Fire Works
Fire Works
Thank goodness Independence Day is over. Not that I have anything against fireworks--they're pretty, only occasionally annoyingly noisy, and with how much my neighbors spend at the Fireworks Factory Outlet tent, I don't even have to leave my backyard for the display.
It's just that they're so small.
I work with fire all the time, you see, but my rocket has four burners, is 50 cubic-feet in volume, and you don't want to blow it up. Oh, and it shoots out colored streamers of flame for about half of the twenty-some hour firing cycle.
And if everything goes right, we all get to "ooh" and "aah."
So while everybody else was outside watching the skies, Denise and I were
indoors unloading our glaze kiln on July 4th, marveling at the colors and
patterns and generally celebrating a very successful firing.
And I do mean "celebrating." Our last firing was a bit... well, a little... okay, it was a disaster.
It wasn't my fault, I hasten to say. Club Mud had been getting a lot of raw glaze materials from potters who are going out of the business, and something that was labeled "talc," wasn't. I mixed up two batches of my base white glaze with it, and filled half of the kiln with them. I wound up with half a kiln of brown, un-shiny pots. That's a lot of shards for the driveway.
I had to go into high gear. Threw about a bisque kiln and a half of new pots, including some special order replacements. Washed the glaze off of most of the unfired pots leftover from the previous firing. Glazed everything up in about five days, and fired off my rocket on July 2.
The day the Declaration of Independence was signed.
I'd been meaning to try it for a while now. I keep getting asked if I make them. And finally everything just came together.
And I made my first sink.
Hal and Molly, up on Vashon Island, are remodeling the barn on their property to be a rental hall, for wedding receptions and family reunions. They needed a bathroom, and wanted the sink to reflect the history of the building. They already had my chicken pottery in their guest house, a former brooder coop. Best of all, they weren't in a hurry.
Right after they talked to me about the project, I ran into Alan Higinbotham at Ceramic Showcase. Alan's a porcelain potter from Albany? Oregon who specializes in luscious copper reds and celadons. He also makes sinks, and was more than willing to sit down with me and show me the parts, explain the overflow system, write down dimensions and draw me pictures.
Throwing a sink isn't easy. Centering 18 pounds of clay is no picnic, and keeping it steady while pulling it up and out to 22 inches wide, 10 or 12 inches deep is an aerobic exercise as well. And then I lost the first one to the evil brown glaze.
Just as well, really. The second one is even better, a nicer profile and a lovely painting featuring Holstein cows and a little red barn. I'm very proud of it, and ready to try more.
If that's not vanity.
I'm in Wisconsin visiting my wife's parents as I write this, watching goldfinches from the front window. Brilliant streaks of yellow, black wings and tail in sharp contrast, I can pick them out flying well down the block.
It seems a little early to see them. My memories are of watching them in August, down in the ditches on the family farm, tearing into ripe thistle heads for seeds and silk for their elegant, woven nests. Canada thistle and bull thistle are endemic on the farm. I sometimes think if it weren't for what my dad called "wild canaries," thistle'd take the place over.
Goldfinches still flock the ditches for thistle seed, but also my mother's bird feeder, where they make a habit of cleaning out the primo black-oil sunflower seeds before deigning to try any lesser food. So when I got a request for a French Butter dish with a sunflower on top, I couldn't resist adding my favorite finch. My well-fed finches are turning up on pitchers, square baking dishes and pie plates.
Panning for gold...