In The Studio Today

Its getting a little chilly here, I like it, but I really miss the hot Florida sun right about now too... But anyways, some new stuff from the studio. Today I was far from productive, I've said it earlier, but this is a real stretch for me, I've never had to make more of the same thing ever before, I usually never do, just because I don't have to, and as a result I've never practiced, as a result, it's challenging for me. Also, I like to keep experimenting. So for me making sets of bowls is not exactly the funnest thing to do, but it's a necessary skill, and one I've been struggling through and developing lately. Sorry no pictures of said sets of bowls as of yet. Maybe when the come out of the kiln. Just a new mini tea pot and a mini vase. Made from Kyo-Shiro.

Hai Dekimasu!

Wow, just got done watching the the Obama 30min vid over on the huffpost. It's really good and states his message in simple terms which is what his target audience, the "undecideds" probably want and need. You rarely get such candor from a candidate so close to an election. Also I went down to the local post office and voted today, it felt really good by the way. I just got to say, I know Obama is the best candidate, I just hope he'll be able to accomplish the things we all want. In other words I really hope we get to the 60 person majority in the senate. It also looks like my dream is going to be fulfilled, after nearly a decade, Florida will be officially blue again!!! Its been blue for a while, its just been so close that it was easy to fake as red, a couple hundred thousand minorities wrongfully purged form the voter roles, a bunch of old people duped into voting for Pat Buchanan and some conservative thugs dressed in Brooks Brothers was enough to make it look like Fl was red, Not this time thank god! I hope to see it get Californian or New York Blue in the next 8 years.

The Post Card

This tea pot will be put on our post card for the show. I think we're calling it the 3 amigos. There's three of us doing the show. I suggested it, kind of as a joke but they liked it. Nobody who was present at that time had ever heard of the 3 amigos so I guess it just sounds nice. Personally, it makes me chuckle a little, but I like it.

Working in the shop

Here's some pictures of stuff that needs to be bisque fired. What looks like a small tea pot and a very large tea pot. I'm saying its a pitcher, not a tea pot.

Thus Far

Whew, So I've been adding up what I've made so far and I think I've got about 47 pieces, 56 if I add in the rice bowls I made two months ago that didn't come out all that good. I don't want to add them, but either way that's a lot for an amateur like myself.

Thus far I've got:

• 13 coffee mugs (2 sets of 5 one odd ball and a pair)
• 7 yunomi (one set of 5, and a pair)
• 7 non-related beer mugs
• 4 0r 5 tea pots
• 4 large jars
• 2 large pitchers
• 1 small pitcher
• 6 medium sized vases
• 2 semi-large bowls/platters >2k
• 1 small jar
• and a handful of miscellaneous stuff, a couple of very small vases, etc.

I guess I could round it up to 50-something.

Things that I don't have that I should have are as follows:

• Large "ramen" size bowls 750g to 1k
• Tokuri and ochoko (that's sake bottle and cups) small stuff, off the hump
• sets of beer cups 400g
• large platter style bowls <=2k
• katakuchi, (two kinds, could be any size)I'll just show you a picture later on at some point...
• and anything else I'm not thinking about right now...

This list is of stuff that I am reasonably sure I can make, like it's all in the range of things I've made in the past. Things out side of that range that would be good to make would be plates, I've made a total of 1 (one) plate in my entire life, and I don't want to start now. I know I should, it's just something I'm totally not interested in at all, even though my wife keeps bugging me to make some square ones for the house. Personally I like tall things, not short flat things.

So, anyways let's say I make two sets of 750g bowls, that's about 8k's of clay or 60 skins, I hate to drop a lot of money at once for some reason, and I don't think I can sell them for more than 15 bucks a piece just because its my first show, and I can't charge all that much, and then I don't really have anywhere to store that much clay, plus I don't really look forward to wedging all that clay. I think I hear the world's smallest violin playing now. What else? let's say I make 3 to be realistic tokuri sets, and 2(?) beer mug sets, I find making them boring usually. I can probably make 3 large platters and as for katakuchi, I don't know... lets say one set of tall, and one set of short. Okay that's an additional 31 things give or take. Not exactly enough to put me into the 100 range. Ideally I'd like to have about 110~120 things made because I know stuff ain't gonna come out of the kiln looking all that good or things will break etc. So what should I make to fill out the roster...? Any suggestions?

