“I hadn’t thought about Captain Ceramics in years, but when you mentioned all the gadgets to be had at NCECA, that’s what came to mind.  Turns out someone recently put together a video showcasing the whole Captain Ceramics line circa 1979.”

Sorry, I can’t embed the video here but this is the link: http://crafthaus.ning.com/video/the-captain-ceramics-story.

It’s a hilarious spoof on pottery gadgets, including a wheel that is powered by a 300-horsepower V-8 engine from a 1965 Oldsmobile and the elaborate splashguard pictured below.

VisGirda is still making cool pots and you can see some of them here.

The gang at the Potters for Peace table

Earlier this month I spent three days at the annual NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) conference in Seattle, where I volunteered at the Potters for Peace table. We were set up in the Exhibitors’ Hall, which means I was surrounded by displays of equipment, tools, stamps, moulds, brushes, glazes, underglazes, books, magazines, DVDs and miscellaneous gadgets, all designed to help us make pots.

cariboo hair brush

I donated ten bucks at the University of Alaska table so I could get  a brush that was made out of caribou hair and held together in a shell casing, and I bought a couple of new-fangled sponges that I will review later, but as the days wore on I began to wonder whether, if you just brought a lump of clay into the room, all the gadgets would be able to get together and make an instant pot.

Hey, wait a minute, isn’t that what factories do? And wouldn’t all those pots look alike?

It is tempting, especially for beginning potters, to believe that the newest gadget will make us into better potters, or that the latest book holds the secret to success, and we can go on buying these things forever, but ultimately the courage to move ahead in our own direction can only come from inside of us. That’s not to say that good tools aren’t important for good work, but sometimes tools and gadgets that prevent us from making mistakes also prevent us from following those “mistakes” to see where they might lead us.

my little shell stamp

Many people say that the my textured pieces remind them of the seashore,  and it’s true, I do love rugged beaches where one might expect to find all kinds of shells and rocks that, when pressed into clay, should make a good impression. The truth is, my favourite textures come not from the natural world, where the textures are often too subtle for clay, but from man-made materials, often rubber or plastic. The photo on the right shows a lined texture that was made by rolling a slab onto a rubber floor mat from my car and “shells” that were made with a little clay stamp. One day I was making a bunch of stamps when, on a whim,  I  pushed  one into a crescent shape.  I pressed lines into it with my needle tool, then waited for it to dry and voila!, the resulting stamp looked just like a “real” shell.

In the end the shells on my pots bear little resemblance to “real shells” and the lined textures don’t resemble anything that one would see at a “real” seashore; instead they give us a rough idea of “shell” and “seashore” and leave us to fill in the blanks from memories of our favourite beach walks. At least that’s my theory.

Ceramic Art: Innovative Techniques

Ceramic Arts Handbook Series
Edited by Anderson Turner
Published by The American Ceramics Society
ISBN 978-1-57498-299-2
136 pages / $29.95 US

That night I was going to make several pattern pieces out of cardboard but decided instead to build one big pattern, complete with darts, from which I could build a pot that was up to 8 sections wide. The next day I took my goofy-looking pattern to the studio and cut out three versions of my design: 8 sections, 7 sections and 6 sections.

I added texture to the walls by rolling the clay onto a car floor mat and I cut the darts with bevels on each edge to make a better surface for joining. This time I waited a bit so the clay would stiffen and the wall did not flop as badly, but the stiffer clay was more difficult to join, especially at the darts. As you can see by the photo, my “planters” turned out to be bowls but who cares? Sometime during the night, as I lay awake thinking about important things, I realized that all my joining would have been easier if I had made the darts straight or concave, rather than convex, so, as they say in the world of paper and pencils, it’s back to the drawing board for me.

