The standing lamp for our "new" living room is finished. We took all the pieces and, this afternoon, put them together. I made sure to document the process (beginning with an earlier post chronicling the part where I made the different pottery components). So, here it goes.

First, our list of supplies:
A standing lamp (which we disassembled by removing the electric cord)
Pottery pieces (enough to go to the height of the decorative piece below the actual fixture), including a "cap" piece).
2" PVC pipe
Foam spray (to "set" the PVC pipe against the metal pole of the lamp).
Silicone (to attach and anchor the separate pottery pieces to each other).
A replacement plug (since we had to remove the old one to remove the wire so we could put the whole thing together -- a long story).

We took the PVC pipe and loaded the pottery pieces onto it. I'd already checked the height of the pieces against the lamp and, being really, REALLY lucky, they were the perfect height.

At this stage, everything was just sitting one on the other, so we could make adjustments and figure things out. We decided to switch the order of the pottery a little, switching around the bottom piece with the blue piece (fourth from the bottom).

Then we marked the PVC pipe where it needed to be cut and took everything apart again.

Then Avie, my favorite husband and incredible handyman, took the PVC pipe outside to cut. He cut it 1/4" below our marked line.

Then we brought it back in and put it on the lamp. At the top, we sprayed in some insulating foam sealant so the PVC pipe would be fixed in place. We only needed to do this at the top, since the bottom sat squarely around a "hump" from the lamp base, holding that part quite nicely. Then we allowed the foam to set for a few minutes.

The wire you see sticking up through the center is the guide wire we were going to use to pull the original electric cord back down through the lamp. We had to do this because you can't drop pottery pieces down with everything attached. We didn't think about this until we started looking at everything after we purchased this lamp at the Salvation Army.

When the foam had set up a little, we began loading on the pottery, putting a line of silicone where they joined the PVC and each other, to keep them secure and to prevent them from shifting.

Finally, we had all the pieces loaded.

When the insulating foam dries, it also expands. Avie trimmed the foam so it wouldn't block the threads where we would be screwing the lamp back together.

Then it was time to pull the electrical cord back through. He threaded the guide wire through the cord and gently used it to guide everything back through the bottom two holes of the lamp. It worked like a charm except, in the excitement, we'd forgotten to put the pottery finishing cap on. So, the first time was for practice. We put everything back the way it was, put on the cap, and rewired the lamp a second time.

Then it was just a matter of attaching the cap piece, attaching the new plug, screwing in the top, and making sure everything worked.

It did!

 

 

All in all, it was a fabulous experience resulting in a tremendous sense of pride AND a fabulous piece for the formal living room.

Let me know what YOU think!

My husband Avi and I are big coffee snobs. Morning coffee during the week involves the use of a Chemex coffee maker, a special filter, recently roasted beans which we grind ourselves, and water heated to exactly 195 degrees on an induction cooktop. All in all, the process takes about 20 minutes and yields an incredibly complex and smooth cup o' Joe.

The other day, our favorite high end coffee shop, Local, offered a workshop in a new brewing system called the Clever. After the workshop, we got into a discussion with the other attendees about what, in their opinion, constitutes a perfect coffee cup.

First, and most importantly, we agreed many coffee cups are too large to savor well-brewed coffee. We want our coffee to be hot, accessible, and in a mug which allows us to savor rather than gulp. The general consensus was anything over 12 ounces was just too big.

As coffee cools, its flavor changes. One morning, when you have some extra time to really taste your coffee, play with this. Brew it, pour it into your cup, and taste it at different temperatures as it cools. You should note a change, even with cheap coffee. Coffee connoisseurs want a cup that allows them to enjoy their coffee, while keeping it above 134 degrees for the time it takes to sip and savor.

It's also important to consider the ergonomics of your cup -- how does it feel in the hand and against the lips?

For me, this means a hand-pulled handle. After all, what feels better in the hand than something shaped in the hand? Also take into account the particular size of the hand holding the cup. How many fingers will fit in that handle? Will it feel too large for a small hand? Will it be too tight for a large hand? In the art of cups or mugs one size does not fit all, so vary your designs to take this into account.

Don't make handles too thin, since that makes everything else about your cup feel flimsy and unbalanced. Don't put any fancy textures on them, braid three skinny coils, or do anything to detract from simply holding a cup to sip a beverage. A cup is a functional object; function should be integral to design.

