StarDish

This is a nice example of a dish that has been bisque fired but has not been glaze fired. The red clay becomes lighter as all of the water has been removed during the drying and firing process. It is neat to see the clay in this state because many of the small bumps and roughness that are obvious on close inspection become smooth once the clay is covered in glaze and fired for the final time (click the pics to zoom in).

This also happens to be one of Paula's most creative designs. I really like the wavy walls of the bowl and from above you can see the neat star pattern. I am curious what glaze(s) she decides to go with.

Over-birdened

The harvest is going well. Our coworkers may be getting sick of squash and cucumbers very soon. The biggest news is that we have been chosen as the 2007 home for a sparrow's nest! I am pretty sure they are not finches. Anyway, they have secretly built a nest within one of the tomato cages. The mother feeds 2 babies and there is 1 unopened egg in the nest. The mother is somewhat tolerant of us getting close to pick basil, but usually she gets spooked and flies to an adjacent fence to spy on us. As long as she doesn't dive-bomb us like the crows at PSU I will be happy.

Welcome to the Jungle

The harvest is in full-swing. If you live near us and need fresh cucumbers, squash or onions please give us a holler. I wish we had a super-buff cow to pull our haul from the garden to the apartment; Something like the cows described in this article.....


Sounds like a cool company!

The Garden is growing strong, here are pictures of both plots.

This is plot 1 and those are monster tomato plants growing down the center. They have grown so large and have dwarfed the basil and marigolds. On the ground to the right you can see a pile of harvested squash being prepared for transit. The onions are growing wild on the lefthand side.


This is plot 2. The beans are starting to climb the bean trellis and the corn has popped up in the back. There are 2 pumpkins plants on the leftahand side that keep growing into the neighbors gardens and we have to pull them back. Currently, the pumpkins reach all the way across our plot, even past the bean trellis. Front and center are Paula's radishes and turnips, yum. The hot peppers are HOT, I'm not sure what we will do with them.

Back from Vacation

Our vacation to Northern Ontario was very relaxing... except for the frequent concerns about the weather in Boston and the state of our garden. We were unable to find a substitute waterer for the gardens and were forced to do the Rain Dance in Huntsville, ON. Unfortunately, all of the rain fell in ON and the garden was left dry. It turned out ok afterall, the plants are large and could sustain themselves through a semi-drought. Here are some of the first fruits of the garden! The green squash are WAY TOO BIG, they should have been picked a few days ago but we were gone. The larger of the squash is easily over a foot long. We also harvested some turnips, onions and basil. The tomatoes are still 2 to 3 weeks away from being ready.





On a sad note: The LCD screen on our canon sureshot is busted and it is now very difficult to take photos with the tiny viewfinder. We are working on a solution, but please forgive us if the photos seem a little off for the next few weeks. I'll try to take good shots of the garden soon, you will not believe the difference compared to the previous photos. Enjoy!

Curved Lip Bowl

I think this is Aaron's last bowl of the season. We ended pottery a few weeks ago, but I still need to pickup our last pieces from the museum. The colors on this bowl aren't spectacular but Aaron was pleased with the curved lip of the bowl. He wanted to avoid the straight-walled bowls that he has been making plenty of.

Acorn

Aaron hit a creative streak and came up with this funky shaped piece. What is it? A vase? A water jug? Not sure, but he gets high marks for originality. The glaze colors came out smooth and have an Acorn color. I suggested that he make a brown lid that would make this look like an actual acorn.

Bohnanza

We enjoy games and one of our favorites is called "Bohnanza" but we affectionately call it the "Bean Game". The official game site is here but that is a pretty weak description compared to the wikipedia site. I bring this up because today we built our new bean support (V2.0). Version 1.0 is visible in the pictures of garden plot A and was simply the old door to our garden. V2.0 will have 4x the surface area of V1.0 and should yield 4x the number of beans! Beans planted that will use the support: peas, yellow wax and kentucky (string bean). We also planted soybeans, but they are small bushes and do not need the support. Eventually we will put strings or rope across V2.0 (the white pvc pipes shown below in garden plot B) that will support the beans as they grow 6+ ft up.

