My newest side-line product. A Christmas seed packet. I was answering phones at the plant company in my little cubicle when someone called to ask if we sell seeds. The woman wanted some special seeds to put into her husbands Christmas stocking.



Bing! Another great idea. This is a watercolor of my grandaughter, Isobel. The seeds are Scarlet Runner Beans. I printed them up at Staples and packaged up the beans for Christmas gifts to family and friends. I fell in love with Scarlet Runner Beans years ago. They grow 6-10 feet tall up trellises or houses or telephone poles. They have abundant bright red flowers. The flowers are edible in salads. The long string beans taste great and you can let them go to seed and make a nice chili next winter! What a beautiful and versatile plant.


How does this connect with pottery? My grampa was a florist and left me a house, barn and greenhouse parts. This may be the year I finally put up a makeshift greenhouse from the old redwood window panes he left behind to add to the ambiance in my yard. And, working at a plant company, I have access to some wonderful plants. This coming May, I will have my first May Day... Pottery with Plants Sale. I am designing some new pots for tulip, hyacinths and daffodil bulbs that can be grown on your back deck or porch. Buy a pot and get a free plant! Pottery and Plants are an obvious combination. And, you will be able to buy the new packets of Spring Magic Beans!


Happy New Year to you all!

Martha Stewarts Yellow Ware... the story of plates

Martha Stewart collects old yellow ware, along with lots of other folks. I think many collectors use the low pie plates for their place settings. Although yellow ware has been produced since the 1600s, dinnerware plates and sets made from these yellow clays where not generally made until the mid 1800s when they were mass produced with the use of a "Jigger". Jiggering is a method of making pottery by pressing a ball of clay into a plaster form on a potters wheel. This doesn't take much skill and was a form of mass producing pottery. Plates made by jiggering were made with flat rims like the plates you buy everywhere today. However, the flat rims tend to warp and fall while being fired in the kiln. Large potteries used rolls of clay between plates to support the rims during firing.

Before the large factories took over the small potteries in the 1800s, plates were not made by small potteries because of the warping and complications in firing.

My plates have slightly raised and rounded rims, with a rolled edge. This keeps them from warping and mades them a little more durable. Hand thrown pottery plates are a little heavier than the pressed plates but they have their own charm. Visit my web site for more information on dinner ware. www.eastknollpottery.com

Goshen Center School

Working with the great kids at Goshen School this week. Our pottery class is making Christmas jars and ornaments for their trees. Kids have great imaginations and like to play in the clay!

The Flames from The Sawdust

My first sawdust firing was a grand success!
I fired the pots yesterday. Being October, I was waiting for a day I had time to do this and dry enough. I started a fire in my grill the day before to heat up the wet bricks and had the fire blazing all day. The pots are made of local Red Clay. I had made some of them on my treadle wheel and some of them by coil. Most decorated with shells. They were plenty dry, but I placed them on the grill over new hot coals the next morning to heat them up and remove moisture. My bricks I had mortered with my stoneware clay earlier this summer and they have dried and heated up over the summer BBQ's to set the clay pretty well. I wanted the mortar to be temporary. I can easily knock these apart to make a new kiln or use them for something else.

When the coals yesterday were down to a small glowing log, I raked it around and set 3 inches of very dry sawdust on the bottom. I then carefully placed the pots about 2" apart, bigger ones on the bottom filled with sawdust and small pots or whimseys. 3 more inches of sawdust on top and then another layer of smaller pots. I kept them about 3 inches from the walls with 4 inches of sawdust on the very top, a layer of crumpled newspaper and my burning piece of log. Soon the paper caught on fire and the sawdust began to burn and smoke. I placed a tin lid on the top and left it to smolder.

16 hours later, the next morning at 8:00, the sawdust had burned down with only a dotting of hot sawdust embers and the pots were cool enough to handle. And here are the results.

The pots are still fragile. The smoke and carbon have turned most of them black, but the effect is quite pleasing. And they are hard.

The last photo has a spash of yellow. This is where I actually put a diagonal band of yellow vanadium slip. Most of any colors I applies has disapeared or turned black.

Now I have to wait till spring for another attempt... glazing in saggers perhaps?

So Many Photos And So Little Space! For more photos of this years Big E go to my Flickr page...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29942392@N08/sets/
Little Isobel came along this year in her new dress I made (while at the fair). It's always nice to see my old friends, many who I only see once a year, both at the Village and the visitors.

