The Life & Blog of Two Potters

I know I’ve probably said this before, but I think it might be safe to say that we are never more content than during an uninterrupted stretch of days working on our farm.  This was one of those sweet days in a series of days where the sun shone on our laboring bodies, and after the hours of work were done, we still lingered at the kiln shed in the fading light and calm air, soaking up the joy and satisfaction of our day’s progress- of nearly completed kiln adobe and stone retaining walls- under a beautiful night sky.

It’s the season for mudding around here . . . on the kiln, anyway! (OK, on our dirt road, too, but that car-bottom-scraping story is for another time and place.)

By some wonderful coincidence, an record-breaking stretch of warm (hot) weather has descended upon us in conjunction with Nathan’s spring break from teaching pottery at Dartmouth. For us, this means two solid weeks of 10-hour days putting some of the ‘finishing touches’ on our kiln. We couldn’t be happier!

Here’s how this works: the dry materials- mainly sand, sawdust, cement, and a bit of other fireclays and grogs we had lying around- get measured by volume, and dumped into the cement mixer we borrowed from a friend.  Water is slowly added until the mix is smooth-able but not too slump-prone (those are technical terms, by the way).  Layer by layer we work our way around the kiln, troweling the adobe-like mix smooth.  In and around ports, up the walls of both chambers we go . . . the purpose of this ‘structural frosting’ as I have come to call it, is multi-fold, but essentially it’s designed to insulate the kiln a bit more (the sawdust eventually burns out creating air pockets) and hold the whole thing together (that is until it cracks from expansion, but that’s another issue).  It also unifies the kiln’s chambers, and hopefully gives it an attractive final appearance!  (We haven’t decided on a final color, but will likely paint some sort of oxide on the adobe- pale yellow? white? earthy red?  We’ll have to see.)

I leave you with this shot of the completed-with-newly-refurbished-transom-window back wall of the kiln shed.  Stay tuned for some photos of the finished surface in the coming weeks.

Enjoy the beautiful weather!

They say if you don’t like the weather in Vermont, wait five minutes.  The day dawned with a quick ski around our snowy land (very important to exercise Lego the puppy before cooping him up in the studio for a bunch of hours!), and finished with a mud-boots-walk around bare, wet fields.  By afternoon, the snow had completely disappeared from all but the northern slopes.

I mention the weather because the gorgeously sunny 55 degrees outside forced me to summon an extra bit of willpower to stay inside and work . . .one of the bitter-sweet things about clay is that it won’t wait around indefinitely for you; you have to tend to it when the time is right.  I had a few teapots, a couple small jars, and a board of mugs waiting for white slip and decoration.  It’s work that I really enjoy doing, and add to that some great NPR programming, a fantastic new Red Molly album, and a cute four-legged side kick, and it was a pretty great way to round out the weekend.

With fifty-plus-degree weather in the forecast for most of this week, we’ll be shifting our focus out-of-doors to the last few weeks (??) of work on the new kiln! We’re prepping for mudding/adobe/skin coat . . . call it what you will, but in any case, it’ll be bye-bye brick work pretty soon. We’ll keep you posted.

Just a reminder that we’ve disabled comments on the blog because of spam . . . if you have a question or a friendly comment, we’d love to hear from you on our Facebook page.

A quick photo comparison of the past couple of months (January 2012 to March 2012) . . . we spent a good portion of January outside in the odd non-winter weather working on the kiln shed, and we LOVE how things have changed out there.  Aside from now being 10 feet longer, the shed lost its unsightly, windblown tarp of a back wall (that was up for well over a year), and has graduated to an actual back wall of lovely local ship-lap siding.  (This works oh-so-much better at keeping out the snow, now that winter has finally decided to arrive!)  But the best part of all is the ‘sky-lights’ we installed between our roofing panels.  It’s amazing how much light that brings into the back of the building . . . and we’re looking forward to even more light in the form of windows along the west wall, and the eventual disappearance of rusty-metal tin roofing-turned-siding that is keeping the snow out!

It sometimes it seems these little improvements are even sweeter because they didn’t happen right away . . . good things made even better by the simple fact of waiting and dreaming . . .

(A few more photos of the back wall here.  And I’m sure there will be more soon, as spring arrives and we begin staining the outside of those lovely boards, adding more windows . . . so much to look forward to!)

One of my favorite things about being a potter is finding unexpected uses for things we- or other folks- have made.  This week, one of our very large platters made it into the house before it got returned to the showroom, and during its stop-over in our kitchen, has been used for everything from keeping hats and gloves out of Lego’s reach, to holding fruit and an oven mitt (also likely placed there to avoid the puppy’s chewing mouth!).  An oval baking dish, back from being used as a demo in Nathan’s class, became a mail-and-magazine holder- a quick way to turn clutter into something a little nicer to look in the midst of a busy week.  (Oh, by the way, that adorable ‘heart woman’ as I call her, is a clay finger puppet by Jane Kaufmann.)

And while I was snapping photos, I thought I’d share a few more non-traditional ways we use pottery in our daily home life . . . an small oval vase turned office-letter-organizer, and an oval plate by Kari Radasch turned olive-oil-cruet-and-garlic-clove holder.   A few pieces we use more traditionally are the ‘barn jar’ I use for sea salt, and ‘puffy’ soap dish by David Orser and Laurel MacDuffie respectively, tiny ring-bowls by Wayne Fuerst, and this cookie jar by Nathan that holds a very large bag of puppy treats on top of our fridge!  (Oh, and believe it or not, I made the pewter spoon in a metal casting class with Paulette Werger!)

