Hannah McAndrew & Doug Fitch

This is Doug blasting the puzzle jug, (pitcher) with a leaf burner.  The piece was slipped and decorated by Hannah.

 Just got back from a great workshop in Shelby of all places with Hannah and Doug, come over the pond to show us farmhouse pots and slipware.  They are big bloggers with Ron Filbeck and were able to work out a tour of demos in the states. [What's up with my formatting!?  Will figure it out later folks.]

pouring the slip.

Finished puzzle jug.

 I found some puzzle jugs in some books Doug had and have some ideas for one or two of my own.

Decorated puzzle jug front.

 Here Hannah is making a large platter by throwing a bottom and adding a coil for the lip.  Due to "American" clay and a pug mill that left a big air hole throughout the coil, we didn't get to see it finished, but great idea I plan to try.

This is a "jug" that Doug made with his "man decorations",(quick and simple).

 Hannah and a beautiful platter she decorated with slip bottles made from tire tubes and mechanical pencils!?

Hope to become blog friends with these great folks.  They did a great job considering we have such crappy clay over here...LOL  Their clay comes straight from the ground without drying out, so it has been seasoned for thousands of years, enabling lots of stretchability.

OOOOH another Textured Slab Pot!

Got another glaze load out of the kiln today.  Finally getting some consistent results from the adjustments I made on the L&L. This is one of the pots I made using the textured paper. 

 To get the inside pink and outside blue, I protected the "binding" with wax resist and glazed the inside with the pink, re bisque the piece and then glazed the outside.  The glaze at bisque temp crackled quite a bit when I took it out of the kiln, but enabled me to clean off the blue glaze that got on the inside of the pot easily.  After refiring, the crackling repaired itself.

I am really pleased how much detail shows with this paper.  The yellow eyelet pot detail was very faint, comparatively.

Off to Hickory tomorrow to set up for the Festival.  I seem to have collected plenty of pots, this one included.

learning curve

Hopefully everyone can read this as I made some changes and now I can't get to my page!!

Catawba Valley Pottery Show

Well the show is coming up this and I will be bringing quite a variety of my work, since I haven't had any time to make a stock of production best sellers. Hope those of you that can will come by. I kind of doubt that I will be doing the show next year.

The Stucco Guys finished the cement work and will be back in a few days to paint... just in time to get my things for the show out of the garage door before they come back.

Ilse packed up 3 orders yesterday and a big one, (6 18" boxes!), today. I started working on the large order for Mast Store, at last. At least I got started on it before I have to stop to get ready for and do the show. Never a dull or still moment here!

More from the conference

These tea bowls were a challenge to the thrower, seen at the right, to throw as many as he could in 5 minutes. He did 18. Very doable off the hump. I will be timing myself when I get home! BTW he is 33 and has been throwing pots for a living since he was 16.The upper right shot is a plate that the over glaze painter did along with at least 2 other pieces today.

North Carolina Potters Conference

Wow! what a day. The Bailey came yesterday and this morning before I left for the conference, I had the electrician wiring it up and Ilse, my assistant helping to unload and wax bisque out of the L&L. Never a dull moment on Beroth Circle! The Chinese pottery team was amazing, each doing a different step of the pottery making process. The thrower and trimmer were outstanding as were the under and over glazers. The two top images are finished pieces priced around $1280. The bottom pieces were thrown today and ranged between 12 and 50 lbs.

Made some time to do some of my slab pots with textured paper gift wrap I bought several years ago. It was too pretty to use but not to immortalize in clay. Sandi Pieranatozzi had some textured paper samples and I realized I had a use for that paper! I can't wait to glaze them with the fiesta colors.