As for the rim, too thick and it feels like you're going to lose your liquid, too thin and it will be too sharp against the lips or be liable to chipping with hard use (and coffee cups get hard use). I use the web area between my first and middle fingers over my rim as the just-thrown piece turns on the wheel to "finish" my rims. I've found that technique creates a rim which feels right against my lips.

Shape? I put a "waist" on my mugs. Personally, I like sticking my hand through the handle and holding the mug itself. This particular shape gives me something to hold that feels good in my hand. I also like this shape because it helps keep the coffee warm for a longer period of time. (I also leave the bottom part of my mug a bit thicker, to add some insulation.)

Granted, the mug below is a bit larger than I would like -- but not everything I make is for the coffee snob. The coffee snob is simply the focus of this particular post.

Let's conclude by turning to Daniel Rhodes and his wonderful book Pottery Form:

"The cup is such a simple form . . . . Its functional aspects are few. The cup works best if the height and width are about the same. The emphasis may be either toward the upright or the horizontal, but if the cup is too high it will be unstable. On the other hand, if it is too broad and low, the contained liquid will slosh and splash. In broad cups, hot liquid will cool too fast. If there is no handle, a foot will make the cup easier to pick up and to hold. The rim touching the lips is smooth and may turn outward slightly, but not inward. This edge or rim, if too thick, will feel awkward at the lips. Inside, the cup is smooth, without ridges or sharp corners. The scale is determined by the amount that is comfortable to drink at one time."

Keep on throwing!

Time for an update on the standing lamp.

All the pieces have been through both the bisque firing, been glazed with "Hi Fire Clear" and fired up to cone 5. I brought them home, all excited about putting the lamp together this evening. Here are the pieces lined up on our coffee table:

Then we hit our first glitch. I knew we would be able to unscrew the lamp pole from the base; but I completely forgot about the cord! And, this being a very commercial lamp (purchased used, but made in China), detaching the cord from anything proved to be more difficult than I thought.

When Avi (my husband) came home, we unscrewed the bulb housing, only to see the wires were permanently embedded in it. No unscrewing wires here.

For a bit, I pondered creating this as a non-functional piece of art. But Avi loves a good puzzle. In the end, we decided to cut off the plug, pull the wire out from the top, with a lead wire attached to help guide it back through when we're done putting everything together. The wire is out, with the lead wire still in place in the tube. It will be reattached to the power wire and pulled back down through when we're done with everything else. Then we'll just attach a new plug. I'm sure this is all clear as mud. At least Avi and I understand what we're doing.

Then we had fun trying to decide where each section would look best on the lamp. This was what we've come up with:

 

I've decided I need to make a "cap" to top off the stack and make it fit the top piece of the lamp more snugly. I wouldn't want to just leave a gaping hole at the top. I'll work on that tomorrow. I'm planning on making one concave and one convex, then deciding which I like best when they're done.

So, there'll be another lapse in time from now until the next post. Stay tuned for the next installment.

You've seen the home side of the new living room project. Now I'll show you what's happening in the studio.

As I said in the previous post, I'm working on making a standing lamp from ceramics. The idea is to throw the lamp in sections. My forms are made so the bottom opening will sit just over the rim of the top opening, locking the pieces in place. They're thrown to fit around a two inch pvc (plastic plumbing) pipe, which will sit over the base lamp, pictured in the previous post. They won't sit right up against the pvc pipe. But there will be about a quarter to a half inch clearance between. Hopefully this will all be enough to keep the lamp stable. I'm assuming it won't be moved much and this will all work well.

So, the following photo is of some of the pieces thrown on the first day. I worked with 3-4 pounds of clay per piece, leaving a fairly thick wall for stability and strength.

I wanted the lamp to be colorful, but not enough to dominate the room. So, I decided to use underglazes and have one color family per piece. The base coat would be a light shade of the chosen color, after which I would sponge paint a darker shade over it to create some sort of pattern. Each piece would have a different pattern. There will probably be two pieces for each color family: red, purple, green, brown, blue. A few of the finished underglazed pieces are below:

I have about one more day's work before the pieces have all been underglazed and touched up. Stay tuned......

The "Cascade Effect" has hit my house. We decided to redo the formal living room, which has now spread to the family room AND the kitchen. Upholstered furniture has been purchased, but I HAVE to leave my mark on things. So, I have several projects in the mix -- one of them even involving clay!

