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Frugal Pottery for Earth Day

Tools made for tooth care can be saved from the trash can and re-purposed as pottery tools.

Potters can have a very special relationship to Earth Day, frugal potters especially. Frugal potting not only embraces the gifts the Earth gives us, but also the tenets of Recycle, Renew, Reuse.

More Earth Day Pottery Tips

Pottery Spotlight10

Q & A - Colored Slip, Anyone?

Wednesday May 11, 2011

Q: I work in a pottery where we work with slips (blue, turquoise and yellow) ... I would like to introduce some new colors to our range.... I would love to find a recipe that works well and then use stains to make lots of different colored slips.... We use earthenware clay.

A: This is a pretty solid slip base recipe (learn how to read them) I've used a lot on high-fire ware, so it may not fit quite right with your earthenware. If you do have trouble with it being underfired, reduce the flint and up the neph sye. I'd begin by testing a 10% adjustment on those two base ingredients.

Slip Base:
kaolin                          21% by dry weight
ball clay                      21
nephaline syenite   26
flint (silica)                32

Additions for Color:

Blue: 5% cobalt carbonate
White: 15% ulttrox (or similar product)
Brown: 26% red iron oxide
Tan: 21% rutile
Green: 5 % chromium oxide
Purple: 2% cobalt carbonate, 3% manganese dioxide (warning: toxic when raw)
Mid- to High-Fire Reduction Red: 11% copper carbonate

Another possibility is to get a white low-fire body that is compatible with your earthenware --- same shrinkage, close to same absorption. Use that as your slip base. (I use the slurry that develops as I throw with low-fire white.) You can also -- if available -- use Mason body stains instead of or in addition to oxide colorants.

To add dry stain to a slip, slowly stir the stain into hot water -- I use a whisk. Strain the liquid through a 200 mesh screen, then stir into the slip. This helps prevent stain from clumping, giving a much more even distribution and less speckling.

Stereotype Gremlins

Tuesday May 10, 2011

I have just been reading an article in the digital version of June's issue of Craft Reports, "Crafts Business Stereotyping; Are You Guilty of It?" The article itself is great and thoughtful reading. However, I found myself jumping off and wondering about stereotyping within ourselves as we work in our medium of choice.

Do you ever feel that your pottery isn't quite good enough if it does not look like pots you've seen produced by a potter you respect? Have you ever felt like a push-me-pull-you (the two-headed llama from the Dr. Dolittle stories) when it comes to craft versus art form? Have you ever wondered if you will ever develop "a style"?

I know I certainly have had my times of dealing with each one of these questions. So, in reading this article, it dawned on me. Perhaps what I have been doing is stereotyping what "good pottery" is. I've let assumptions (often unconscious ones) lead me around. I've allowed them to make me question my work --- in an unproductive way. (I'm all for giving myself some pretty tough critiques but I like to be the one doing the evaluation, not some nebulous idea that does not really exist, nor fit with who I am as a potter or artist.)

How about you? Do you think it may just happen --- just on occasion, perhaps --- that pottery-stereotype gremlins dance in the moonlight of your mind?

Q & A - Mold Reactions to Clay?

Monday May 9, 2011

Q: I am a high school ceramics teacher and today I received a call from one of the parents stating that her son can no longer be in my class because he is having an allergic reaction to the mold and bacteria that is in the clay.... Have you ever come across this?

A: Yes, people can have mold reactions to clay that has mold in it. In fact I too (along with a few other potters I know) have allergic reactions to mold in my clay. Usually for it to kick up for myself, though, there has to be visible mold --- such as you get when a bag of moist clay has been hanging around for a fair amount of time.

When the mold begins to grow in the bag or bucket (causing discolorations), you can spray the outer surface of the clay with bleach-water (1/4 cup per gallon of water up to 1 part bleach to 9 parts water) to kill the surface mold. Usually, the mold won't have grown down into the clay too much. (although given time, it will.)

I also recommend cleaning reclamation buckets with bleach-water once all the clay has been removed from them. This cuts way down on mold growth in recycled clay scraps.

If you are mixing your own clay, you can use bleach-water to clean the interior of the mixer. You can also cut down on mold by adding a small amount of bleach to the water used to wet the dry clay. (The chlorine volatilizes out and will not effect forming or firing results.) The same goes for reclaiming dried clay scrapes.

Common mold symptoms include respiratory distress (coughing, sneezing, shortness of breath, asthma, etc.), nose and throat irritation, nasal or sinus congestion, runny nose, eye distress (itchiness, redness, burning, watery), headaches, sensitivity to light, and skin rashes, redness, or irritations. For further info, I'd suggest you read Mold Allergy by our Guide to Allergies, Daniel More, MD.

A Potter's Happy Mother's Day!

Sunday May 8, 2011

Even if you don't live in the States (and therefore aren't doing a "Remember  Your Mom" day today), it is never a bad idea to remember and thank your mother for all she has done for you. Therefore, I offer this potter's tribute to her mom:

Mom...

Thank you for your forbearance when I tried to bring loose handfulls of clay in from the pasture. Especially since some of it may not have been clay.

Thank you for patiently explaining to me that crayfish and tadpoles like their own home better than living in an old coffee can.

Thank you for guiding me to change horsey and clay clothes in the official mudroom, thus saving both of our sanity.

Thank you for teaching me the proper way to wash dishes and scrub out toilet bowls by hand. I use those same techniques now in cleaning my buckets and other studio equipment.

Thank you for not laughing at my first attempts to make dishes and little animals out of that aforementioned pasture clay.

Thank you for not freaking out too badly when the pony tried (multiple times) to get in the house to visit me.  Well, at least not after the first time when he made it into the kitchen.

Thank you for teaching me that changing your clothes is not as horrible a thing as this little kid thought.

Ditto for washing up.

Ditto for brushing my teeth.

Thank you for not telling me I was crazy to walk nine miles in a snow storm to get to my Ceramics II final critique. (After I had slid the car into a ditch.)

..... All in all, Thanks Mom, for putting up with me!

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