http://www.webbpottery.com/blog/

Saying goodbye to wordpress.com for now. I’ve made the plunge and moved my blog to a hosted site. I’m still tweaking my gallery pages, but I’ll be posting to my new blog site from now on.

I hate to inconvenience anyone, but if you have already linked to this blog (http://annewebb.wordpress.com), and you get a chance, can you please change the link you have for me to my new site.

Look forward to seeing you over there!

Sorry I’ve not been posting *to* my blog lately but I’ve actually been busy *with* my blog and website, working to integrate the two.  The plan was to not only place them under the same URL umbrella but to give them both a consistent look.

I was going over my blog and web site last week, trying to come up with a plan of action of where I should start. I had already moved my original website over last fall to Bluehost (I took the plunge) in anticipation of the move to an integrated site, so that was done.

In the process of looking over my site and doing a little homework of looking at LOTS of other sites online, I ran a site optimization thingie through websitegrader.com to see just how far off I was from having a good site. Well.. there was lots lacking and having my web site and blog running independently on different sites (it didn’t matter that there were links on each to each other).

My meta tags were too long, I had no headings, my site wasn’t listed in places like http://www.dmoz.com or http://www.zoominfo.com, it couldn’t find my blog.. no RSS Feed.. and the list goes on.  The final grade my site got was a dismal 27 out of 100. My blog faired quite a bit better, at 79/100, but it was still lacking in some areas. Interestingly, one of the things toward the end of the report that was a blaring X mark was: “blog found on a free domain” and had a link to this article Why a business blog should not be on Blogspot.com.

So anyways, my old web site is now officially gone and I have moved everything over to a hosted site using wordpress.org. There’s definitely still some tweaking to be done that I will hopefully be able to resolve the bulk of  in the next few days, but I have to say, the tech support guys at Bluehost came through like champions to clarify and correct some tough loading issues I had this morning.  Yay Bluehost!

My new blog URL is: http://www.webbpottery.com/blog .  Come leave a comment! Hope to see you there!

Cheers!

A few kind people from the UK posted this excerpt from the 1965 film ‘Isaac Button: Country Potter‘, directed by John Anderson and Robert Fournier .

The last time I saw this film (and it had no soundtrack at the time) was at that wonderful Fusion clay conference in Ottawa I had mentioned a few posts ago.  We were very fortunate that conference to have John Leach not only as our presenter, but for his  wonderful narration of this silent film, talking about Mr Buttons and his pottery, as well as fielding questions.

Isaac Buttons was one of the last in a long tradition of country potters.  It is said that he could throw a ton of clay in a day, and gauging from his systematic and efficient way of throwing (a pot in 22 seconds), and the scale of some of his pots, that is certainly not inconcievable.

I would love to have a copy of this film in its entirety to add to my collection, but I have yet to find it for sale.  I’m forever hopeful that it will come up one of these days!

Can you believe that it will already be December 6th tomorrow?

Don’t forget to join us at the  Mobile Botanical Gardens between 9 am and 4 pm for the Coastal Artisans’ 3rd Annual Christmas Art Show and Sale.

For more info about the artists and directions to the Gardens, please visit: http://thecoastalartisans.blogspot.com

I love the look of pots all laid out whether they be green ware or pots  waiting to be loaded in the gas kiln, as these are.   The mugs almost remind me of a regiment of soldiers, or a tightly packed school of fish all swimming in the same direction.

I’ve been finishing up a gas firing this morning, busily trying to keep the gas tank from freezing up until the propane truck finally makes it here this afternoon.  We’re cutting it pretty close though.. down to less than 5% in the tank and I have the garden hose dribbling some water on it so I don’t lose gas pressure completely.   Thankfully though,  cone 9 is bending evenly top and bottom so we’re in the home stretch.

I made a little adjustment to the way my target bricks were positioned this time (an experiment) in hopes of making the firing more efficient.  Evidently it has had some effect because the last time the kiln was stacked similarly, I had a good cone or 2 difference from top to bottom .   I guess I’ll only know for sure once the kiln is opened.

Looking forward to this kiln opening. I have several pots in there with clay from our new clay deposit I mentioned in my last post.

