The week in review...

This past week I made teapots. It was my first run of making them here at Mark's. Mark was busy with bowls all week and Joseph made coffee pots and casseroles. On Friday I took off to East Fork to work on the house a bit and lay out the workshop. It was blistering hot but I finally managed to find a layout that works for the location. In the last picture you can see the faint outline of the workshop. The large space on the right is the workshop and the smaller space on the left is the showroom. There is a 15' shed coming off the back marked by two stakes which are not in the picture. I am still going back and forth about the layout and so this is by no means a final draft but it gets closer every day. Tomorrow is more teapots...

Big Pot Workshop with David Stuempfle

This past weekend Joseph and I, along with a bunch of other folks, took a workshop at the Central Carolina Community College (or CCCC for short) campus in Siler City. The workshop was led by David Stuemple and focused on coil building large vessels. Davids tecnique is similar to the way that I was taught at Matt's but he uses a paddle and anvil to thin and compress the coils before wetting them and throwing them. It was a little tricky to pick up on his technique because I still have Matt's way in my muscle memory even though I only made a few when I was out there and it was well over a year ago. I met some great people and got to get out of the pottery for a few days which is always a nice change of pace.

David throwing the base

Adding the first coil...
Pinching the first coil onto the pot...

Paddling the coil to thin it out before thowing. Usually he uses a small wooden anvil on the inside but here he is using his hand.

Lara O'Keefe using the weed torch...

The Sandman

Your Deepest Mind

Here is the essay in its entirety:

YOUR DEEPEST MIND

by

Alex Matisse

Some days the work is maddening; others, it is a delight, the clay springing from the wheel head effortlessly, as though it could not wait to be turned to its final form. Other days the clay stays obstinately close to the wheel, falling back down when it is worked too hard, tired and wet, retiring to a growing pile of slumped pots in the corner of the splash pan.

It was the spring of 2006 when my blue Vanagon wheezed up the last pitch of Early's Mountain, North Carolina. At the crest a sign read, "Welcome to the Big Sandy Mush Community." I rode the brakes the rest of the way down. As I passed the old Fords and Dodges with their diesel engines grinding up out of the bottom land, their drivers still waved at the passing cars; not so much a wave, perhaps, as one crooked pointer finger, raised from the top of the steering wheel, above a cracked dashboard. After winding through fields of silage and tobacco, I arrived at the Jones Pottery where for two years I was to work under the watchful eye of Matt Jones, learning his craft.

Matt's introduction to clay was similar to my own. Just a decade prior, at a small college in Indiana, Matt somehow ended up in a pottery class. From Earlham College, he went to apprentice with a Connecticut potter, Todd Piker, who introduced him to the family of potters we are now all part of. After two-and-a-half years with Todd, Matt and his wife, Christine, moved down to North Carolina to work for Mark Hewitt, another potter who, like Todd, fires a large wood-burning kiln. Mark and Todd had worked with the same potter in England, Michael Cardew, who made pots in the English country tradition, not unlike the folk potters of North Carolina. Matt worked for Mark for six months before leaving to find the land he now lives on with his wife and their two children, Linden and Sara Frances.

The pottery, or workshop, is simple. A dirt floor keeps it both cool and dust free, two small windows sit on either side of the door, and below them two potters wheels, the plastic splash pans replaced with wood. Behind the workshop lies an enormous pile of bluish-gray clay, dug with a backhoe from a tobacco field on the other side of Early's Mountain. Matt thinks it should last him 30 years and it probably will. At the far end of the workshop, under a peak-roofed tin shed lies the kiln, like a giant egg cut in half, dug into the hillside.

Potting is a work of extremes. For a few crazy months we work like mad, filling the ware racks with pots, preparing the kiln to accept them, and performing the countless other chores required to keep the pottery in order. The firing approaches with a week of backbreaking, painstaking work. The loading takes time and mental strain as each pot is placed into the kiln, each one raised off the kiln shelves or floor with a chalky white mixture of alumina hydrate, china clay, and sawdust, called wadding. After four or five days, the kiln is full and the door is carefully bricked up, the cracks filled with clay and sand.

Overnight a small fire dances at the feet of the pots on the very front ranks to make sure all residual moisture is evaporated. Then the fire starts in earnest, growing gradually over the hours until the temperature reaches 2,300° Fahrenheit, the interior of the kiln glowing a bright orange-yellow.

