Medallion bowls

I carved a little stamp to make my own medallions on yet another soup bowl. Seattle Pottery Supply's Shadow Green glaze brings it all together. Iron Red glaze accents the medallions and dripped a little as I had hoped. One of these days I'll make a set of bowls for myself and stop using my ancient set of Corelleware. This reminds me of a reply a carpenter/builder gave me once. After seeing a beautiful example of his work at a friends house, I commented to him, "Your house must look amazing. Where do You live?" He said, "a trailer home in a trailer park." He said that when he got home from work, he did not want to build or fix anything. For now, it's soup bowls for everyone else but me!

Never put an egg in your pocket

We have a small flock of chickens and I needed to bring one egg in the house to refrigerate. Who needs a basket for one egg. I'll remember I've got an egg in my pocket. Well one distraction led to another and I get to the bathroom sink to wash my hands and I hear a crunch! Now I remember....ughhhh. At least very fresh eggs have strong membranes and I was able to scrape most of it out of my pocket and put it in a nearby cup. Guess what I'm having for lunch? I had to share. Hope your day starts out better.

Soup Toureen Bowl

We've got almost 50 bowls completed and we have 50 more to make. I don't feel like I've even hit my stride in bowl creativity. As I was bringing in this pot for firing, I received some encouraging compliments , even in its greenware state. To "handle" and stamp a piece, I usually have to work it at home to get it to the correct leather hard stage. It turned into a real cutie and I will try to make more of that shape. The glazes are Seattle Pottery Supply Dark Mottled Blue painted generously 3X in the interior and lip and a pouring of Lagunas Celadon Froth on the exterior. I put a little Iron Red on the square around the leaf but one coat wasn't enough. I will have to revisit where the Celadon and the Blue meet on the lip. I like how that looks. All at cone 5/6 in a Skutt kiln.

Glaze fix

A previous, temporary instructor of the senior center had purchased a large amount of Laguna Catalina Crackle, without testing. Bad idea. It ran like it was in a marathon, and blistered leaving sharp craters. The sludge that settled in the bottom of the bucket is impossible to mix by hand. Not exactly user friendly. Thanks to an article in Pottery Making Illustrated July/Aug 2013, In the Studio "Crazed" written by Deanna Ranlett, the glaze shall not go to waste. I tested two possible solutions suggested in the article and both worked...the addition of Gertsley Borate or EPK. The trick was to get the proportions correct since I am dealing with a bucket of wet glaze. So my testing measurement went like this.... mix 1/4 cup of drained glaze sludge with 1 teaspoon of EPK mixed in 1/8 cup of glaze liquid. Repeat until empty peanut butter jar is full. I will have to expand my measurements since I've got a large bucket to amend. This bowl, for soup of course, shows the results. The bare buff colored stoneware becomes an attractive toasted color next to this glaze. And that crackle finish makes it worth all the trouble.

Drippy Soup Bowls

At the fundraiser, I noticed that people were looking for "his" and "her" soup bowls. So even though no two bowls will be identical, I have decided to give myself the challenge of making some bowls as similar as possible. Colonial White glaze over Brown Mottled makes for nice drippy rims on this pair.

Mug of many glazes

From bottom to top, the glazes are, Burnt Orange, Iron Red, Brown Mottled, Colonial White and a drizzle of Catalina Crackle in the middle.

4 new glazes

The Draper Senior Center's soup bowl fund raiser was so successful this past November, we are already planning for this November. Since we will be making 100 bowls this time around, we need a good supply of glazes. And that is what I recently ordered. Its almost like Christmas again! It is great to discuss other glazes and all things pottery with other potters because that is where I learned of Seattle Pottery Supply and their glazes. (You would never know how good their glazes are from their web site images, however.) Upper left and continuing clockwise is Mottled Dark Blue, Shadow Green, Burnt Orange and Brown Mottled. They are very paintable and stable at cone 5/6 although all but Shadow Green can be fired at 04. More tests to be done, always! The overlaps show potential for color variations. The random spots and rim are Laguna's Colonial White which I find plays nicely with others. Lol. This is more fun than I should be allowed to have. Now to make more bowls.