Thanks to the Internet, distances and separations between nations and individuals have become ever smaller and friendships are developed throughout cyberspace. One such friendship has developed between myself and Muazzez Unal.  Following age old Turkish tradition Macik's forte is decorating, with paints, pots thrown by her potter friend Sinan. The pots range in size from a few inches in height to 30 inches tall.  Sinan's pots are glazed with locally processed Terra Sigillata that renders a smooth, slick and semi shiny surface.  Macik's free hand decorating techniques boggles the mind as she re-creates ancient designs in a manner that might be rather foreign to American eyes but is none-the-less worthy of a closer look.  A visit to her photo albums online will be an  inspiration to those wanting to be enthused by ancient decorating motifs on classic pottery shapes. The creations of Muazzez and Sinan are a in a class all by themselves!

A day in the studio.

Since winter is starting, the house building activities are grinding to a temporary halt and because of that, there’s time available to spend some time in the studio. It’s been too long!! Those mugs and ice tea glasses I threw back “WHEN???” really should be finished up! Better make some glaze samples and get the mugs and ice tea glasses covered with the basic white glaze. Glaze samples are easy to make: squeeze some clay in your fist, flatten out the end and inscribe that flat surface with the glaze name. There are always some dry “mice” (which is what the glaze samples are called) sitting on the shelf in the glaze lab. After the name of the glaze is inscribed on the flat bottom, the mouse is dipped in the glaze, sometimes two or three times. Sometimes overlapping the basic white, sometimes overlapping basic white AND another color. I will use “greenish”, bluish” and “brownish” versions of the basic white as well as combinations thereof. The test kiln is a now forty-year-old Amaco 67E which used to have

a top firing temperature of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Slightly modified with additional insulating brick and heavier elements I “souped up” the small kiln years ago so that it would fire my samples all the way to 2350 degrees Fahrenheit  if needed. I generally fire my ware at cone 6. (around 2185) Once the samples are in the kiln it is time to pour, re-pour and dip the ice tea glasses in the basic white glaze. The white glaze is mixed five gallons at the time to facilitate dipping and pouring.  Dipping and pouring are basic glazing techniques that are fast and easy, the only possible draw back is that the techniques do require a large amount of glaze. Having been trained as a  “one-fire” potter, I have never bisque fired any of my ware. To this day I thank Karl Martz for introducing me to that money saving technique back in graduate school! One has to be somewhat careful glazing “green ware” so as not to break the piece while handling it during the glazing process. In forty some years I’ve only broken a couple of coffee mugs…

So here’s the table with a bunch of ice tea glasses. Glaze is poured into the next one in line, the one that was just emptied is then dipped into the five-gallon bucket to glaze the outside and in two quick moves the job at hand is done. By the time the dipped one is placed on the table, the one with glaze inside is ready to be rotated and emptied into the next one and the story repeats itself. In a matter of minutes all the glasses are glazed! Very efficient!

Coffee mugs are a little trickier to glaze. Years ago, when Amaco marketed a portable Raku outfit and I traveled the nation as “Mr. Amaco” these specially designed tongs were part of the outfit and were very useful picking up 2000 degree hot pots. When I, in that previous lifetime, designed the tongs I also had in mind to use them in the glazing process. They come in really handy when used to pick up a coffee mug or any small item that needs to be dipped in a glaze. The “green” mug will be crushed when one squeezes the tongs too hard of course, but THAT only happened a couple of times, back when I was young and inexperienced in such delicate matters :-) Glazing a coffee mug never went this fast! Once upon a time I figured out that it took less than five minutes to produce a coffee mug: thirty seconds to throw the basic shape “off the hump”, (no trimming needed if the throwing was done correctly) one minute to pull the handle and attach it to the mug, thirty seconds to glaze the thing and the remaining three minutes to fire, handle and ship/sell the creation. Back when I threw over a couple of thousands mugs and ice tea glasses a year these very same pair of tongs got quite a work out!

To this potter nothing is more pleasing than to see a table full of identical thrown items. The basic white glaze will be allowed to dry thoroughly before further glazing takes place, so we’ll be working next door in the cabinet shop for while. I’m still amazed and humbled that my hands can actually throw a bunch of mugs one day and build a house the next…

When the ice tea glasses and coffee mugs were thrown they were all about the same size and diameter. After a few years of throwing measuring each and every mug or ice tea glass falls by the way side as the potter’s hands develop a “feel” for just the right size of each particular shape being thrown on a regular basis. Most potters have about eight to ten basic shapes that they have down pat. Bread-and-butter items like ice tea glasses and coffee mugs are among the first shapes the sensitive fingers of the potter “recognize.”

Even though the shapes on the table are within an eight to quarter inch the same in both diameter and height, now is a good time to really match the sets up. Out of the table full there will be a couple of “large” sets and a couple of “small” sets. Each set will consist of six or eight pieces and when all the matching is done there will always be a few “dogs” left over...

Dipping the white glazed mug into another color requires a certain amount of finger dexterity. Pushing outward too much with the fingers will land the mug in the re-claim bucket… In order to mix up as little a quantity of colored glaze to dip the mug in, it also helps if one has a suitable container that is suited for the shape to be dipped. In this particular case the flexible rubber mixing bowl does the job!

To dip the ice tea glasses into a colored glaze requires yet another container, one has to learn to be flexible!

The substantial handle and the balancing nub make for a comfortable and very “drinkable” mug. The curve of the lip guides the liquid into  one’s mouth, not onto the sides of the face!

Basic cylinders that have their bottom third scalloped into an octagon become very easily held ice tea glasses or hot chocolate drinking vessels. As with the coffee mugs the slight curve of the lip aids in the “drinkability” and therefore practicality of these hand thrown shapes.

Here’s to you!

Every once in a while the pottery department spills over into the cabinet department and /or vice versa. Such is the case here, as I am restoring a twenty seven year old Amaco #3 C potter's wheel with motor attachment. The erstwhile "Cadillac" of the Amaco line of potter's wheels. Unfortunately, because of manufacturing costs, this particular wheel was taken out of production "eons" ago. Somebody besides me is going to be very happy to lay his or her hands on this! If you are in the MidWest and are interested...we will deliver!