Tag Archives: pottery lessons

Sheep Building

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 This year I have sold all of my small animals, except for one lone piggy rattle. It’s not really the pig’s fault, he has been sitting on the peninsula in the kitchen, not out in the gallery.

Time to start building some new clay animals. I always go back to the sheep first. 

His head and body are hollowed out.

I apply the “wool” with a tiny Kemper extruder tool, using what I call the spaghetti die. Some day I might find another use for the tool, and the other dies that came with it. So far it’s only been useful for creating sheep.

Despite the hollow body, his “wool” makes him quite thick. I will let him dry a good long time before going into the bisque kiln.
Next on the list… piggy rattles.

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Winter Blooms

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The camellia bushes are starting to bloom in our yard. This New Hampshire native is still amazed, even after living here in North Carolina for over five years, that these flowers bloom late fall, into early winter! There are about five of these bushes around our house. They are loaded with buds. Each day I go out and check to see what has bloomed and what is on the verge.

The rain today changed our plans. We were all set to do another cone 10 glaze firing in our raku kiln, but it was way too wet to manage. One day won’t set us back too badly and it’s not worth the risk of making mistakes in judgement because you are cold, wet, and tired. The weather will be better tomorrow and we will be able to fire with clear heads. Everything is glazed and loaded and we will get an early start. Our last orders will ship on Monday… arriving for the Christmas holiday with no time to spare. We are living on the edge, like most potters this time of year.

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Progress!!!

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Our kiln move is starting to seem real!!

Jeff and his brother John built the forms this week to pour the concrete pad for our kiln. We are so grateful that the temperatures have been with us to do this outdoor work. Today our man with the tractor, Keith Cagle, came and did some grade work for us. Keith is a hard working guy with reasonable rates. We are so glad he was recommended to us. Our budget is limited (very limited) and we appreciate all he has done for us.
When our work is done here, Jeff has gone every evening to the log cabin to start breaking down the kiln. We need pallets to load the brick on and after posting on facebook, of our need, we had lots of offers from area potters, to borrow pallets. What a great community we live in!!!!
While Jeff and I work hard to fulfill holiday orders and prepare for kiln building, Sophie cat has taken advantage of us…

This is the first time I have EVER caught her sleeping on the coffee table!

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Holiday Open House Weekend in Seagrove

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Put on your flip-flops and head to Seagrove, NC this weekend. Temps are predicted to be in the 70’s and lots of pottery shops are celebrating the season with a Holiday Open House. Listings for all the events can be found on the Seagrove Potters facebook page. Be sure to “Like” it while you are there.

Jeff and I will be serving blueberry bars and homemade brownies, along with hot coffee… perhaps I should rethink that and make it ice coffee! Jeff has some really nice wood fired tea pots and tea ware in the shop, along with the Gong Fu Tea Set in the photo above.

The piggy banks have been flying out of here this month, even the ones that didn’t have wings. Out of the kiln this week came these two sweet piggies that weren’t spoken for. I am sure they will find new homes by the end of the weekend.
Here are the details:

Michèle Hastings & Jeff Brown Pottery
505 East Main Street
Seagrove, NC
You will find our new home in between Pottery Junction and the Big Red Barn
Saturday, Dec 12th 10am to 5pm
Sunday, Dec 13th 12pm to 5pm

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Jeff saves the day!

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What a week it has been. Remember our firing over the weekend, the one with all of the Christmas orders? When we un-bricked the door on Monday, half the kiln was filled with hideous glazes. It seems that the bottom reached temperature and the rest was spotty. We also weren’t sure if our new batch of green glaze had some bad gerstley borate in it. I just wanted to puke. My mind raced ahead to letting everyone know that they wouldn’t have their pigs for Christmas and having to refund boatloads of money. Jeff told me to calm down.

He was going to re-fire everything in the raku kiln. We couldn’t re-fire in the bigger gas kiln, because we are getting ready to have the tank moved and we pretty much drained it with this firing.

Here are examples of the re-fire results in the raku kiln…

I love the way this glaze combination re-fired! The orange is beautiful.
Jeff also got great copper reds from this little kiln. He had some tests that were a rich, deep red.
The green pigs were packed and shipped before I took photos, but they all looked awesome.
Nuka white always looks good. This double bowl was fired in the raku kiln. Luckily all the whites in the bigger gas kiln also looked fine. What a relief. I told Jeff he is the kiln wizard.
I have spent the last couple of days packing pots. Late yesterday I took a car load to the post office, just before they were about to close. When I got out of my car, there was a despondent looking woman, sitting in her car with the door open. She asked if could help her. Of course my first thought was, she is going to ask me for money.
I was wrong.
She said that she needed to pay bills, her English wasn’t good, and she didn’t know how to write the dollar amounts in english. No one in the post office would help her. I told her I would bring my boxes inside, and then I would see what I could do to help.
She had three bills. Her checks were all signed, she just needed me to hand write the dollar amounts and find on the bill, who to make the check payable to. It took maybe five minutes.
She was so very thankful and appreciative.
We all hear so much negativity towards non-english speaking people in our country. Most commonly heard is if you are living in the United States, learn to speak english. 
My grandparents spoke both English and French. My great grandparents lived in this country for a long time and never learned to speak English. I wonder if they experienced prejudices back then.
The Kiln Gods (and Jeff) saved me from a major stress this week. It was a small token of repayment for me to help someone else who was distressed and needing a helping hand.
…and that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