The non-pottery designs are a coffee table and end tables featuring wonderful Chinese silk embroidery with birds as the unifying factor. I purchased an old coffee table, two square stools, and a couple of frames at the Salvation Army. The stools, with the seat removed, will be the bases for the end tables, with the framed embroidered pieces as the table tops. The coffee table will have a longer embroidered piece (purchased on e-bay) under cut glass.

 I'm going to remove the woven seats from the two stools, prime them and paint the bases black to go with the charcoal grey sofas we've ordered. The coffee table (sorry, didn't get a photo of it) will be painted the same way. Finally, a couple of coats of polyurethane will be painted on for a durable finish.

Here are the two smaller silk embroideries. One is already framed, although I might opt to replace it with a frame more like the one sitting in the chair as pictured in the third photo down.

And here's the lamp which will act as the foundation for my standing lamp:

A 2 inch pvc pipe will go over the rod part of the lamp to better anchor the 6 or 7 ceramic cylinders that will be my contribution to its beautification. I'm debating whether to run the ceramic parts of the lamp over the open ironwork and up below the lampshade (so no dark metal shows except for the base), or to use the openwork as an accent. I might make pieces that work both ways and decide when I'm putting the pieces together.

I'll try and remember my camera when I go to the studio tomorrow to show you the individual pieces of pottery, which will be stacked on each other to create my standing lamp.

This is a bit more of the pieces I saw at the Ceramics Museum in Havana. This next group begins to give a feel for the lack of "things" in Cuba. Many ceramic artists have little or no access to the basic chemicals (not the lack of glazes on these pieces). As a result, many of them use oxides and firing methods to color their work.

A future post will deal with an artist I met at her studio in Camaguey, a city located in central Cuba. But, for now, let's get to the art, shall we?

This piece was a combination of a mural and a few three-dimensional pieces. 

I lived in Mexico for many years. A potter named Ken Edwards used iguanas as his trademark. This artist does the same thing, but takes it a little farther. I enjoy the whimsy of these three-dimensional creatures stalking the small, two-dimensional, more primitive bird painted onto the surface of the vessel.                

A lttle bit of glaze to accentate the octopus, then a matte surface as background. I'm beginning to wish I had taken notes regarding each photographed piece.     

This was quite a large piece, with a sgrafitto'ed design on it.  It has a wonderful rustic feel!                                                       

Damn the embargo! I could have bought this artist's work at a gallery in Havana la Vieja. But I was afraid it would be confiscated. You're allowed to bring in "art", but nothing of a touristic nature. Who decides? The customs agent. I didn't want to take a chance.                              

This is a large piece. I know it's difficult to tell the scale. I would say it was about 3 feet tall. It's also a vessel. The thumb is removeable so you can "use" the hand as a container. I think I looked at this piece a good long time because of the wonderful detailing the artist put into his figurative design.                                                   

Well, true to my predictions, I've become underglaze crazy. In fact, I'm trying to switch from my Mason Stains in slip to Amaco Velvet Underglazes for most of my work calling for that type of application. But this switch has not been without its issues.

For one thing, I still get some fading with many of the colors. I've now printed out a color variations chart for them, indicating what they will do  at cone 5 glazed and unglazed (and cone 10, though I don't think I'll see cone 10 for quite a while).

Another issue I'm having is watching the colors fade away under my clear glaze overcoat. I think I'm going to try thinning the glaze a bit before applying it. The thickness creates a milkiness, obscuring the color beneath.

Finally, I've had the underglaze run under the clear glaze on a vertical surface. This is NOT a good thing, considering most of my work is vertical (mugs). Again, I think it's a function of the thickness of the applied clear glaze. I've applied a thinner coat on my latest mugs. We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, let me share one of my successes -- since not everything is doom and gloom. The following is an Apples and Honey set for the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana), coming up the evening of Sept. 8, 2010. We eat apples dipped in honey to symbolize our wish for a sweet year.

I thought I'd take a few minutes to explain why I decided to go with colored underglazes rather than majolica glazes.

The first reason is movement. In my experience, underglazes and colored slips (both contain clay) tend to adhere better to surfaces. I've had no experiences with it running under a final coat of clear glaze. This gives me sharper lines in my carving.

Secondly, I want strong, intense colors in my upcoming prototypes and projects. Something like this by Sharon Bloom:


The following is a wonderful majolica piece by Judy B. Freeman. As opposed to underglazes, majolica is glaze -- much more closely related to glass than underglaze. As such, it has a softer, more watercolory feel to the coloration, which definitely works on this piece, but which I don't think I could pull off with the designs I have from David:


Of course, as this life tends to work, I'm sure there will come a time when I decide I've had enough of underglazes and get brave enough to start working in the world of majolica.

