Mid Cycle Update....

Not much new news.... the firing is approaching rapidly. We've got a little under a month before our may firing (and my last firing at the Jones Pottery). I made three boards of birdhouse late last week. They are nice and easy to throw and really fun to decorate. Below are just a few of things I've been working on for Matt.... I've been a little obsessed with the slip trailing as of late but thats when I feel like real progress is made, when I just do one thing over and over and slowly it evolves. One theme leads into another and over the cycles things change and evolve into something that I feel is more my own. In the past few months its been much more of a back and forth between me and Matt where we both are looking at the others pots for new ideas.

Ball mill update...

Thanks to my brother Robin I now have a camera that works! Thanks Robin!
So here are few more pictures of the finished ball jar. The quote on the top of the jar is read by Bascom Lamar Lunsford on a Smithsonian Folkways Collection. Bascom lived in South Turkey Creek very close to Matt's pottery. Me and Matt have listened to the CD quite a bit in the pottery and it'll be nice to have that concrete remembrance of my time in the "Mush". More details of the ball mill to follow. I gotta get to work..... Have a good weekend every body!

Fried chicken helps...

...you remember which side of the grass you're on.

It seems only right that on a blog about pottery there should also be a few recipes. Perhaps this will turn into a weekly thing. To start off I am going to show you how to make the best fried chicken in the world. That is a bold statement some of you might say but I feel that this recipe has the stuff to back it up. To give credit where its due Scott Peacock and Edna Lewis came up with the recipe in their fine collaborative work The Gift of Southern Cooking. I recommend this book to anyone who likes eating food.
The ingredients are as follows:

-One 3 lb chicken cut up into 8 pieces and brined for 8 to 12 hours (brine in cold water with the ratio of 1/4 cup of kosher salt to 1 quart water, table salt is too salty)
-One quart buttermilk
-1 lb lard (good fresh lard is tricky to find in most places and the stuff in the supermarket is just gross!)
-1 stick of unsalted butter
-1 thick slice of country ham
-1 cup of all purpose flour
-2 tablespoons of corn starch
-1 teaspoon salt
-1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

For this recipe the chicken gets two longs soaks. Apparently this is called "Alabama Style". First in the brine and then another 8 to 12 hours in the butter milk.
Once your chicken is sufficiently soaked (cue the Neil Young) style you must prepare the fat. This is what makes this dish so darn tasty. Below is the lard, country ham and pickled okra (just for snacking)

Take the lard, country ham, and butter and put it in a large skillet. Heat it on low for 45 minutes to an our to get all that tasty flavor out of the ham. After its food sufficiently remove the ham and give it to you dog. (Or make some pork stock out of it)



Things got a little crazy here and I stopped taking pictures but the next step is as follows...
Now turn the head up to about medium. In the book it says to get the fat to about 355 degrees but although we use a pyrometer to fire our kiln my kitchen is lacking in such high tech instrumentation. Combine the flour, corn starch and salt and pepper in a bowl and take the chicken and dredge it in the mix. Fry it in the fat, skin side down first for 8 to 10 minutes a side until its done all the way through. Be sure not to overcrowd the pan and do it in batches if necessary. Enjoy!

Exciting horizons...

With the help and connections, of folklorist, historian, and writer Dr. Henry Glassie I am working on a trip to Turkey. I don't want to get ahead of myself here and jinx things but this June I am planning a trip to Kutayha where Mehmet Gursoy lives, works, and teaches. My hope is to some day in the next year or two return for a more extended visit and learn some of the tequniques of what I consider to be some of the most beautiful and refined brushwork in the world. This is all just a work in progress but I am keeping my fingers crossed!

