our new location. We are paying our rent, our instructors and selling pottery. And what is even more satisfying, we are teaching more and more people about the art of ceramics and what goes into the vessels that you drink out of, eat off of and admire your plants and flowers in.
We look forward to everyone visiting us at some point soon, and thank every one of our members for all their hard work in making our dream a reality and we wish ourselves a Happy something in our new home!
There is a beautiful display on at the Gallery on the Lake at the moment. Our guild members have added their art to this beautiful venue for the month of August. If you are up in the Buckhorn area, you won’t want to miss the gallery and the surrounding scenery.
Some photos from the show we have on there until the 31st August. Click on any image to see a larger image.
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What a lot of fun our campers had at our first week of Mud & Motion Day Camp. You can tell by the big smiles on their faces. There was clay, dancing, dress up and a cupcake party at the end. We can’t wait to start all over again next week!
Kickstarter has this fun project running at the moment that may get the creative juices going. They are creating a plate for every State in the U.S. The project runs until August 14th, and I’m not suggesting any of us in Canada want to buy plates of U.S. States (although a few of them look pretty neat). It’s more about the process and just the idea that you may find inspiring.
Our annual pit firing took place Saturday evening, July 5th at Dan Ferguson’s farm. Dan had the pit prepared and we all had fun helping setting our pots on their bed of sawdust and straw and watching Dan make the final tweaks before we covered them with another layer of straw and dried cow manure and wood.
While the fire roared we sat around and enjoyed a typical yummy guild potluck supper.
Saturday morning we went back to find our beautiful pots in the ashes. We really appreciate Dan sharing his skills and facilities with the guild.
~ Jackie Hodge
Pots are placed in the pit on top of various materials
Dan carefully arranges and adds more straw to the pit.
Darlene helps add the straw
Dan, putting the cow manure on top of the pots.
The pit covered and ready to light.
Here are the firebugs watching the fire take hold. this will burn over night, the pots ready to be revealed the next morning.