Met many new, interesting folks this year. The kids had a great time making marbles. Marbles are so simple... easy to make with many games to make up... but they are also a history lesson too. Clay marbles have been made everywhere and from long, long ago. They are decorated with colored clays, fired and then make durable toys. Of course many have been lost during play and the old ones still turn up in peoples homes and yards.

This year, a source of fun and interest for our reenactor group was a box of buttons brought in by Guy. Yes, we had a great time sorting our hundreds of brass, bone, shell buttons, along with many other little oddities; hindges, pins, toys, clips, needles. Many were very old. Some of the buttons were very interesting. Not much source of fun for everyone, but for those of us interested in history, this little box brought on many a conversation about the old days. I made an impression of some of the buttons in a clay bat and will be used as stamps in my pottery in the future.

Now back at home, I am battening down the hatches for the upcoming snow and ice. Closing off the "Cellar Pottery Cave", getting out the quilts, cleaning out the pellet stove and buying some new thermals! Its going to be 30 degrees tomorrow morning!

I made over 700 mini pots at this fair alone. Now I have to sort, fire and glaze them all... with tweezers! Started potting in the "Cellar Pottery Cave" yesterday. I am working in the cellar of my old house this winter. Half the floor is still dirt. With the dirt and hugh stone walls it is like working in a cave.

Pottery classes start next week at Goshen Center School. We do an afterschool pottery project for one week each month. We have a great time and kids come up with some wonderful pottery. You can see some on my web site... http://www.eastknollpottery.com/id12.html

Goshen Fair 2009

Another great year at the Goshen Fair, Goshen, CT. The weather was perfect.

I get to work in the lean-to addition in the front.

Goshen Fair is a small, but fun-filled fair up the the Northwest Corner of CT. One of the earliest New England potters, Hervey Brooks, lived right down the road, along with Jesse Wadhams and Jonathan Kettell, made functional redware pottery from the clay in Goshen in the late 1700s till the mid 1800s.

Herveys' pottery barn has been moved to Sturbridge village in MA.

So I feel right at home here in this simple country town and among woodcutters, ax-throwers, tractors, barnyard, farmers and stitchers displaying their skills and their wares.

See you next year in Goshen!

Another year at Erie County Fair

Another great time demonstrating at the Erie County Fair in NYS.

This year, I brought along some new Slip trays, Face Jugs, Wall Pockets, Butter Jars and of course lots of Miniatures!

The Miniatures sold like hot cakes! It is so much fun to make them on my old treadle wheel. I made red clay Minis and miniature Scraffito Plates, Stoneware Whistle Jugs and Tiny Butter Churns. The smallest Jug I made was 1/2" tall, and yes, it was hollow. People ask me what are these Minis for, and I say.. "Nothing!" "Just for Fun!" I made over 400 Miniatures at the fair this year. I can box them up when dry and at $3 each, will easily sell them at my next fair... which is the Goshen Fair in CT. (My local fair is small but it is the "Fair above all others" for us. Labor Day Weekend. )

....................This year, I had Austin back to help out. His dad is the demonstrating Blacksmith and last year, Austin made a nice tile. Often, I ask kids to help me out, and Nathan put a face on a little jug for me. He and my other little helpers got to take their pots home. Sometimes, kids and I do a marble swap. I bring some wonderfully colorful and smoothly burnished Old-Tyme Clay Marbles along, fired and ready to use. The kids make me a marble out of fresh clay trying to make them perfectly round and then we swap for a finished one. Clay marbles are dried and then rolled around in a metal bowl with a mix of water and colored oxides. As they rub against the bowl and each other, they acquire a nice patina that is enhanced when fired.

Along with meeting some really great people, other crafters, locals, visitors and staff, I reconnected again with Athena and Pete who let me hold Butchy the snake. Butchy is a 7' phython and very friendly. Here is Roger the Bowlmaker, a giant broom specially made by Little John and me with Butchy. You can find more information about John and Roger at my web site on the "Reenactors I know" page. http://www.eastknollpottery.com/id18.html

Athena and Pete are the owners of Butchy the snake and the other larger snakes they bring for people to marvel over.

For more photos of the people and attractions at the Erie County Fair, check out this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29942392@N08/?saved=1

Paulette and Barry are fairgoers that live "off the grid". I had a great time visiting with them everyday and learning of their solor and heating meathods. The sweetest couple in the world have been married 34 years!

I miss all of these friends and wish them a year of happiness and success till I see them again next year!