Plate by Mehmet Gursoy

Part 1: Ramblings of an Apprentice

As I said in my first post, I wanted this blog to not just be a daily recounting of the events at the pottery but also a more three dimensional look into the apprenticeship as an experience. There is a metaphor that I think describes well what I (and I am only speaking for myself) think an apprenticeship offers...
If I go to foreign country my experience is going to be defined a lot by the types of interactions I have with those who live in that country. I could go to France and climb the Eiffel Tower, eat some frois gras and have a great time but if I don't speak French I am going to be limited in my ability to communicate. The apprenticeship that I have been doing has given me those tools. It has given me the technical "language" to express myself. Now...the only problem is that I speak the language with the heavy accent of the person who taught me. But the question is then asked...is that a problem?

I think overwhelmingly in our culture there is a enormous emphasis on the individual. Whether that be in an academic setting where the student is pursuing their own vision or any other part of society. The emphasis is on the self and that is where an apprenticeship is difficult. It requires the individual do put their own ideas on hold and create something that is not their own. All around me I see younger potters around my age going off and creating and making their own work and having openings and sales and all that comes with being on your own and it can be difficult at times to not want that right away. But that again is another thing that we have been conditioned into and it takes a deliberate effort know we are on the right path. No matter how slow it seems at times....

Crazy days...

Ive been running around like crazy getting ready for tomorrow. Im going down to my old college in Greensboro to do a demo for Charlie Tefft's ceramics class. Ive never done a demo before and the idea of throwing in front of folks is kinda scary! Any ways... today I mixed up a glaze, finished the slip trailing on the jug and got a little closer to finishing the ball mill I have been working on. When I get back from Greensboro Ill do a more detailed post on the ball mill. They are really neat tools! I feel like I look in the picture below.....

How we make the big 'uns....

For this pot I started with a 3 1/2 lb ball of clay for the pad that will be the bottom of the pot. When we make these pots the only addition to our clay mix is grog that is added into the pug mill but for the bottom we wedge in even more grog to help with cracking issues during the drying.


Below is the pad of clay on the wheel head with a 6 1/2 lb lump on top which is then centered onto the pad...

At this point one of these would come in very handy. It is on my long list of things to make....


When throwing the base there are a few things to keep in mind. One is the thickness of the pad, about a 3/8 to a 1/2 inch is good. The walls should not be thinner than 1/4 inch. The bases can be very tricky because they determine where the pot is going to want to go. Sketching it out is always a good idea. Then we use a weed torch to get the base to leather hard state where it is ready to accept coils. The edge is then slipped and scored....

I'm sorry the camera angle was so bad here because you really can't see what I'm doing but the coil is added onto the rim using my right hand with my thumb on the outside and my index and middle finger supporting on the inside...

Once the coil has been added and the part where the two ends meet has been smoothed I use my thumb to work the new coil down onto the old section while supporting the outside with my fingers. You can sort of see this in the picture below. Once I work all the way around I take a rib and smooth the outside of the coil onto the bottom section. Then without wetting the coil I take a rib on the outside and start the wheel turning. I smooth the section just slightly and then trim the edge and repeat the process. For each section I add three coils before wetting the clay and actually throwing it. I use a large rib on the outside and my fingers or a sponge on the inside. Then the torch is used again and the whole process repeated.





This is only one way to make large pots but it works well for me and Matt. There is way to much information to really get across in this format but hopefully this gives some sense of how it is done. The best thing to do is just try one! Let me know if anyone has any more questions or would like more detailed pictures.... Ill update when I get the slip trailing on there!

Days work...

This is the pot I made today. I almost lost it when I stomped on the pedal by accident and spun it up to about a million rpms. The next one I do I will try and document it from the beggining. It is really not as hard as one might expect and requires more patience than anything else. This pot started with a 10 lb base and the rest is extruded coils that are added on and then burned with a weed torch. More tomorrow...

The CRUSHER!

This is Matts glass crusher. All the silica we use in our glazes comes from beer bottles that are broken up and tossed in the crusher. It is very similar to the glass crusher, "plunking mill", or "trip mill" that Burlon Craig used at his pottery but the idea is as old as the trees. My Father told me he has seen bambo bells in Japanese rock gardens that work on the same pricipal.