I was thinking of making those lidded domburi from an earlier post but I don't know if I have time to make something as labor intensive, and time consuming (I need to make in matching sets, something that's not my strong suit) same goes for wine glasses and more tea pots. The firing cycle is about 1 to 2 months from bone dry to glaze fired so I've basically got to make up a ton of stuff in the next two weeks or so in order to insure that it all gets fired before the show. I'll probably make another set of yunomi, and a set of coffee mugs. If I did that I'd have 18 coffee mugs and 12 yunomi! seems like a lot of cups, still in total about 41 things, and still short.

Today

Today I made about 17 pieces but kept only 13. I was working on a set of small 400g bowls and I must have made 10 to get 5 that are about identical. I also made a semi-tall narrow neck vase 1.5k I also kept two of the small bowls that didn't make the cut. I don't know if I can use them in the show because they'll be sticking out like oddballs, but they'll be good for experimenting with glaze. I also made 2 beer cups. It's a design that we don't have in the US, but here in Japan people like to drink beer from ceramic cups, usually they aren't glazed on the inside. Personally I think beer tastes better in one of these, kind of like the way beer tastes better in bottle than in a can, and so does a British friend of mine who certainly doesn't feel compelled to say so. I'll take a picture later on so you guys in the states can see what I mean. I also made a really small tea pot, it might turn out to be too small after it shrinks, at which point I guess it'll become a decorative piece as opposed to functional ware. By the way, everything I've made and am trying to make for this show is functional ware. Lastly I made two matching tea cups for the small tea pot.

Today I tried what I think was a new clay body, our studio has a really large selection of clay bodies to choose from. I usually just use the same thing which is a 50/50 mix of Kyo-Aka and reclaim clay from the community slurry bucket. Kyo-Aka means red clay from Kyoto aka Kyoto red, its super smooth, like cream cheese, there's a word that describes it, but I forgot what it is! It's common among my friends to forget English or to use jumbled up English (as is apparent from reading this blog!!), but its weird to me for some reason I've forgotten several pottery related words... Anyways, Kyo-Aka and reclaim, I'm a po'boy, and frankly it's hard for me to accept spending 10 bucks for one kilo of clay! For you US guys, that's about a ball of clay the size of a grapefruit. The reclaim runs for 5 skins a kilo, so I guess it's a deal. Mixed together they make a pretty decent throwing body, but its far from consistent or ideal, and sad to say but Kyo-Aka does not like to stay stuck to its self, so I have to be extra careful when attaching handles, and things like that. I usually let everything slow dry for like a week or more before air drying to bone dry.

Anyways, I was making wine glasses two weeks ago, and for that I wanted white and clean clay to get it thin, I honestly don't remember which white body I used for those, but I was planning to make a set of them today so I bought 3k's of this white body called Ky0-Shiro, aka Kyoto white. I just want to say this is the mother bleeping (sorry I think I have kids who read this) bomb! Hot dang! I'm in love with it. It's awesome, it's so smooth, smooth like silk. I wish I could use this stuff exclusively. When you stretch it it doesn't crack like my mix does, it's like pulling taffy, one down side to it is it gets weak when thin (I like to get thin) and can't support much inconsistency in the the clay thickness, like a thick lip on a bowl for example. Never the less, it made me happy.

Good Glaze Gone Bad

I guess this happens to every potter. Glaze troubles, the first was a new glaze called Bi Doro, kind of glassy and green, it looked really interesting on other peoples pots, who had dipped twice, what happened?

