This is my first attempt at blogging from my Motorola Droid phone.

This pot was fired at Waubonsee Community College in the anagama. 24" tall,
Standard 306 stoneware.

I finally finished up my first set of sinks, and I'm very happy with how they look. My wife and I even decided to put one in our 1/2 bath as part of our impending bathroom remodel. We'll be using the swirl pattern below, but with a celadon green glaze. It should look very nice against the dark wood countertop we'll be using.

   

Both of these are fired to cone 8 in oxidation. The blue sink is a self-rimming type, the other is a vessel sink. Both are 15.5" in diameter. It took a few tests, but I finally settled on using 16 pounds of clay to make one of these. They are thicker and heavier than I would typically make a bowl of this size, to make them a bit more durable. I can't wait to see one installed!

I spend Mondays at home with my two sons. This past Monday my 3 year old was begging to take his nap in my bedroom, rather than in his own bed like he does every day. He even started to carry his blankets and stuffed animals into my room. The more I told him 'no' the more upset he got. After several minutes he finally said "But I don't have any pottery in my room!" So off to the basement we went and picked out a few pieces from the storage room. After placing them on his bookshelves, he climbed into bed without a word and quickly fell asleep. Future potter?

The glaze tile board is done! We finally made sample tiles of all of our class glazes, showing all the possible double-dip combinations:



14 glazes, 196 possible double-dip combos. We discovered a lot of great combinations that we never would have dreamed of trying. For instance, Easter Blue is hideous as a bottom coat, but gorgeous on top of almost everything else. Same for the Dog Breath Yellow. Fun stuff. A special thank you to Chris, Jill, Soko and Linda for all their hard work making the tiles!

Thanks to everyone who has checked out the blog recently. It's been a while since I've posted, and I apologize. Unfortunately, blogging is way down on my list of things to do. Classes and kiln repair have kept me very busy for the last couple of months, which is good. I've also been busy with some new pots, like some new dinnerware designs and sinks. Yes, sinks. I met a guy who has a granite countertop business in the area, and he thought it would be great to have some handmade porcelain sinks at his shop. So I've thrown a few prototypes:

  The two on the right are vessel sinks, which will sit on top of the counter; the one on the left with the wide rim is a self-rimming type, which will sit down into the countertop. My main concern with that one is that the rim might warp in the firing, which will prevent it form sitting flat on the countertop. I'm going to be putting the self-rimming model into the 1/2 bath in my house, to work out any issues before taking any to the granite shop.

 
I've left a second foot ring in the middle around the drain hole to give some strength to that area, sink the drain pipe will be screwed on there. It's a hair shorter than the main foot, so the pot actually sits on the main foot.

A standard vessel sink is 16" in diameter, so these need to be thrown to 18.5" to allow for shrinkage. They are a tiny bit smaller than needed, but will work fine for prototypes. I used 14 pounds of clay for each. I think I'm going to up it to 16 pounds, just so I can make them a little bit larger and a little bit thicker. I would like the rim to be thicker, and I think if the wall is thicker they will be less likely to warp, or slump around the foot. I'll know more once I get these glaze fired. For the sink for my house, I wanted a smaller bowl so I don't have to offset the faucet. I used 12 pounds for that one.

I realized when making these that a typical drain pipe won't work. Most commercial sinks that are not vessel sinks have an overflow feature (that little hole up near the top of the sink), and the bottom of the sink where the drain pipe screws on is very thick, like a couple of inches or more. The drain pipe that works with the overflow sink will not work on my sinks, since they are not anywhere near that thick on the bottom. So I'll need to get a drain pipe without the overflow feature. Not a big deal, but not something I had realized before.

Hopefully these will come out the kiln successfully, and I can move forward with more designs. I'll post again when I fire them.

Here are some photos showing my process for building a large porcelain planter. The first part of this planter was made with two 12-13 pound sections, stacked, pulled and shaped while wet. These photos show me attaching another 12-13 pound ring after the first part has set up to the leather hard stage:

  
First I throw a ring, on a bat. The ring is about an inch thick. Then I score the rim of the pot.

   Next I flip over the ring, while still attached to the bat, and set it onto the rim of the pot. Then I cut the bat loose. Next I take a serrated scraper and smear the two pieces together, inside and out.

   
After smoothing out the marks left by the scraper, I clean up the lip of the pot (formerly the bottom of the ring), and then pull up the wall to thin out the ring.

   
Last, I clean up the wall with a metal rib, and then a sponge.


Finished pots drying on the table.

Here is a shot of the feet on the oval planters. The feet are just small slab pieces. After they set up, I clean up the sides with a sur-form, so there's no joint between the feet and the pot. These pots are a bit smaller than the last batch, but same design.



Here are some porcelain planters, freshly thrown. Each is about 12 pounds of clay. They will get a trimmed and notched foot, to allow for drainage under the pot. I'm thinking about doing some wax etching on the sides, possibly with some iron slip, too.



Preparation for the Garden Sale is coming along quite nicely. I'm actually several weeks ahead of where I usually am in getting planters made. I typically don't have this many pots until about a week before the sale. Today I'm going to start throwing a few really big planters, about 50 pounds each, and maybe start on the small planters. It's good to be moving this much clay again. I haven't thrown this much since last year's Garden Sale.