Garden Guide

We keep posting pictures of the garden as the plants grow, but many of our loyal fans have been asking "which vegetables are growing where?". We are slaves to our fans and now we have a guide for you to use when watching the vegetables grow.


The guide is fairly self-explanatory. For the labels close to the edge the actual plant may be slightly off the edge of the picture, so you will have to trust us. Soon I will post a similar guide for the second garden.

Super Bowls

Paula has 2 bowls to present for your entertainment. The first is s smaller bowl that has really cool textures on the inside and outside. She used a stamp to press the bottom of the bowl and it made a neat "bump" texture. The utside of the bowl has cool ridges made by her fingernails. The glaze did some neat things around the ridges.


This dual colored bowl is very cool because the right side (tan/gray color) is actually the color of the red clay after the bisque firing and glaze firing. The left side was dipped in a blue glaze, but the right side was only dipped in a clear glaze.

Mug Shot

Aaron has made his first mug (handle courtesy of Paula productions). The outside is actually a darker blue than the inside and the edges (rim and handle egdes) turned a nice brown in the kiln.


Paula's best (but not biggest) bowl to-date. The glaze turned out really nicely, and the rim at the top is dark blue. The tough part about the bowls is making sure they're symmetrical at the rim and at the bottom too.

Garden Planted

The garden has been planted and if you look closely at the pictures you will be able to see the beginning of what will be many delicious meals for both us and the rabbits in the garden. In a future post I will photoshop the pics to give you exact locations of vegetables, but for now, just a listing of the goodies we hope to harvest:

Plot A: "big boy" tomatoes, "beefsteak" tomatoes, basil, parsley, butternut squash, yellow squash, zucchinni, cucumber, red cherry tomatoes, orange "sun sweet" cherry tomatoes and marigolds to ward of bugs. The piece of fencing is the old gate to plot A and will be used for bean plant support in the future.

Plot B: cayenne peppers, cubanele peppers, white corn, pumpkins, peas, turnips, spinach, radish, marigolds and hopefully soybeans (the only unplanted crop as of yet). P.S. That is a LEGAL immigrant working the fields.

Pottery Expo

We have managed to keep up the pottery while spending a lot of time getting the garden running. Here are 2 new pieces from our collection. Paula made a new mug that matches her old mug shown here. She is the master handlemaker and anything I make that needs a handle gets gently nudged in her direction.


My latest creation is a decent sized bowl. I tried dipping the rim in a separate color than the bottom and inside of the bowl. The glaze drippped down from the rim and made a weird streaking phenomena. Kudos for making the inside of the bowl smooth, a first for me!

Spring Cleaning

The garden plots have been cleaned, tilled and fertilized with mulch and organic fertilizer. We would have started planting last weekend, but the weather did not cooperate. This weekend we will hit the dirt first thing saturday morning.


Plot B looks a little smaller, but that is because we didn't weed block the entire area. There was quite a bit of straw in the garden leftover from the previous owner, so we used that to cover the left quarter of the garden. This will be Paula's Pumpkin Patch.

Garden Baseline

For the past 2 years we have rented a 15'x15' garden plot in an organic community garden in Waltham, MA. This year, we opted for a 2nd garden plot giving us about 30'x30'. The original plan had our 2nd garden directly next to our original garden, this was ideal. However, when we arrived on the first day a new member of the garden had already cleared our 2nd garden spot and begun to plant stuff. The powers that be let him keep that plot (which should have been ours) and gave us a 2nd garden catty-corner to our original garden. Oh well - I guess the early bird gets the worm.

This is our original garden plot (above) with old weed block on it and a pile of mulch.


This is our 2nd plot. You can see our original garden in the top left corner of the image.

These are "before" images of our gardens before we started to clean them and prep for the season.

Warning

I don't want to upset our loyal pottery followers, but I must warn you that we do not plan on taking pottery classes during the summer months. The reasoning: we don't want to spend summer nights in a basement when we could be outside nurturing our garden. To keep you amused and to prevent the Pottery blog from going dormant, we have decided to gradually replace pottery updates with garden updates. While this post represents the first garden post, the pottery posts will continue through mid-June. Thank you for your time, we hope you enjoy.

