Simona - March

March at Tythegston Pottery

March has been intensive and interesting, doing something else as well as potting... At the beginning of March, we went for a photography course up in the valleys... Thinking that I was going to the "Bacon Brecon"... apologies for the Welsh but this is what happens to my speech, first in the morning... Hum...
Lovely driving up towards the valleys where we found snow...brrrrr...

Back in the pottery throwing and

making handles....

             Glazing

while enjoying the sun

 Spring at Tythegston with the Eclipse

   sheep back on the fields

sun shine at 360 degrees

March

This month has been interesting. We have had a visiting potter from Japan. Yusuke Matsubiashi, he is the 16th generation potter of his family. His great uncle helped to build the climbing kiln in the old Leach Pottery. Yusuke came to St Ives to retrace his great uncle's footsteps. He has told us all about his uncle's experience and shown us images. It has been great to see him working and to learn about his family and his work. On his last day he made us Japanese tea, served in some of the tea bowls made during his time here. The work has been made using a combination of our clay the the Matsubiashi family clay, marbled together and decorated using our glazes along with the Matsubiashi family glazes.

 
One of our production throwers, Kat Wheeler, came back from a 3 month trip to Japan. She has been working at the Hamada pottery in Mashiko. It has been great to hear all about her experience and it is good to have her back in the studio.
We also said goodbye to a potter. Ian Morrison, a volunteer potter from Arkansas, America. He spent a year working in the pottery as a production thrower. So there has been a lot of changes in the studio.
As always we have been working on a big SeaSalt order involving mugs, jugs, tiles and statement pieces. I made a lot of the medium sized jugs for this order, which was a good challenge.
I have also been making tea pots for my own work, as well as more platters and mugs.

I am happier with the glaze results on my new pieces. 

Niklas Preukschat - March

Puh, that month has certainly exceeded the expectations I had of it! Now that I have to review what happened it all seems to be ages ago…

packing the kiln

  

It all began with a few days of glazing pots. When that was done we started packing both kilns simultaneously and while Nic was about half way through his one, Sabine clammed up hers and lid the fire at a Saturday. The following night gave me the opportunity of having this years first grave yard shift from 2 – 6 am. And many would follow soon… 

The start of Nics’ firing was on a Wednesday morning and looking back I must say it went quite extraordinary. After a battle with weather and wood we did soon fall behind the schedule and after two days there was no other option left than to fire one night and one day longer. We then finished on a Sunday evening. Moments of satisfaction came up when the air system I had to build in the firebox last month did its job and burned down the embers nicely. Though there have to be done some adjustments before the next firing…

So, as I mentioned we finished on a Sunday which left us seven days to go until the arriving of the German students. And without rewarding our self after that great task with having a day off, we moved on to finally finish it all off : putting up the yurt, building up the compost loo, getting the footings done for the new kiln to come and preparing the workshop.

the beginning of something new

wind- and waterproofed

And after a noisy week (hammering and sawing and drilling and digging and screwing and swearing) we’ve got it all done dead on time. The yurt was ready for moving in, the toilet ready for use, the footings ready to get bricked up and the workshop as clean as a whistle!

I think we’ve done well.

health and safety: checked

The Germans

So far, the Germans have been here for over a week and from beginning on they were all very kind of taking over being bussy! Under instruction of Nic and Sabine they’re throwing mugs, bottles, tea pots and lidded jars for firing sabines kiln and the one they’re building. That gave me a weeks’ time to potter around, getting some bottles and vases done, mixing a couple of new clay bodies to test and to help out at the kiln if needed.

 

work in progress

next months' job

Yeah and in the next weeks we’re getting back to a well-known routine of splitting and stacking wood and packing and firing the kilns!

Ah and that makes me think of the last firings! What was all that outcome of it? Well, first at all Sabine decided to wait with the opening until the Germans have arrived to give them some kind of idea of how their pack should look like. That did make sense of course but having had a fully cooled down kiln closed up for over a week put quite a strain on me and certainly on Sabine as well! Nics kiln needed that week to cool down anyway. But that whole process of waiting and not knowing what’s inside waiting for you reminded me very much of how Christmas eve used to be as a child. All the expectation and anticipation which are building up over the days and then spilling over at that very moment of the opening, leaving you whether with amazement or frustration of not getting what you want.

before

after

 

ongoing investigations

Ha! And what a bitter pill that was I had to swallow!

The outcome of Nics kiln wasn’t quite what I had expected or maybe it was as expected but not what we were looking for. But that only changed my way of looking at the pots and now there is very different, new and beautiful stuff to look at. It also was a great kick-start for me to think and read about woodfiring. A process that is still going on…

Hmmm… and I still wonder about how Santa Claus manages to get all those colors’ into the kilns…

the combustion of santa (not!)

February and March - Tamsin and Helen

It's late March already! The last couple of months have been super busy and exciting here in the Helen Beard studio.