The second one is my favorite glaze, Shiro-Matto, but I've noticed that after being used in daily life it will start to show cracks! Arugh! So sad.... That can be considered an interesting feature of the glaze to some but I was taught that this makes it unsafe for food. Se la vie. Also on this run of large bowls it had these little bubbles scattered around, making them even less food safe. So sad to see a good glaze go bad like that, what to do?

Shino

Hi, to the millions of you out there who read this blog religiously you will certainly recall my mention of the shino glaze that we have at my studio, I'm sure many a sleepless night was spent wondering what said shino could possibly look like, well this is it, anticlimactic? Yeah. Its a shame, it doesn't run at all, those drip marks are from when I dipped it, yeah I meant to do that, I thought maybe if it was thicker, it might do something interesting like pin hole or crawl, nothing. I've noticed that it acts like a fire wall to the most runny of glazes too, glazes will not over run into it, and if its over or under another glaze it just freezes it and they stay exactly in the same place as where they were before firing. I've even noticed that if you scrape it when its wet to almost totally dry, the scratches don't soften or move at all! like you can get it to stand up off you pot quite a bit, how far can I get it will be my next experiment. Also I've noticed that this shino is WHITE. Like it will not orange unless you put a minuscule film like amount on you pot, and the iron in an iron oxide wash or the clay body won't affect it unless it's a "red" clay and even then it has to be applied really thin. One last thing, I've only fired it reduction, maybe oxidation is the way to go, stop fighting the whiteness of the glaze and try and use it...

I guess part of me wants to say that it's a boring shino, but instead I'll say its a very challenging shino with a lot of properties that are different from my expectations of what shino is supposed to do.

Here is a mug,

I've been working on mugs lately, this is actually the first one I made (in about two years) its a kind of prototype, since this one I've made 10 or 15 I can't remember off the top of my head, I need to make some more, I've given out my first 5 as gifts and I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about the thumb rest, It's kind of funny because I thought it was a bit affectatious, (I sometimes get carried away I think, and there's that whole thing about not over working something...) and dropped it after the first 5 mugs, So anyways, I'm going to add it back to my future mugs. I think people like coffee mugs, so I'm hoping they'll be popular.

First A Quick Look At Some Old Stuff

looking at these pictures on the Internet I can see how bad the lighting is in my make shift photo box. I'll have to try to fix that.

The first object is actually small, about the size of a soy sauce container, and although I was thinking sake bottle, everyone who's looked at it has said "soy sauce."

The next one is just a bowl.

The third one is a large lidded Jar, about 2 kilos of clay. It has a kind of white slip on the outside that I recently discovered in the studio. It has interesting properties, it can be really grainy and course, or smooth depending on how you apply it its very fun to use, and good for spontaneity. I really like it a lot. I've been applying it a lot lately with so far favorable results.

The next one is a small pitcher, about 1.5 kilos, but a large portion of it has been faceted off, and randomly painted with the slip, and if you look closely, a dragonfly too.

Lastly, a small otsumame bowl made of porcelain, the color looks a little better in real life, it's white on white on a white background and kind of difficult for my camera to capture.

Living for the weekend...

I was informed that the Kangen (Reduction firing) kiln will be opened this Friday. So hopefully, I'll have some good pictures to put up this weekend. If not, I'll have some bad picts anyways, either way it'll be a learning experience.

Till then,

In The Studio

I think every potter can relate to the weird creative cycle that one goes through as a potter, or as any artist for that matter. Two weeks ago I was on the up swing, I felt like I could make anything, and I was real productive, last week it was like the opposite. I had difficulty in getting it together. I broke things unnecessarily and felt like my name was mud... Anyways, every cloud has a silver lining, I just push through these times and this week wasn't totally a wash, I made some stemmed "wine cups" although the cup is a little small and will get even smaller after firings, it was a proof of concept. I threw 300 grams and left about a one and a half inch of clay on the bottom and then trimmed it to the stem shape. They all look kind of funky, but not bad for a first try. Here they are about bone dry. You can see one that I trimmed through on the left. I also made this ring shape, and the last one is Just some Jars and a funky pitcher I made while I was "in the up swing." The pictures are small because I took them on my cell.

