Ugh! PItting, PInholing and CRaZiNg!!

I ran the kiln yesterday. I'm not surprised that of the two creative commitments I've sustained over life, ceramics is one of them; photography is the other. I used to stand in the dark room waiting to see what the final outcome of a print was. It took so many chemical experiments to get the right print quality and color. It wasn't like it is today with digital photography. I had to match paper contrast, to negative quality to chemical composition and printing techniques. I enjoyed the surprise and the science of it. Eventually, I had the science so down that I could get a print just the way I wanted.

Now it's ceramics. I'm not even close to understanding the complex science of it. I open the kiln like it's Christmas. Sometimes its an awesome Christmas, and sometimes, like today, it's a disaster! I had slaved over these pieces and they went into the kiln with big dreams-- looking entirely different from what they came out as. Luckily, I've recently learned how to throw on the mound like production potters do, so losing the original piece to glaze disaster is not as painful as it used to be.

Here are studio notes on today's kiln opening (Cone 5 glaze firing, incl. Laguna Hagi Porcelain and Aardvark Cassius Basaltic. Approx. 6 hr firing):



1) Blue and yellow yunomi. Hagi Porcelain. Cone 5. Laguna Clear Matte interior, and Laguna Versa 5 yellow and blue on exterior. Glaze surface ok but application is inconsistent. Versa does not run enough. Hagi cracked, which became apparent when I ran a liquid test on it. Crack was exposed through glaze.There is also some slight crazing in the yellow, which cannot be seen in this photo.




2) Cassius Basaltic Tea Bowl with Amaco Tenmoku glaze. I usually fire this combination at Cone 4 because the Cassius is very unpredictable, but this turned out great with Tenmoku. This glaze fires very predictably on Cassius, however does not usually fire as glossy at Cone 4, so I am happy with this experiment.





3) White Hagi Porcelain Yunomi with Mayco 2000 Series Natural Clear Glaze and black and neon chartreuse underglaze. Though usually a low fire glaze, the Mayco was recommended to me as useful mid fire glaze. Every piece that I used it on had serious pitting issues and some crazing. The glaze application may have been too thick, firing time may have been off and I'm pretty sure this glaze is not right for this glaze body, as there was also some pitting. I have to stay aware that Cassius was fired in this run, and there may have been strange reaction to any off-gassing from Cassius. Pitting can be seen top left edge of cup.




4) Hagi Porcelain sake cup with black underglaze applied with scratching inlay technique to greenware. Laguna clear matte overglaze applied on bisque. This is the only piece that came out as I visualized. No glaze flaws.



5) Hagi porcelain tea bowl with dark green foam underglaze and Mayco 2000 Series Natural Clear Glaze. This cup has the same pitting issues as the black and green yunomi.

Pete Hornberger's Mug

I've finally started yet another blog, so that I can archive Hot Mud entries from my website, keep track of the happenings in the ceramic studio and track my process. I'm working in my home studio where I'm able to fire up to Cone 6, and I also now work at another local studio where they fire Cone 10. Even though there's a lot going on in the ceramic studio, there's a lot more going on snuggled in a guest room that my husband and I call The Treehouse, watching our latest big flat screen TV.

I have compulsive spurts of watching episode after episode of tv shows (there was the Charmed phase, the Northern Exposure phase, the Parks & Recreation phase, South Park forever phase etc..) but boy, oh boy have I become obsessed with 30 Rock on Netflix lately. It's such a fun show and I love, love, love Pete Hornberger's yellow mug! As a connoisseur of ceramics, I look for it wherever I go, including on tv. I take screen shots of stuff that I see so that I can look up the ceramicist and check out how it's made. It's kinda silly, but as a (somewhat) beginner I haven't developed my own style. I spend so much time getting excited about learning new techniques-- maybe one day I'll get to style. This week's excitement is Pete Hornberger's mug...

Here are a couple of screen shots of Pete Hornberger's mug from my awesome new tv that has "freeze" mode on it...(am I gonna get a cease and desist request from NBC for stealing their footage off my tv? I hope so. It's wrong of me to do that.)


It's a brave, unpretentious mug and I wanted one! I looked high and low to find out who the ceramicist is so that I could buy one, but I couldn't find it. Maybe it is just a child's mug from a ceramics class? Either way, it actually has a sophistication in its quirky playfulness, and I love seeing the hand of the artist in its dimples. It's unexpectedly handmade looking and so very yellow. If a child made it, that makes a lot of sense to me, because children are so free in their expression.

In my fruitless search to find the mug, all I came up with is this Interview with Scott Adsit discussing his mug:

"CP: And finally, what is up with that huge clay mug you are always using in 30 Rock? Is it a real-life thing for you? And, if so, are you into hand-turkey finger painting too? SA: Pete's clay mug is not his mug of choice. His mug of choice would be the grand, sexy, exciting, fast-paced mug of a jet-setting playboy with no responsibilities. As it is, he's obligated to use the leaky mug his daughter made for him."

I gave up the search and decided that I could likely make my own version. I sat in the Treehouse watching 30 Rock with a bag of low-fire Laguna EM-210 clay (regularly used with children in clay classes). I constructed it using a coil technique, with a very sloppy adhesion style. The yellow underglaze was painted on in greenware stage (once it dried). Here it is not shiny, before the kiln...

I have a rich fantasy life, and obviously not a very big social life (unless of course you include regular film premieres and a recent trip to Medieval Times), so I've now created a new personal ceramic challenge for myself, as gift for my imaginary friend Pete Hornberger-- I'm going to make him a "grand, sexy, exciting, fast-paced mug of a jet-setting playboy."