Preparations for the Chelsea Art Fair and Ceramic Art London are well underway. Helen has reached the decorating stage of the process so all of her blank forms are turning into beautiful stories! I'm helping out by doing a bit of glazing and loading and unloading the kiln etc.

Another major part of the preparations is all of the planning for the stand display, marketing materials and general logistics of a show like Ceramic Art London. This is particularly useful for me because my big news is that I got into Ceramic Art York in September! So in a few months I'll be doing all this planning for myself!

My work has been mostly focused on making mugs both for my mum and for Adopt A Potter. My mum's mugs are safely delivered and the Adopt-A-Potter ones are almost ready...

I've also been making little espresso cups which are a bit fiddly but very sweet when finished!

Once they're finished my next project is lidded jars!

Simona February

February at Tythegston Pottery

We decided to take a day off in February and create something useful for a Shimpo wheel.. Well, it was not really a day off but this is what we made...

"Crab" top for Shimpo wheel

It is all another story working on the Shimpo with this improvement. Well, if you like it one for yourself, please contact us through Joanna's web site (link below):

http://www.joannahowells.co.uk

Then more plates to throw...

The new table is amazing!!!! I can find the tools that I need straight away and it is much more comfortable and I have much more space!!! I love my new table. Thanks to Joanna who had such a brilliant idea!!!







Done a lots of more throwing and worked on my own project as well.. Few oven dishes created with a new technique (new for me).

Not fired yet!! I have used a different clay as well. I really like it and I am thinking to use it to create some of my own production. It is a white stoneware with porcelain.







We also done about three firing, so keeping busy busy. I have booked few markets in Wales to sell my own ware. As well as carry on doing my classes on Wednesday evening.

In February, we also had a new entry at Tythegston Pottery, Isa a student from Cardiff University, who is coming to help us once a week.

February 
                   We had another Seasalt order to complete this month, with the month being shorter and some members of staff being away it was more of a challenge. The order was slightly smaller.
We visited the new Seasalt store in St Ives, which was good to see all of our work in a local shop.

 I made some different shapes this month,
including honey jars. They were good fun
to throw and the type of lid was something
I have never tried before. It was a bit more simple
and saved time.

The finished pieces were successful, they have now
been shipped off to a gallery.

I have also thrown some larger jugs. Pulling the handles was more of a challenge, as they were so much bigger. But I got better as they went on and became more confident.
We had a lot of glaze firings in order to finish the pieces.




I have spent a lot more time working on my own pieces this month. I have fired 2 glaze kilns, which were successful and I have made a lot of new pieces.

 Here are a few pieces from my most recent firing, including some lizard mugs, an oven dish and a carved platter.


I have also had some feedback from glaze tests, some of which were successful and I plan to use them in my next firing.






I spent some time updating my website with
images of new pieces, and also preparing for Hatfield in various ways, including ordering price stickers etc.

feel free to take a look :D

www.lauracroslandceramics.com

Niklas Preukschat - February

February is over and I must say that it was very much characterized by getting everything ready for March. Winter lies in the past and the last couple of weeks gave us a glimpse of the action that’s waiting for us this spring. There will be two firings going on within a week and not long after that a bunch of German students are coming to stay with us for a month making pots, building and firing a kiln.

scallopshellflowers enjoying the sunshine

So what happened in February?

 

Well, first at all we were desperate to do some wood work otherwise we wouldn’t have dry, seasoned fire wood for when it’s needed. And trunks were waiting all winter long to get sawn, splitted and stacked… We certainly didn’t want to let them wait any longer.

our secret glaze ingredient: rat poison (not!)

Then after having that finished, we moved back into the workshop. There were plenty of empty glaze buckets which needed some fresh filling and clay had to be mixed to keep the supply fluent.

The third week blessed us with proper sunshine and temperatures were jumping up into the blue sky, 

giving us the opportunity to continue with: the compost toilet. Though still not finished, we managed to build the main frame around the toilet before rain was coming in again. Getting that finished will be a priority next month. We surely don’t want to disappoint the German students…

 

 

ARRR, treasure!

Another job regarding to that course was to get the base ready for their kiln they’ll build. There was still the floor that needed to be straightened which also meant that I had to shift soil and stones around it. But by doing that I exposed loads of well needed whole fire bricks, buried and preserved in there for years! What a pleasant surprise that was. And so it happened that a more or less unspectacular job turned into an exciting archeological hunt for treasure!

 

And some of those bricks found a new home in Nics’ kiln straight away! Under instruction of Nic I built a tunnel system in the fire box, allowing air getting underneath the ember bed to get a better control of how it’s burning down.

 I also did a general cleaning up in and around the kilns as well as cleaning kiln furniture and getting everything ready for the packing next week.

 

And all that happened in between my throwing time! ;-)
 

I really enjoyed throwing small stuff in series and seeing how the process was improving over the time.
And I spent some time on mixing my own slips. Testing them in the next firings makes me feel even more excited about the firings!