Winter Morning in the Studio


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pop Up Camper Repair - Part 1 Let's Remove the Roof

Image
Prologue A few years ago I purchased a 1981 Palomino pop-up camper from a 1st grade teacher.  It was an impulse buy.  I know nothing about pop up campers. But now I know I paid a bit too much for the unit.  We have used it for 5 years without much maintenance.  But we still paid too much. The picture above is a few years ago with the camper set up.  It is rough but functional What I knew was that the wood on the roof was a bit sketchy...and when the lift arms cables broke after the season in 2010, it was time to undertake fixing the roof.  Due to a few circumstances beyond my control, I couldn't fix the roof in 2011.  So this May (2012) we began the project. The Roof Repair With the help of reading posts on www.popupportal.com and obsessing about this for a year in my head, I began the process.  The first trick was how to remove the roof.  The external lift arms had to be removed to repair the spring / cable mechanism anyhow. Th...
Read more

A New Kiln Build

In rural part New Hampshire, a wood fired kiln is being built by the New Hampshire Potters Guild.  This kiln will replace a 30-year old, tired, kiln.  I'm creating a short film to document the event.   The short (30 seconds) video provides a glimpse of the beginning of the process.  Watch for more.
Read more

My Affinity for Shino Glaze

Image
After moving to New Hampshire in 2000, I took a ceramic course at the New Hampshire Art Institute (now part of the College of New Hampshire).   There I found a group of potters who introduced me to Shino glaze. Shino glazes were used by Japan potters during the 16th century.   They were known for their characteristic warm white finish, earthy tones, speckled surfaces, and subtle crawling effects. Unfortunately, the recipe for the glazes faded away around the late 17th century and became lost. Through extensive analysis of surviving Shino pottery scholars attempted to piece together the lost recipe. In the 1930s and 1940s, two Japanese potters, Toyozo Arakawa and Hajime Katō, developed the first modern Shino glaze by studying Momoyama Shino pots. Working independently in 1974, Virginia Wirt, a student of Warren MacKenzie at the University of Minnesota, developed a glaze formula that emulated the characteristics of the Japanese Shino glaze.  ...
Read more