Coffee Pottery

This is a view from the window in the back of our house in Henderson, NV. If you look closely you can see our back fence.

More pictures to come.

I like to experiment. (You get to do that when you have your own kiln!)

In my latest experiment I used some copper wire. I had a spool of grounding wire, the kind you use to ground electrical outlets in your house. I looked up the melting point of copper and found that it was lower than cone 10 temperatures so I wondered, \"What if you just wrap some wire around a pot and then cover it with clear cone 10 glaze?\"

I tried it. Not a good idea!

The copper not only melted but it spattered everywhere in the kiln. Where large pieces fell on the kiln shelf, it burnt craters into the shelf.

One of the pots in the firing did come out with a pleasing results. It was a Santa Barbara (plain white) clay bowl with clear glaze on it. The splattered copper made small black to brown speckles on the bowl.

Claudio was here for a longer period of time this year. He offered a sculpture workshop that was 4 sessions over 4 weeks. He taught us how to create a human bust starting with three thrown cylinders.

I finished the one shown above, a man, and I am still working on another, a woman. I hope to fire the first one soon. They need to dry a long time because the clay is very thick at some places. I'll update this with a picture or two when they are fired.

The workshop with Claudio was everything I had expected and more. This is the third time I have taken his workshop (once per year for the past 3 years -- he travels from his home in Italy to take a "vacation" here). I've learned something every time.

This time he brought with him sets of trimming tools that he designed. Those tools allow you to trim the pot when the pot is drier. That means you can trim it thinner without causing the form to deform.

I also noticed this time that he builds his own trimming platform every time. He had done this the other years but that tid-bit of methodology had not impressed me before. I can see now that this is important.

The picture shows a few of the pots I created at the workshop. (The wine glass is for size reference.) The picher looks a lot like the ones Claudio created.

This coming weekend I will have the privilege to attend a workshop conducted by Claudio Reginato.  Claudio is a third generation Italian potter.  He has won the European pottery throwing contests several times.
See http://www.ceramics.it/reginato/about.html  and http://www.fromthepines.net/claudio/.  He is amazing.

Our dog biscuit jar broke. (We don't know how. I came home one night and noticed that it had been glued back together.) We replaced it with this one. It's slightly taller.

Believe it or not, I used the same glazes on this as on our first cookie jar. I must not have applied the same amount of dark glaze around the jar. I really liked the way the first one came out. This one is ok but I liked the other one more.

This is a nice cookie jar. The clay body is Santa Barbara, a white stoneware clay. We use it for holding dog biscuits.

This is a basic, large-mouth vase. It's about 8.5 inches high and 5 inches in diameter. The inside and bottom part of the outside are glazed using "Ida's White". The top of the outside was dipped in "Tenmoku".

This vase illustrates a couple of firing techniques - "once firing" and using sawdust as a 'glaze' material.

The bone dry pot was placed inside another (already high-fired) pot, called a saggar pot. The saggar pot was then filled with sawdust and covered. The kiln was brought to cone 10 temperature and then shut down. This was done in a leisurly manner -- not a fast firing. The pot inside the saggar pot did not reach cone 10 temperatures. I know that because the pot would not hold water - it is still porous enough to let water eventually seep through.

The dark color towards the bottom is the result of the sawdust burning. The brown spots are the result of some dirt that was in the sawdust.

I solved the water problem by melting some wax and pouring it into the vase. Only the bottom portion of the vase is porous. The top portion is solid.