The planters for the Garden Sale are coming along. The first batch is in the bisque right now, and this weekend I made some oval pieces that will be great for herbs:

These are each about 15 inches long, made from Standard 306 stoneware clay. They'll be glazed and fired to cone 8 in oxidation.

After some discussion with my resident gardening expert, I have decided not to make saucers for these pots, and many of the planters I will be making over the next few weeks. These are meant to be outdoor planters, so saucers are not really necessary. We came up with far more reasons to not have saucers than to have them, including:

Mosquito Breeding- The water that sits in the saucers is perfect for mosquitos to breed in. Not exactly what you want on your deck.

Deck Rot- If you have the pots and saucers sitting on a wood deck, like I do, the deck under the saucers doesn't dry very easily, and causes water damage. At the very least it will discolor the deck with mold/mildew, at the very worst it will rot it out.

Plant Damage- If a lot of water sits in the saucers for too long, it can damage the roots of the plants. This happens a lot during the rainy season, when there is water in the saucer for weeks.

So instead of saucers, I will be putting feet on the bottoms of the pots to allow them to dry out underneath. They will still have drain holes in the bottom, so the plants don't drown.

The 5th Annual Garden Sale is coming up in May. I need to get all my planters made before the new baby comes in mid-April, so I jumped right into it today and threw some big ones. I started with an 11 pounder that I did in 2 pieces as a demo for one of my classes, then went right into a couple of 38 pounders, which I did in 3 pieces. I finished with two 25 pounders, done in 2 pieces.


When I make pots in more than one piece, I throw the sections as cylinders, then stack them, pull them up thinner, and shape them. It's a lot easier to center the smaller pieces, and it allows me to get more of the weight up off the bottom and into the walls. I don't dry the sections before stacking, just leave them a little thick to handle the weight before pulling. I'll try to post a series of photos showing the process in the next week or so as a make more.

Earlier this week the mother of one of my students asked about the safety of the materials we use in the studio. Specifically, she was concerned about lead and cadmium, as they can leach out of glazes, and the general public is pretty aware of them. I assured her that we did not use any lead or cadmium in the studio. This got me thinking about the safety issues I discuss in my Teacher Prep Course. So here's the short version of my clay and glaze labeling talk:

The federal government has labeling standards that must be met when selling art materials in the United States. This standard is ASTM D-4236. You'll see this number listed on everything from clays to crayons to pencils to paints. Items certified as non-toxic will be labeled with 'Certified Non-Toxic' and 'Conforms to ASTM D-4236'. Items that bear the non-toxic label are safe for use by everyone.

Safe by everyone? Does that mean some items are only safe for certain people? Yes. For instance, glazes that contain copper or cobalt may only be certified safe for people in grade 8 and above, or only for adults. Why? Adults are physically larger than small children, and so can handle more metals in their bodies if they were to ingest the glaze.

Some materials, although certified non-toxic, will also bear a label that reads 'This product contains a material known by the State of California to cause cancer'. This statement is referred to as Prop-65 labeling, which refers to the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. Because California has the most strict environmental and health standards in the U.S., manufacturers will put this statement on their labels so they the product can be legally sold in California. A good example is a glaze that contains a heavy metal such as cobalt. Even though the amount of cobalt in the glaze is so small that it is not considered to be a health risk, they want you to know that it is in there.

A very important thing to remember is that the safety certification label only applies to the material in the condition in which it is sold. That is, once you apply a glaze to a pot and it dries, it will have different health risks than the glaze sitting in the bottle, and the label is no longer valid. Similarly, a dry, powdered clay body will not carry the same certification as the same clay body in a moist, ready to throw state. Dry clays carry different health risks than moist clays.The difference is that moist clays and glazes cannot be inhaled. Dry clays and glazes are powdery and can be inhaled. Dry, powdered ceramic materials will never be labeled 'Non-Toxic'.

And now it gets more complex: A glaze that is 'Certified Non-Toxic' is not necessarily food safe, and vice-versa. As I said before, the safety label only applies to the material as it is sold. Just because a glaze doesn't have anything toxic in it in the bottle doesn't mean you can safely eat off of it. This can be for both chemical and hygienic reasons. Read all of the labels on the products to find out if they are food safe. Matte glazes are good examples of glazes that have hygiene problems. A matte, dry glaze surface is difficult to clean, and can trap bacteria in the rough texture, which can pose a health risk. Any rough or highly textured glaze is not ideal for serving food. Conversely, a glaze material that is harmful if swallowed raw from the bottle may be just fine once it's locked up in the glass of the fired glaze. READ THE LABELS!

Also, it is possible to formulate a glaze with lead that is food safe. As I just said, materials in their raw state are not neccessarily the same once they go into the melt of the glaze. You will occasionally run into commercially available glazes that are food safe, yet contain lead. They will be labeled as such.

We would go on all day talking about glaze safety, but these are the basics of safety labels. Pay attention to the labels and be smart about what you're doing.