The firing is broken down into shifts; as apprentice, it was my duty to watch over the kiln from midnight until six the next morning. On my last predawn firing shift at the Jones pottery I wrote:

This is the time I call the “Grind.” My friends have gone home to their beds to drift off into sleep and I am left alone with the kiln, the dogs, and my thoughts. The next two-and-a-half hours will draw by slowly. The moon sinks lower in the gathering clouds, and the flame slowly works its way farther and father back into the kiln. These are some of my favorite times. I've fired this kiln 10 or 12 times, I’ve lost track by now, but each time I've kept watch over it in the small hours of the night. It’s an easy kiln to fire, rarely if ever stalling, it sometimes seems like a giant, walking up a steep hill slowly, but showing no sign of tiring. As if it would fire the pots into puddles on the kiln floor.

I toss two more pieces of slab into the fire and the kiln roars back to life: 2,050° reads on the pyrometer. This is also the last time I will sit here at this hour. Coyotes are suddenly calling out in the pasture across the road. The dogs wake for a minute from their slumber to let out furtive growls and drift back off to sleep.

This is the part of being a potter few will get to understand or appreciate. It is the hidden part, the quiet part. There is no glamour to be found sitting in front of a fire at 3:45 in the morning. There is no one to watch, no one to applaud. Even the spring peepers are quiet tonight. A bullfrog sounds in the darkness.

When the front of the kiln is to temperature, the flame is then moved back through the kiln by carefully sliding strips of wood into small openings on either side. The fire licks the plates and bowls stacked in the very back, 25 feet from where it started, and winds its way through the flue, past the dampers, and up the chimney out into the night air. When the whole kiln is up to temperature, Matt pours feed salt onto thin strips of wood, which are then carefully placed into the kiln, a few in the front and the rest through the side-stoking ports. The salt instantaneously vaporizes, and then adheres to the surface of the pots adding a bit more shine and luster to the finished wares. After salting, the kiln is given a final few stokes to “soak” a bit longer, and then it is shut down, any visible cracks in the door are filled and the kiln is left to cool. When the kiln has cooled, the door finally taken down, and the pots litter the lawn, glinting in the sun, a pall settles over. So much work and energy has reached its climax, and we are once again left with the staggering prospect of starting over.

The reality of a potter’s life is quite different from the often romanticized notion held by people looking in from outside. It is a tremendous amount of work. To make pots in the "old way" means there is wood to cut, clay to mix, and glass to crush for the glazes. A lot of this work falls on the apprentice, while the master potter has time to create his own work. It is both a matter of economics and an earned right.

It was Matt who told me first that there are no new forms, only old ones turned well or turned poorly. As potters, we are not always asked to invent something new, but instead to carry on a thoughtful conversation with what came before. Out of that conversation, new ideas emerge. Matt’s pots are made from the same clay that the mountain potters of the region used in their dirt-floored workshops a century before, and it is this adherence to material integrity, coupled with his strong classic forms, that give his work depth, presence, and the same quiet dignity as their predecessors.

With the availability of industrially processed clays, the relationship of a potter to his or her medium has changed. Most potters choose to use materials that have been refined, processed, and tested to assure quality and consistency, but in doing so, they lose something less tangible. The Sufi mystic Ibn al 'Arabi (July 28, 1165 - November 10, 1240) wrote:

While watching an artisan mixing clay and making things out of it, one is led to observe superficially that in the hands of a potter clay is passive and inert. One forgets, however, the important fact that clay actively [positively] influences the work of the artisan. Certainly, he can make a great deal of things with clay, but whatever he does he cannot go beyond the subtle and rigid limits imposed by the very nature of the clay. In other words, the nature of the clay itself determines the possible forms in which it can be realized.

The unrefined clay, referred to as blue-pipe clay by the locals, after the Civil War soldiers who sat around their campfires fashioning pipes from it, stretches out in a large pile behind the pottery, almost indistinguishable from the surrounding hillside due to the grass that has sprouted over it. It could be any pile of dirt, save for the end closest to the pottery, where the hard outer crust is scraped away with a spade head shovel every two or three months to reveal the dark blue-gray clay beneath. Compared to the mule-driven pug mills of the turn of the century, Matt’s clay-mixing system is rather twenty-first century. The clay is shoveled into 5-gallon buckets and then poured into a “blunger” to mix with a few other materials. The blunger, designed and built by an Amish man in Ohio, is a simple 55-gallon drum with a motor on top that powers the submerged mixing blades. The drum is filled with water and clay and left to mix, usually while Matt and I break for lunch. When the clay is thoroughly mixed, a sump pump is submerged into the blunger and the clay is pumped into the drying beds, where it will sit for a few weeks, slowly expelling its moisture until it can be brought into the pottery.