Yesterday I threw a couple of plates to work on. I'm hoping to get them trimmed out today. Then, when my anticipated delivery of underglazes comes tomorrow, I can get to work on them next week.

I'm moving into a new world and that world contains Amaco Velvet Underglazes.

"Why?" you may ask.

I recently completed a weddding kiddush cup commission. The customer wanted it in Northwestern University purple, which is a rather intense color -- one I knew I couldn't achieve using Mason stains in slip. So, I broke down, asked around, and came up with Amaco's Amethyst underglaze.

The kiddush cup came out wonderfully!


Tied in with that was the receipt of new drawings by my artist friend David. Several of them are adorable imaginary animals that would be absolutely perfect on a baby name plate (in Hebrew, of course). But they just wouldn't look right carved through a single color of slip, which has been my hallmark technique up 'til now.

So, when I put the two events together, it helps make up my mind to try using strong pastel underglazes on my soon-to-be-made baby name plates. Since shipping info shows my underglazes are due to come on the 28th, I think I'll throw a couple of plates today so they're trimmed and ready to decorate early next week.

Meanwhile, I'm also working on a rather large plate that's a commission piece, with the tree of life around the rim and encroaching on the center, with the words Tikkun Olam in bark textured sprigs in the center of the piece. The customer wants lots of color on the plate -- but I think I'll leave the various colors on the individual letters, add brown on the tree, and I'll decide on the background once it's been bisque fired and I can get a better feel for what the finished plate might look like.

It's been a while since I've been able to post. Actually, it's been a while since I've been able to do anything that requires dedicating time to myself.

One of the biggest reasons for this has been my mother, who probably has lung cancer, but whose struggles with the mazes of health insurance has delayed adequate testing for a definitive diagnosis.

But this is a pottery blog -- not a political/health issues one.

I did get back into the studio for a couple of days last week and worked on some pierced goblets and an "upside down bowl" teapot. I've enjoyed the teapot's progress and am making it a bit funky, with a sideways handle and a small lug handle in the back to facilitate pouring, since it promises to be a rather heavy item. I'm not sure all my proportions are right -- but I'll only know this once it's fired and the handle has been attached.

I keep meaning to bring a camera to the studio to do a photographic tutorial on my sgraffito techniques. But that, obviously hasn't happened yet. Maybe someday.

Meanwhile, I'm anticipating getting back into the studio more regularly to work on something other than mugs. Anticipation....... (is that Carly Simon in the background?)

A while back we had a stamp exchange and I received several wonderful stamps from fellow potters. I decided to use them in a quilt-patterned project and decided to make a funky vase. You can see the prototype below.



I'd like to try making a couple more, modifying some of the techniques I used in this prototype. For one, I'd use the glazing techniques in the original. In the other, I'd like to try slips for the different "panels". I even wonder how something like this would translate to a Chanukiyah (Chanukah menorah)?

I'm hoping to get to it once Father's Day and the end of the school year have passed, since that's also the end of my busy Hebrew mug time.

Another project I'd like to do is a blog tutorial, with photos, of my slip carving techniques. But that will take a bit more coordination, since I'll need a photographer.

A few of the bowls I've made so far for the Empty Bowls fundraiser in San Antonio, TX -- to be held the first weekend of May.

Remember I was talking about blue slip? Well, the pieces finally came out of the kiln and looked great.

Sadly, another piece (a wedding gift) also came out of the kiln looking lousy.

Can you tell which is which??? I'm SURE you CAN!

Sgraffito

No, it's not something you spray on the sides of buildings or subway cars. It's a pottery technique. Basically, I took greenware (dried, but not fired clay), crushed it into a powder, added water and black mason stain (though you can add many different colors), and blended well.

Then I used this as a coating on the outside of leather hard pieces, after which I carved through to reveal the contrasting white clay beneath. Fire, glaze clear or with a transluscent color, and glaze fire. Voila!

In my case, I've been carving Hebrew "Mom" and "Dad". But last week I tried something different and took a couple of sketches from my friend David (see previous post), reduced them in size, and traced them onto the slip using a wood stick over a copy of his drawing. Then I carved through the indented lines.

The final results make me smile -- cuz David is such a wonderful doodler. Looking forward to more sgraffito soon!