Black Dog Publishing | soft cover, 206 pages | ISBN 978-1-904772-76-7 | $39.95

The sculpture on the left is the first thing I saw at the studio yesterday and I kidded Elizabeth, its maker, about sculpting anteaters now (anteaters are funny, right?). Over the course of the afternoon, Elizabeth turned the anteater into a bear eating a salmon and, at the same time, she threw a series of water jugs. Between jugs, or whenever she needed a break, Elizabeth spent a few minutes working on the sculpture and then she went back to her water jugs. No big deal. Elizabeth makes lots of bears (you can see more of them here) in different poses but this is the first one I’ve seen interacting with another creature. She told me that while she was working on the anteater-like version, she turned to talk to someone for a few minutes and the sculpture flopped over and partially collapsed and when it was pushed back into place it had acquired the movement that brought it alive. Elizabeth’s loose and fearless way of working is an inspiration to myself and others in the studio and her influence was probably one reason that I was able to wing it during the demo that I talk about in my previous blog post.

5 inches high

This bottle design came into being while I was giving a handbuilding demo in my Wednesday afternoon class. I had visualized a bottle made of two shallow, textured, circular bowl shapes put together to form the body of the bottle, but I neglected to visualize how the bottle stand up. When I rested it on the table the bottom half sagged out and the two sections came apart at the top. I pressed the two sections back together at the shoulders and pushed the side of a pencil into the joins to further secure them, after which I added two little feet to keep the form upright. Now I was flying by the seat of my pants so I quickly added a crudely-formed neck that tore as I was handling it and by then I was laughing out loud, as were several class members.  I went around all the joins again to make sure they were tight and then I blew some air into the neck to re-inflate the sagging shape and voila, I had created a new bottle design.

8 and 10 inches high

This afternoon, in my own studio, I was determined to use up clay that I was liking less and less so I threw some cilanders and bottle shapes that I will use as experiments in an upcoming raku firing and I altered two of the cilanders along the same lines as my little bottle. The cilanders were wider at the top than at the bottom and when they were a very soft leatherhard I supported the walls on the inside while I rolled texture onto the outsides. Then I pinched the shoulders together, added the necks, and pushed in a few buttons. I added feet to give them a bit of a lift and the final touches were a few more texture lines and a coil around the neck. Because of my throw-away, experimental  attitude , I was able to stay loose and avoid trying to control my final outcome, an outcome that pleased me very much.

And what if, before you shape the slab, you apply some lovely texture from netting, stamps or a car floor mat? Would you worry about the texture being marred when you shape the form? Don’t be—that texture is tougher than you think and variations in it will make a more interesting surface.

Along with sound technical information about how to texture, join, gusset and shape soft slabs, Piernatozzi encourages us to ask the question “what if?” (What if I turn this shape upside down? What if I add a shape on top of this shape? What if I put a lid on it?) and it is this repeated invitation to experimentation that makes these DVDs much more than just technical demonstrations. They can be a starting point from which you make your own forays into (or back into) the wonderful world of creating with slabs.

You can watch excerpts from this DVD series here.

Ceramic Arts Daily Video Library
The American Ceramic Society
3 hours  / 2 DVD set / $69.95

The presentation is a little dry but that’s partly because screen printing on clay seems to be 90% preparation and 10% screen printing, so having detailed demos will help those who are keen to try out these techniques. For the most part Wandless’s instructions are clear and easy to follow, although he does bring into play something called a “halftone screen,” the origin of which he does not divulge, but according to Google you can buy this stuff at an art supply outlet.

The interest level picks up once Wandless uses his screens (plus a squeegee, a stiff rib and a sponge) to apply thickened underglazes to clay slabs and thickened glazes to bisqueware, and when he layers two or three images we begin to see, at last, the possibilities that these techniques could offer. It would have been nice if some of Wandless’s original ceramic work could have been shown at the end of the presentation (as has been done on other Ceramic Arts Daily DVDs) to further inspire us, but these can be seen at www.studio3artcompany.com. An excerpt from this DVD is available at ceramicartsdaily.org/bookstore/screen-printing-on-clay.

Ceramic Arts Daily Video Library
DVD / 1 hr 37 min / $49.95 US