My studio is just a small downstairs bedroom that has been converted. I have a throwing area that has protective thick plastic sheeting on the floor – I am a little messy!, a working table, drying shelves and storage shelving along the wall – although there never seems to be enough storage space. My husband just built a shed for me so I could store my materials for glass mosaics and stone carving. This really helped in keeping my studio space organized and more stream-lined although it may not look like it.
The following pictures show the stages of throwing – it this case a bowl. First I weigh out the amount of clay I will need and form a ball. This ball of clay needs to be centered on the wheel. This is a crucial step. If the clay is not centered – you’re not going to be able to throw anything. Once centered, the clay is opened and the walls of the form are pulled up and shaped. It may take 2 or 3 pulls to bring the clay up to the height and thickness you want. The final shaping of the form is often done with a rib. The rib helps compress the clay and smooths out any throwing lines.
The form is then moved to the drying racks. It often takes a few days for the form to dry out to a leather hard stage. At this point, the form is returned to the wheel and the bottom rim in trimmed out, giving a nice foot rim. Once completely dry to the touch, the form is bisqued fired in the kiln to take out any moisture in the clay. Glaze is applied to the bisqued ware and a final glaze firing is done.
Lillian Forester is famous for her cheese mice. The perfect little friends to accompany your cheese tray! These cute little fellows won’t even nibble! Like the rest of us, Lillian is getting ready for the show, and has her kiln loaded and ready to go. Check out her beautiful work, before it is even glazed!
Anne has been making pottery since the 70’s and has the Autumn Treasure’s show in Peterborough as well as ours, all in the same month! Here is Anne below, working on some pieces for her upcoming shows.
June Goodwin is the hardest working member of our guild. A lot of days you will find her at the gallery, either teaching or doing our books, as she is our treasurer and general “go to” person. How she has time to do her own work is beyond us all! Below is some of her work that has been bisqued and is ready to be glazed. That is where the magic comes! Every time we open the kiln, we never know what we will get! You’ll have to come to our sale to find out!
Click on the image to see a larger version. The work below includes not only June’s pottery, but our member Barb Zmozynski on our “Newbie” table!
Shelf full of work
Another day another shelf!
the kiln is being loaded
some glazed mugs and bowls ready to put into the kiln
Heathyr Francis and Colin Hoag are the team that make up Place in Nature Studios. They are working hard at creating some magical toad houses which will delight and enchant you. Below are Heathyr and Colin working to make some pieces for our upcoming Christmas show. And below that is a video of a Raku in progress!
As Hearthyr explains about their workspace.
As you can see, we work around the clock in our sun porch and garage. This is getting increasingly difficult at this time of year with less and less daylight and colder temperatures. We are looking to migrate indoors or fix up the sun porch so we can work til December or so in that space. I think January and February might be just too cold much work out there.
We thought that you (and our fellow members) would be interested in seeing where the potters that belong to the guild work at creating their wares. There must be a reason that studio tours are so popular!
We have a few members that have space in our studio, but because a lot of our members have been potters for years, they have been able to carve out a space in their homes where they can work. In some cases, our potters are full time artists and this is how they make their living, in others, it is a passion that they do in their “spare” time.
I thought I would start us off today. We hope that you enjoy the peek into where we work, and will find that it doesn’t matter how fancy the space is.
Mary Sullivan
I’m the website designer for the guild and web designing is also my day job. So I already have a room in my home that I use as my office. However, when we moved into our home in 2002, I commandeered a spare bedroom that didn’t have carpet or even proper flooring, it has large wooden panels that are painted. Little by little I have stuffed that poor room with all sorts of art supplies, be it acrylics, beads, paper making, you name it, I have some of that material in my Art Room. Then the clay started. I’ve been making sculptures of various things for years. I took a course many years ago where we sculpted with clay, but we then made a plaster cast of the piece and it was cast in a cement material. But in 2004 I bought myself my own kiln, as I wanted to make clay sculptures that were fired.
It’s likely not a very healthy idea to work with clay in a bedroom that is across from the room that you sleep in. Yet I have been doing that for over 8 years now. (oh well, we’ll all die of something) But the room was getting more and more cramped and I was not able to move or find a place to put down anything. Plus, I have my kiln out in the garage, my pugmill and extruder in the basement and I found that when I was in my art room I needed something from the garage, or if I wanted to pug some clay for a piece, I had to lug the clay down two flights of stairs, pug it and then lug it back up again. And clay ain’t light!
This summer I discussed an idea with my husband as it meant taking up a bit more room. I decided to make a quarter of the basement my pottery studio. The guild renovated our glaze area and there was an extra table that they were going to return and I promptly bought it. A friend and I set up the new space and I have to say it is so much easier to be productive now! I have my dry ingredients for glazes still outside, as it is safer for me to mix them there (you shouldn’t breathe that stuff in!) and the kiln is in the garage too, but everything else is in my space in the basement. I have one table to work on, right beside my pugmill, so if I need to soften up some clay from the many bags I have (see picture) it is easy to just move over and then start sculpting. I have a number of drywall boards cut into a manageable size and I place my work to dry (tiles especially, as they will warp if you let them dry without a bit of weight on top) and then they double as trays to take upstairs to load into the kiln! I have boards with cloth on them, one for white clay and another for brown, and I work on those and can easily swap them around. I’m close to the sink (it is my laundry room too) and I can rinse down anything to avoid dust.
On the other side of the room is the glazing area. I have my underglazes on the shelf under the table, and I can quickly bring out the ones I need, and when I’m not glazing I can use this table as a place for some work to dry.
I’m finding myself a lot more productive now that I have all my tools in one place and eventually I will put some shelves up and boards to show my test tiles for easy reference. I look forward to seeing everyone at the sale, this is my first year back for at least five years.
This is my work area now. To the left are some ready mixed glazes, and I have two really good lights that allow me to see. I couldn’t work without my iPod full of stories and podcasts though!
Here is my lovely pugmill with the bags of clay below. I hope not to buy any clay for a year and try to use all of this up! I have to say, I love my pugmill.
Here is the glazing table.
Here are some tiles that have been cleaned and are ready to load into the kiln.
Here are my dry glaze ingredients as well as a table to put things while I load the kiln.
The kiln is in the corner of the garage, and some fireboard protects the two corners of the garage from heat (not that it really needs it)
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.
