I enjoy making teapots. It is one-part throwing on the wheel, one-part conceptualizing the final product and one-part assembling the final product.   It blends the skills I have as a potter with a desire to use sculptural techniques to provide balance and form. The end result should be a teapot that is well-balanced in one's hand, pours effortlessly and is cherished by its user as a beautiful object.  People ask me how much time it takes to make a teapot.  That is such a difficult question to answer.  For me, I balance a "day-job", family time, house chores and a few other indulgences with what I do as a clay artist.  Therefore, there are few periods that one will find me in the studio on two or more consecutive days. Over the years I have developed a rhythm that works well for me.  The elapsed time between making, glazing and firing can be 60-days and sometimes longer.  One day I may just make teapot bodies and keep them on the wheel head bat...

Pictures are from when the kiln was cool enough to be opened.  Kiln Shed- Closed Kiln Shed Opened Kiln Door Opened and Contents Revealed Top Shelf Cone Pack - Cone 9 Down Bottom Shelf Cone Pack - Cone 9 Down Top Shelf - Right Side Persimmon Blue Teapots and Vase.  More Plum than Blue.  Teapot in back is Shino.  Bottles are matte white. Top Shelf - Left Side Two Bowls in Front are Persimmon Blue.  Matcha Bowls and whisk holders in the back are Shino Second Shelf - Right Side Two small bowls are test bowls.  The pink bowl is the original red glaze that came out too pink in Oxidation, electric firing..  The vivid red bowl is the the same glaze adjusted.  Teapot in the middle is Tenmoku and in the rear Persimmon Blue.  Mugs are Persimmon Blue. Second Level - Left Shelf Front bowls are Shino.  Rear bowls are Persimmon Blue Bottom Shelf - Right side All items on this shelf are Willie Hel...

I was able to create enough work to fill the kiln again.  The pressures of the day job and summer family plans caused making forms to slow to a crawl.  As this can be frustrating at times, it fits me well.  And let me sing the praises of Laguna's B-Mix clay.  It has taken me some time for this clay body and me to become friends, but now that I have learned how to cope with the clay's intricacies, I appreciate how the clay is very slow to dry.  I can make a teapot body and keep it in a leather-hard state for weeks under dry cleaner garment bags. As I have been invited to be a guest artist at Windblown Studio during this year's fall Potters Tour, October 19-20, in Western Pennsylvania , I needed to kick up production during August and September.  For information on the Tour go to:  http://www.potterstour.com/index.htm I loaded the kiln on Saturday (28) and fired it on Sunday (29).  Here are a few of the kiln loading pictures.  I will post t...

My teapots are not targeted toward one gender or the other.  I design my teapots so that both woman and men will find my teapots appealing and comfortable to hold. But men searching for a teapot to purchase are sometimes restricted by a selection that is biased toward more feminine teapots.  This becomes even more problematic when men shop for a covering to keep liquid in a teapot warm ... or what the refined species refers to as a Tea Cozy. I mean, the name just doesn't cut it with men. Picture this: A big man wearing jeans and a work shirt stained with oil and paint walks into a tea room.  He is visibly uncomfortable walking through the room full of well-dressed woman all in white and colorfully print dresses.  He walks up to the counter. Deep, big voice, "Do you have any Cozies?"  See the problem? Well, this was solved by my friend Annilese Pitt, owner and designer at Thistledown Cozies.  She designed the HOB.  As she explained to me ...

I was exposed to Shino glazes in January, 2002 at the Fitchburg ( Massachusetts , USA ) Art Museum. Friends and fellow potters attended an opening reception of " American Shino: The Glaze of a Thousand Faces “  at the museum where I learned of Shino for the very first time.  I learned that it was a family of glazes that had been developed in Japan during the late 17 th century, but then had fallen into obscurity. In 1974, a student, Virginia Wirt, a student   at the University of Minnesota , developed a glaze formula that mirrored the Japanese Shino affect.  This formula became known as American Shino and has provided the foundation blocks for many variations of Shino used by potters today.   After attending the event, my friends and I put into motion plans to purchase a gas kiln so we could experiment with reduction gas firing and Shino glazes.  Shino itself is considered a very finicky and unpredictable glaze.  I would never boast that I...

While working in the studio, I was listening to a classical radio station and an opera began to be broadcast.  The opera was Maria Stuarda   This two act opera was written by Geatano Donizetti and is based  on Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 play Maria Stuarda   involving the doomed life of Mary, Queen of Scotland. Now to me, opera means songs that are sung in Italian or German that I cannot understand nor follow.  So I wasn't listening intently, but I was enjoying the music and voices.  While listening to the opera I began to create a teapot and thought I might record the steps that I take to make one. I was working on numerous teapots, so I distinguished this one as the Maria Stuarda Teapot. As you read, you may find a new perspective how hand-made teapots are formed before it finds itself at a gallery, store or on-line shop. Forming the body It is always good to conceptualize the finished piece before one even sits down to begin...

The snow stayed away long enough to finally fill and fire the kiln.  Over the three first weekends in February, New Hampshire was visited with snow storms during the first few weekends.  The kiln couldn't get loaded in the snow but on Saturday, February 24th, we received a reprieve from the snow gods and were able to load the kiln. My kiln partner, fired the kiln on Sunday, February 25th. Today, we unloaded the kiln. The picture on the left is the first lowest level of the kiln.  The teapots on this level have three different glazes applied.  The teapot on the far back of the shelf is covered with Tenmoku glaze.  The middle teapot is covered with Persimmon Blue and the front teapot and tea bowl are covered with a (new for me)Willie Helix green. The picture on the right shows the second level and portions of the lower level. The bottom left is filled with mugs that are covered in Persimmon Blue. The second level is all Carbon-Trapping Shino. The lef...

During a visit to San Antonio , I was blown away by the number of re-purposed older buildings the city has employed.  And I'm not writing about the re-purposing of the Alamo into a tourist destination. First site I became aware of was the Southwest School of the Arts. The school is located in the former Ursuline Convent and Girl’s Academy. The site has two campuses.  The first is in the refurbished buildings of the first school for girls in San Antonio and houses the ceramic and fibers studios (along with a small museum.)   The second campus is cattycorner on the other side of the street housing the contemporary exhibition galleries and its high-tech classrooms for photography, metals printmaking, digital imaging, paper and books.  This building us a re-purposed Sears and Roebuck automobile repair facility. This corner of Navarro St. and Augusta St must be the epicenter for re-purposed buildings in San Antonio . ...