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Clay and Glazes
I recently began using a
rudimentarily refined and indigenous clay body and glaze materials. The clay for
turning is, in part, dug here on the farm. I blend “Stony Meadow Clay” with
crude clay from a deposit that runs from western Pennsylvania through southern
Indiana. I initially used a body I blended from commercially available
ingredients but found them to be a little too “slick”.
My glaze materials include the
same indigenous clay mentioned above, wood ashes from my aunt and uncle’s wood
stove- screened for fine particle size, ground limestone for calcium- a powerful
flux, several different feldspars, bone ash for phosphorous, and iron oxide as a
colorant. My glazes are recipes I’ve developed myself or modified recipes
borrowed from my apprenticeship tradition.
Wood
Much of the wood I use is off cuts
of hemlock from timber felled locally by Robert Kilmer and Sons Lumber. It
arrives in large bundles of slabs up to fifteen feet in length. A significant
but smaller proportion of the wood I use comes from right here on the farm. Each
year my uncle and I select hardwoods for thinning; great care is taken in
choosing trees that are not otherwise good for lumber and to spread the cutting
over the entire hundred acres to promote healthier growth of the woods on the
farm.
The choice of woods is an
important one for potters; in addition to behaving differently during
combustion, the wood ash that fuses on the pots during the firing will vary
dramatically in color and texture from species to species and region to region.
I spend up to one quarter of my time maintaining my chain saw, cutting,
splitting and stacking wood. With the help of my current assistant, Zoë Poster,
we move over twenty cords of wood in one year.
Turning
I make a range of utilitarian
wares suitable for use in dining room, kitchen or garden. The pots range in size
from small juice cups and tea bowls to meter high storage jars. It takes 3500
pounds of clay to make the 300-600 pieces that it takes to fill the kiln. Each
production cycle begins slowly as I settle back into my rhythm at the wheel. As
the cycle progresses and my ware racks fill the pace picks up. I am inspired by
the impending deadline of firing and sales and, more importantly, because each
run of pots inspires the next. The more pots I make the more pots I want to
make. Much of my work is single fired and raw glazed. The tail end of each day
in the shop is spent glazing the previous day’s work.
Kiln
I began gathering materials for
the wood fired kiln at Stony Meadow Pottery in the final year of my
apprenticeship. While there were some minor purchases, (used kiln furniture,
ceramic fiber insulation, pyrometer probes, mortar supply) my budget was fairly
limited. The lion's share of my scrounging came during a two week work camp in
southern Ohio. With the help of some good friends as well as the staff at Cedar
Heights Clay Co. in Oak Hill, OH I palletized over twenty tons of used fire
brick. The brick are salvaged from old kilns used to fire firebrick- a high
temperature endeavor indeed, so many of the brick at the site had been rendered
unusable by exposure to extreme temperature. For every brick I was able to stack
for use in my kiln approximately twenty had to be examined and discarded. All in
all we picked up close to 80,000 brick to find the 4,000 brick I needed to build
this kiln. Kiln construction began in April with excavation for and pouring of
the frost footer. The kiln was completed just in time for its first firing in
September 2002.
more details on the kiln's construction
Loading & Firing
I fire between four and six times
per year. Each firing is the culmination of several months of preparation and is
responsible for up to a quarter of my annual income. With so much riding on each
firing I approach the process with caution and reverence. First the pots are
thoroughly dried as some of them are loaded into the kiln only a few days after
they were turned and larger pots retain traces of moisture for weeks after they
are completed.
Once the pots are deemed dry
(usually after 12-16 hours) the kiln is allowed to climb above 200 degrees for
the first time and climbs slowly but steadily at no more than 50 degrees an hour
for the next half day or so. The pots will explode if they are heated too
quickly at this stage.
After the kiln climbs above 1000
degrees the firing can go much more quickly (150 degrees per hour) until top
temperature is achieved. The control of the atmosphere in the kiln at these
stages will dramatically affect the colors in the bare clay and glazes. At
approximately 2200 degrees the ash from the wood fuel begins to melt and form a
natural glaze on the bare clay. The kiln is held at this temperature for up to
40 hours to encourage the development of this effect. The last 6-10 hours of the
firing are spent side stoking to work the heat evenly into the back end of the
kiln. Four days from the strike of the first match the temperature is even from
front to back and all the glazes have matured. The kiln is then “clammed” up and
the four crews are finally allowed to rest for the three days it takes the kiln
to cool.
The unloading of the kiln is a
private and reflective time. Each load of pots is the next installment in my
identity as an artist as well as an experiential lesson about what works, what
doesn’t and what to try differently next time. It is simultaneously exhilarating
and emotionally exhausting as I discover more about the potter I’m becoming with
each finished piece I unload.
Presentation
I host three to four kiln opening
sales each year. It is a chance to reconnect with friends with whom I share at
least one trait in common: we like to look at and talk about pots. It's important
to me for my customers to come here for several reasons: I place a high value on
the face to face transaction between maker and user, it's important to me that my
customers see my kiln and workspace and have a sense of where and how their new
pot is made, and customers that come to a kiln opening sale get first pick. I
work with a very limited number of galleries at present; while they support my
overall interest in spreading the word and getting my pots into the hands and
homes of people who will use them I much prefer knowing where my work is going
to live…
(See the schedule page for
upcoming events.) |