Paula's swirl bowl

Slightly off-center, but a definite improvement over Paula's last attempt. It's hard to see from the photo, but there's a swirl stamped into the center of the bowl which glazed over well. Paula appears to have diverged from the dark glazes in her earlier pieces to softer, lighter shades. She's been focusing on throwing new pieces so you'll have to wait a little longer to see some of her new creations...

Daily Dish

Hope we aren't bowling you over with 2 new posts in one week. What do you think about the multi-color bowl? I actually like the bluish color, which is a red covered by a white, and will use it on a future piece.

Gone Bowl'ing

Now the pottery machine is churning out goodies left and right. That is literal because everything we make leans to the left or right and is not properly centered. We are still learning. This is Aaron's best bowl and largest creation to date.

The glaze came out very well except for a few imperfections where it flaked off in transit to the kiln. Not bad, getting better.

Closing Arguments

Sorry for the gap between posts. Our first class (semester) has ended and now we are waiting for the 2nd session to begin. Here is a cool cup to keep you amused. I really like the glaze job; the inside of the cup is a dark brown and the outside is much lighter. We are getting better at throwing larger items. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but there are 2 large bowls in the kiln that should be blog worthy in 2 weeks ;)

Best in Show

You shouldn't be surprised that Paula has made the nicest mug so far...

Gravy Train

Another gravy cup....

You know your pottery stinks when everyone starts asking you about the glazes you used and doesn't mention the actual pottery...

Fired Up

Here are some more glazed pieces. This cup could be a good match with one of our first finished products shown here.
This is a terrible piece that came out looking like an egg holder. The white liner glaze underneath didn't work well.

Planter

This piece has my favorite glaze job so far. This is a double dip of obsidian and it is very smooth and dark and covers lots of imperfections. This piece is also a fine example of a well-pulled handle. Don't ask how to pull a handle. I will show you this image clipped from JH Pottery Tutorial and you can get the picture of the general technique.


A good glaze job on a holy piece of pottery.

Does anyone need a planter?

Goals

Where do we look for inspiration? A few years ago our friend Paul started taking pottery lessons and we witnessed his evolution from beginner to expert potter. I haven't seen any of his recent work, but I'm sure he has achieved grand-master status by now! The bowl pictured is a gift he made for us and it sits on our coffee table. It usually holds a pen, the keys to our mailbox and a letter opener, but for official guests it is emptied and displayed in its purest form.I don't know how long it will be until either of us can make a bowl this smooth and symmetrical, but we keep on trying. It may be even longer until we figure out how to put a cool swirl glaze on our pottery.

Another source for our artistic inspiration has been the artwork we have seen in our travels. We really enjoy mosaics and ceramic tilework. The mosaic pictured was not at the Alhambra, but it is available here. Recently, a NYT article suggested that medieval Muslim artists had found patterns for their mosaics that were solutions to mathematical puzzles that have only recently been solved. Here is a link to the original Science article titled "Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture".

Act II

The second round of items produced some interesting results. The black/blue combo of glazes on the red clay gave this piece gave an incredible texture.

This piece produced an interesting lesson in wheel pottery: when you have completely messed up the rim of a bowl or cup you can always make it a spout and pretend that was you original intention from the start! We'll see this strategy several times in the coming weeks. The glaze combo for this piece was a bust: clear chum under a blue didn't work.

In the beginning

Welcome to our pottery blog. We started taking pottery classes in January 2007 and we hope you will watch our progress as we learn and improve. Our goal is to become proficient using the pottery wheel as well as with slab pottery.

Here are our first pieces of pottery to succesfully make it from our bags of clay into finished, glazed products. Keep in mind that the pottery looks 200% better in the digital photos than it does in person. The bowl on the left is made using gray clay and the cup on the right was made using red clay.

I found a video of someone making a nice bowl. This guy makes his bowl/vase in less than 2 minutes... it usually takes us 10 minutes to get the clay close to being centered on the wheel. Throwing pottery can be very stressful, I found a video that gives a great example of throwing pottery in less than 15 seconds.