Dragonfly

Well...I was feeling a little frustrated by the glazes that I found at the studio. They're interesting but sometimes difficult to understand, so I started experimenting with iron-oxide, aka bengara, and a glaze called shiro-matto. I think this dragonfly looks pretty good, so I've started doing quite a few things with dragonflies painted on them right now.

In my experience the difference between glazes in the US and Japan has been quite significant, some "Japanese" glazes that are popular in the US can be very different here. Kind of like sushi i guess, there aren't any california rolls here if you were wondering... not that anyone would miss it, the sushi here is better than you can imagine.

Anyways, you could also think of raku as an example, but the one that surprised me most was Shino. The Shino I was familiar with back in the states was a carbon trap shino, and it was beautiful, beautiful and dirty, and unpredictable, etc. I know there are a lot of different Shinos, but the one at my studio is nothing like what I've seen in the US. It's weird the things you miss living in a foreign country, I really miss carbon trap shino and this ash crystal mat glaze. I really want a crystal mat glaze, but I can't for the life of me figure out what nepheline syenite is in Japanese. Anyone out there know?

A Tea Pot, a pair of small Domburi, and a square Tea Pot

These are things that I've made over the last year or so, I guess in a way they're test pieces for what I'm doing now. What do ya think?

Domburi

This is a Domburi, I'm thinking of making a set (5) or two, for the show, I really don't know what to make to be honest. And I think this is a little small, usually the ones i see around are usually bigger, like the size of a small Ramen bowl. This one is 500 grams if I remember correctly, I also threw the lid from a 500 gram ball of clay and just trimmed the vast majority away, its easier for me to throw right off the bat than it is to throw off the hump, which is what everybody here does, maybe I'll go into that some other time.

Maybe this size is best for ocha-zuke, a kind of rice and hot tea soup. I'm a little nervous, I've always just done what I like to do, and to be honest, being from the West, my sense of design, ascetic, and even what what I think counts as a "bowl" just can't be taken for granted. I don't know how many times people have asked me, what's that? When I've thought to myself, clearly its a bowl! Its a little stressful sometimes, but maybe its an advantage to be different as much as its a handicap, or at least its probably better to think like that. My Sensei who is helping me tremendously, and without her I wouldn't be doing this at all, she's given me some round about pointers, like people like sets of things that are all the same shape and size, and also, just do what ever you you feel like. So, okay she's the one who asked me to do this, so she must think my work is "good enough." By the way, I made this photo box in a closet in my apt.

Hello. World.

Well this is it, the first post. So, Let me sum up what this blog is supposed to be about. It's mostly going to be a pottery blog. I'm an amateur, or maybe, affectionado is a better term, but anyways, I'm going to be doing my first gallery in December (wow) and at the suggestion of my older sis, I'm going to document what I'm doing. Did I mention that I live in Japan? That has a lot to do with why I'm doing this. I took up pottery about 6 years ago, give or take, and I really fell in love, like it was love at first touch. I caught the "bug" as some put it. (My Sensei recently called me an otaku!) But I've only ever done it as a hobby, and really only regularly for a while, like in other words, I haven't been doing this nonstop for 6 years. I say that because I just want to clarify my amateur-ness. Really I feel like a beginner. But anyways, I'm doing my first gallery in December, that's in two months!! I need 100 pieces for the show. and right now I'm at about 30-something. So, I got to really bust my hump, no pun intended. This experience is already really expanding my abilities, and the way I think about pottery. For example, its not enough to simply have 100 pieces, It's important for me that they somehow fit together to form a body of work, they have to have some continuity. Anyways, while that's what I want, I'm struggling just to make sets of bowls that are all the same size... I want to say a lot more, and I'm sure I will as the posts start rolling in.