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Making a list, checking it twice…

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Friday was a glaze marathon. I had to glaze 9 salt pigs, 12 regular piggy banks, 1 personalized piggy, and 2 cow banks… along with other miscellaneous pots. Each was a special order, in a specific glaze combination. I made a paper list and crossed them off as I completed them. THEN I double checked them all with my orders list on Etsy. Let me tell you, that’s when having a smart phone comes in handy. No running to my computer to check.
Each pig got a little note underneath him, to remind me of the glaze combos. This was our first round of glazing in our new space. We finally set the walkout basement up to accommodate glaze mixing and glazing. There is still a lot of tweaking to be done, but it feels like it’s going to work out great. The new windows and doors let in lots of bright sun light from morning until early afternoon. 
This is our last firing in the kiln at the log cabin. This meant we had to carefully pack the pots and drive them a mile down the road. We managed to do it with only one mug getting a spot of glaze knocked off! Determined to fire on Saturday, we worked until 1:30 in the morning, had a quick dinner (or was that really breakfast?) at 2:00 am, and fell into bed, exhausted, around 3:00 am.
At 7:30 Jeff got up and lit the first burner. It was a big hurrah when cone 10 went down at 6:30 pm!
Toes and fingers crossed for a great firing. Lots people’s Christmas presents are in this kiln.
The Japanese maple at the log cabin is looking lovely. Jeff brought home some cuttings to display in the gallery. Seems so strange, to a New Hampshire gal, to still have leaves on trees in December.

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The End of an Era

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Sassafras Tree Artisan’s in Northwood, was where our New Hampshire pottery studio was located. The studio was in the back of the barn that housed the country home decor and gift shop. Prior to Sassafras, it was home to Northwood Pottery. There had been a pottery in the barn for over 25 years.
The current shop owner made the decision to retire this year. During our trip to New Hampshire, in October, Jeff went to help sort through the last of the pottery stuff, and pick up any inventory that hadn’t sold.

Jeff Lalish was the founder of Northwood Pottery, and in the studio was a Japanese kick wheel that belonged to him. He stopped by during the clean out, and gifted the wheel to Jeff. He is so pleased to be it’s new owner. I am sure he will use it occasionally, but I also think it will make a nice display piece in our gallery.

I have slowly started to go through the boxes of inventory and it has been quite fun to revisit work that we made over five years ago. In one of the boxes was a lovely little pot by JZ. It’s one of my favorite glaze combinations that he used. I am not sure if it qualifies as a teapot, or just a pouring vessel… either way it’s quiet little pot that speaks to me.

Sassafras is located on busy rte 4, making it a desirable commercial location. We all fear that when the owner decides to sell, the buildings will be torn down and in it’s place will be McDonald’s. The landscape of Northwood will be forever changed.

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Resourcefulness

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 Living the life of a potter often means that you are resourceful by both nature and necessity.

Our electric kiln for bisque firing hasn’t been wired yet. Jeff decided that we would bisque in our raku kiln. 
He created a temporary bag wall to divert the flame. It’s more time consuming to fire in the raku kiln, but it will get us by for our last glaze firing at the log cabin. Jeff has used this kiln to bisque fire large pots in the past, since it is bigger than our manual electric kiln. He is also considering a glaze firing in this kiln. There are a couple of potters in Seagrove that reduction fire to ^10 in modified electric kilns, with very good results. 
Seeing it an action again, has stirred up my desire to do more raku firings this year. After all, raku was my first love affair with pottery.

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The Second Thanksgviving

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Call me crazy, but I love to roast a turkey and cook all the sides that go with it. Thanksgiving day was spent with Jeff’s family, so on Saturday we had our second Thanksgiving feast at home. We invited a friend to join us. My grandmother’s platter, which must be over 100 years old, fits in nicely with our handmade dishes. I think the best part of the meal was enjoying it in our dining room, this is the first house that I have owned with a formal dining room!
In between the cooking I was waiting on customers in the gallery, and responding to questions from Etsy buyers. I am almost out of “in stock” piggy banks and it’s getting close to the time that I won’t be able to fill new orders for Christmas. I listed this little peach blossom piggy bank in the Etsy shop this morning. I have a feeling he won’t last too long…

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