I can remember lying in bed at night, in the small apprentice cabin behind the pottery, listening to the glass crusher. Every ten seconds or so. Crunch. In the summers, when the stream slows to a trickle, the glass crusher slows as well until a thundershower sends the muddy water charging down the creek bed, through the raceway, and spilling into the square bucket of the glass crusher. The bucket is on one end of a four-by-four post; on the other are three spikes that point downward. When the filled bucket reaches the ground, the water sloshes out and the spiked end plunges back down, into a steel-bottomed box of broken beer bottles. After a few days of this pounding, the glass has been transformed to powder, which will later be added to the glaze as silica. For hundreds of years this method has been used to crush materials, from the potteries of Japan and China where they pulverized clay and rock to the small farm potteries of the Carolinas where they crushed glass for their alkaline glaze.

When my two-year apprenticeship was over, at the end of our last firing, Matt gave me a present: a large 4-gallon ovoid preserve jar reminiscent of those made centuries before, across the North and South Carolina Piedmont. It has the dark green alkaline glaze of the Catawba region, located just two hours east, down the winding stretch of interstate 40, in the foothills of the Appalachians. The jar is slip trailed, a technique of applying a watered down clay mixture to the surface of the pot with an applicator such as an old restaurant ketchup bottle. It is a technique that spans many ceramic traditions, but for Matt is rooted in the varied potteries of the eastern United States: from Edgefield, South Carolina, where skillful slaves turned functional ware for their masters; to Winston-Salem, where the Moravians brought their colorful slip-trailed red ware down through the Shenandoah Valley from Pennsylvania; to the New England potteries themselves with their salt-glazed stoneware, where they used a combination of slip trailing and traditional brush work to apply cobalt, which once fired turns bright blue.

On one side of this jar, a large buck stands, craning back his neck, next to a pine tree. It is the same buck that appears throughout New England stoneware. On the back is a poem, like those seen on the large jars that came out of Edgefield, where Dave Drake, or Dave the Slave, a well-known nineteenth-century slave potter, often inscribed rhyming couplets on his pots. This one simply reads:

Do this in love

Do this in Madness

Do this with your Deepest Mind

Wild Apples

Wild Apples is a literary journal that my mother, Linda Hoffman, started with a few other friends. What follows is the introduction from their website:

"Wild Apples: a journal of nature, art, and inquiry is a new twice-yearly arts and literary publication. Taking its name and inspiration from Henry David Thoreau's essay, "Wild Apples," the journal brings together the work of artists and writers who are connected by the common threads of care for the environment, engagement in social concerns, and commitment to the arts and the way they shape our world.

"Artists are not like the ordered rows of trees in a commercial orchard," writes founding editor, Linda Hoffman, in her introduction to the first issue. "They have more in common with the wild apples growing on the borders of woodlands." Our journal seeks to find these gems in the landscape, let the different arts and visions intermingle, and produce new varieties and voices to sustain us.

Let Wild Apples be a haven from cell phones and computers; a piece of reading that takes you into the woods and wilds. As the journal's guiding spirit writes:

What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the apple of the world, then!"

When for the third issue, with the theme of soil, they asked me to write a piece on the subject of the dirt that I work with I jumped at the chance. The journal is beautiful printed in full color and with no advertisements. The piece that I wrote is on my time working with Matt Jones. There is a .pdf sample of the essay available here. If you enjoy what you see I encourage you all to check out a copy. They are not cheap but it is well worth the money. There are not to many journals like this out there and I think they all do a terrific job. I will post the essay in its entirety soon.

The Dig

Last night some friends of mine came through town and played a show at the Cave. I've known the band for a few years and I try to give them some hospitality and a place to crash when they come through North Carolina. They are a great group of guys with a fantastic sound. You can check out their website here and download a few free songs below...if they are in your area (and if you live on the East Coast chances are they will be sometime soon) check them out.