How do you use handmade pieces in your home, kitchen, or office?  We’d love to hear from you!  (Oh, and by the way, we’ve disabled our comments temporarily because of spam . . . in the meantime, our Facebook page is the best place to leave a comment/question/photo.)

These days in our studio, we are:

- working at filling the 350 (or so) cubic feet of kiln space we have built- and getting excited to fire this spring

- adjusting to ‘green glazing’, where the slip or glaze goes onto the pot in the raw, unfired state . . . it takes a bit of getting used to, but we’re starting to really like it

- imagining what said glazes and slips will actually look like . . . we’ve used and tested many of them over the years, but some are new to us, and every kiln and every firing is different . . . so we really are imagining (this is both liberating and completely frightening at once!)

- making large pots (ok, Nathan is making large pots) and smaller pots, among them at the moment are cookie jars, giant vessels, bottles for flowers, pasta bowls, put-away pots (our version of Tupperware!), wine cups, ice cream bowls, butter keepers, mugs, and ‘tp towers‘ (yes, really)

- celebrating (oh so cautiously!) that our 1 1/2 year old puppy, Lego, has ‘graduated’ from his crate to free-in-the-studio, passing the hours on his bed by the stove (or right by our feet, or somewhere underneath our wheels smelling dried up flies and clay scraps)

- watching Lego watch and nuzzle with Troy, our friend Joan’s greyhound, knowing they are happy to have each other around

- collaborating!  (the large pot in the photo above was thrown by Nathan and given the ‘Becca treatment’ of a wavy rim)

- enjoying each others company as we share the studio . . . usually our ‘free’ days are spent kiln building or kiln shed building or some such thing at home (roofing) or on the farm (forestry) and the rest of the time I work in the studio while Nathan goes to teach, but this winter we are spending that ‘free’ time in the studio and my goodness, it is NICE.

It is mid-winter on the farm, and I’ve managed to capture a few photos of the ever-elusive snow cover.  What a strange season it has been!  We have more ice than anything else, although a few warm days have allowed us to finish work on the ever-expanding kiln shed.  (It is wonderful!)  With the ‘outside work’ behind us for the next few weeks, we find ourselves mostly drawn to the studio these days, our pup slumbering by the wood stove while we work independently- and collaborate!- on new pieces for our new kiln.

(Got to get this camera of mine to the studio . . . soon!)

I hope this finds you warm and enjoying the beauty of the season.

Happy 2012! I love the energy I feel at this time of year- everything feels fresh and new, and I have renewed interest for productivity on all fronts, especially after some really nice time off for the holidays!  In our world, those bursts of inspiration to WORK (and burn off xmas cookies!) have come at home on the farm, and in the studio . . . I right dove into testing new slips and clays (I actually dislike doing this most of the time, but thanks to the change in the calendar, there are about 12 new combinations that will hopefully lead to enhanced surfaces on the painted pots!), and the studio is full of butter keepers and soup bowls slipped and glazed for the wood kiln.

On the home front, we’ve been gathering slab wood from our neighbor’s new saw mill (serendipity at it’s best- more on this later!), cutting it to dry for future firings, and building onto our kiln shed! Thanks to the non-winter weather we’ve had lately, we managed to get the kiln shed addition nearly complete! If the pictures don’t do it justice, let me tell you that adding ten feet onto the building makes it feel exponentially large and spacious. (Holy smokes, we are the proud owners of a fifty-foot long kiln shed! And yes, this makes it’s square footage larger than our house. What does that say about our priorities?!) There’s something about closing in the back wall makes it clear just how large and lovely a space we really have. We love the ship lap boards that our friend at the local saw-mill made for us, and the fact that we have all these great shelves, in the form of the ‘nailers’ for the siding, throughout the building. Next week, Becca will finish refurbishing some old windows for those holes, and we hope to finish the sliding door and a vent for the heat that will eventually come from that there chimney! Oh, and finishing the roofing, we’ll need to do that. It’s been sort of funny to shovel snow out of the area that’s closed in on the sides, but we’ve been awaiting the arrival of some semi-transparent roof panels that will allow light to filter through into the back of the shed. It is SO nice to see all of these dreams coming into form . . .

On the kiln front, we’ve finished the insulating layer!!! Last weekend, we had some hours (and some cold hands) to lay the last soft brick onto the arch of the first chamber, leaving only the adobe/skin coat layer to officially complete the kiln! We are holding off for some warmer weather for this, since we’ve got all these pots to make in the meantime. There’s also a little bit of earth buttressing and site work to do before we’ll feel secure burning out the wooden form that still stands inside the kiln.

We hope your start to the new year has been happy.  We leave you with this image of our puppy, who seems to find joy in climbing into recently occupied chairs.  Or maybe it’s that he finds comfort, and we find joy in watching him do it.

As the holidays near, we take a break from packing insulating bricks with icy fingers and turn towards cozy inside things- like putting every blanket and pillow we own on the beds for arriving family, and nibbling at a fresh batch of homemade peppermint bark!

We wish you all a very merry season . . . wherever you are and whatever you believe, we can all hope for more peace and love in the coming New Year! 

All the best,
Nathan and Becca (and Lego!)

Every once in a (very long) while, we take a wee bit of time away from our projects to travel.  This past week, we spent in the glorious late-fall sun in Tennessee, visiting Nathan’s parents.  The highlight for me was a trip to Cades Cove, now part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Nathan’s mother, Julia Oliver Webb, is directly descended from the first European settlers of this high mountain valley, and it was very special to spend some time appreciating the lives of those passed, and to imagine what it must have been to live in a tight-knit, isolated community of homesteaders.

Now, back to work!