Demo - zip file

Here is what some of the bigger music blogs are saying about the boys:

"Speaking of not changing, local boys The Dig are back at Bowery again. They just played there six weeks ago with Mystery Jets, but it looks like they've got the goods to make a name for themselves. I have no witty observations or creative writing pull quotes to give you. They are just a damn good band. If they keep at what they are doing, playing consistently, frequently and effectively, their brand of 70s road house rock will find an audience beyond our fair city." - Musicsnobery.com

"From the first note this band grabbed my attention (another rare occurrence) and pulled me out of the daze I was in leaning against the bar. And they didn’t let go for the whole set. They’ve got a vintage rock sound that blends the grit of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club with the bounce of the Strokes. It’s Rock ‘n Roll boiled down to its most basic ingredients: Balls, Volume, and a good Hook.

Don’t forget rhythm. Too many acts these days do. The Dig laid down layer upon layer of the stuff (guitar, bass, drums, Rhodes), stacking it up and thickening the hell out of their grooves. No need to get overly riffy. The basics were that good. The songs pull you in with their catchy beats, well-written melodies, and simple hooks…imagine a hipster basement party where the band is actually good. I know, it’s hard. But trust me, these dudes got it!

Song after song was strong and the guys played them with a fervor that only comes with skill and experience. There weren’t any misfires or “time to take a piss” songs in the set. And the crowd dug (pun annoyingly intended) them, too, really getting behind the band and even calling for an encore. Not bad for an out-of-town band no one had heard before.

They are hitting up a bunch of cities in the next few months. Do yourself a friggin’ service and check them out. You’re sure to dig them…

Sorry, I had to go there." - 52shows.com

The Simple Tools

These are a few of our tools. From left to right we have a Sherrill Mudtools Rib which I use for putting the final smooth on the pot. Before the plastic come a few passes with the big wooden rib and before that 1 or 2 pulls with the metal. We all have our different techniques and Mark doesn't use a wooden rib at all but I learned to throw with one at Matt's and haven't given it up. Next is a Dolan trim tool and then a regular old scraper used for putting a bevel on false feet right before the pot come off the wheel head. Next in line is the old fan brush which I use sort of like a throwing stick for pulling up the necks of vases and other narrow forms. Farther on down is the throwing stick used for bellying out pots with tight openings, a fettling knife, a small wire brush which I find indispensable to slip and score at the same time, and finally and assortment of sponges. And thats pretty much it for the hand tools.

Composite

I am going to break a cardinal rule of this "blogosphere" and say what you are never supposed to say. "Gee..it's been a long time since I've posted." I read that somewhere about a year back in a guide to having a successful blog. HA! Well, if consistency is what you are after I am afraid you are in the wrong place. Some days (or months) I just cannot bring myself to keeping everyone updated on my life. I will not bore you with my ruminations on why that may be.

So here is the update:

Plans are moving along on the workshop construction, kiln, and kiln shed. There are a number of details that need to be worked out...like what to do with a pesky power line that goes up through the back field (and the potential site of the pottery) to the last property on the road. As promised before here are a few pictures of the place. This summer I'll be going out on weekends to chip away at a list of house improvements including a shed dormer which I have felt could be a little over my head, but have then been assured by a friend of mine who is a framer that it is "just about impossible to be over your head with a shed dormer." All house improvements will end n the fall when work will start in eanest on the kiln shed and workshop.

Site of Workshop

In the pottery we are busy as always making pots for the next firing which will be in mid August. We have about 7 weeks to throw which will give us plenty of time to fill the kiln. Below are a few pictures of the process of throwing a composite.
The bases are all thrown on day 1. We leave them on the bats and let them stiffen up.
The next day we attach and throw the necks. Joseph throws his necks off the hump which may be faster but I prefer to throw the necks out of individual balls of clay. Fo this pot the base was 3.5 lbs and the next is 1.75. The necks could have gone down maybe a quarter lb but this weight was pretty good. With callipers we match the flange of the neck to the base.

The next step is to flip the neck onto the base and throw it. These are tricky to make and because I haven't done alot of them here they still take me a good bit of time. Depending on how centered the neck goes on and how much I have to wrestle with it wanting to spin out of true they take me between 10 and 15 minutes per base but usually its closer to 15. I would be happy to get it down to 1o minutes. It of course also depends on how complicated you make the neck. These are fairly straighforward. These were inspired by a pot of Daniel Johnstons which is on my refridgerator. Maybe more on that subject on Tuesday...