A couple of weeks ago we had a dumptruck load of clay delivered from the new clay deposit.  I guestimated the pile was around 5 tons or so, but as it turns out, our neighbor, who drives for the same kind of truck, told me one of those trucks heaped up with clay like it was, holds something closer to 27 tons (or more?)!!  All 27 tons, just for the cost of trucking it to our studio not 15 – 20 miles away.  (If you have bought commercially prepared clay, you can probably do the math for what the equivalent would be).

We’ve left the dumped clay uncovered and open to the elements now for two weeks or so, in order for the rain to wash away a little of the residual sand off that was picked up in the dump truck onto the clay’s surface. The mound is already starting to turn from a reddy orange to more of a amethyst-y pink clay color.  Yesterday I broke apart a clump  to reveal a piece of nice, clean, sandless solid clay.   Since the time the of the delivery, three or four batches of clay have been mixed.  I have thrown some of it,  and the rest I have left to age a little more.  ..well, until tomorrow, at least, when I start my throwing cycle again.

Before it was time to mix the second batch, though, Lowell took me out to the new deposit site for the first time to help gather some dryer clay for the mix, since the clay we already had at the studio was still a little too damp to crush to a powder.  So off we went..

We drove for about 20 minutes down familiar roads and around familiar turns, when all of the sudden Lowell turned into a little dirt driveway entrance.  It was a lot closer than I thought it would be.

Well!  I thought the truck load that was delivered was a lot, but I saw where it was excavated from and it took barely a dent out of the mountain that lay before me.  Here is a picture of what I first saw.  It stands about 20 feet high and is at least 60 feet long .   Its mostly pink clay, though there are layers of white, and red, and a layer further in the middle of some dark shale-like material which I assume is the remnants of decomposed vegetation .

I was chipping away dry surface clay and filling up my bucket, as  the fog gradually cleared.  It was almost like a dream.  Off to my right, was another clay mountain .. and yet another further on.

Here is a photo of a hillside that had been excavated with a backhoe.  Sorry,  I couldn’t get the entire hill in the shot but you can get an idea of the various strata.   This layer starts down about 6 feet from the surface and, in this spot, is about 4-6 feet thick.

I’ll try and post more pictures as I can.

Several years ago, when I was *very* new to clay, I attended my very first clay conference.    It was really my first introduction to the clay community.  I remember it being a wonderful and unforgettable experience.  I got to try rakuing for the very first time at the preliminary workshop hosted by Ottawa Valley artist Leta Cormier in her, as I remember, extremely immaculate studio.  I also got to take part in my first mug exchange in which I remember receiving a lovely salt-glazed mug by potter Jackie Seaton.  My name was even drawn and I won some nice oriental brushes. But that was not all (and this was the pinnacle for me), John Leach, of  Muchelney Pottery, was the main presenter.  His pots were like nothing I had seen before (I told you I was new to clay) and I was impressed by what a real person he was … very gracious, generous, and down to earth. He left a lasting impression on me.

I recently discovered John’s brother Simon Leach has posted a series of videos on YouTube over the last year or so, showing demos, kilns, visits back to England and to friends’ studios, his philosophies, etc etc.  What I like is he presents things face on and shares his victories and disappointments, the good and the bad,  taking it all in stride.  I don’t think a lot of people are aware how hard it can be to be a potter and that things, quite beyond your control, can go extremely wrong after many, many hours of hard work, and all for naught.  Here is the 2nd of 2 of Simon’s videos taken while unloading Seth Cardew’s kiln:

As you may know, the majority of the clay we use for our functional ware is native clay which we dig locally and process right here at our studio. (I posted previously about our clay mixer)

A few weeks ago we got a lead on a new clay deposit, again, here in Baldwin County.  We are quite lucky here in this part of the country because you don’t have to dig very far from the surface to find clay.  Typically it can be found along road sides, waterways, and construction sites.  The clay we use is not of any use to anyone but potters, it seems. In construction, it is just cast off or covered over and is sometimes referred to it as “chalk”.  Of course its not chalk, but its not the kind of clay that’s good for road base, like that bright orange clay one typically sees everywhere down here and what Alabama is known for.

The clay we look for is typically bubble gum pink to white in color.  We fire it to cone 10 (approx 2400 degrees Fahrenheit), but I know through experience that it can go higher.  It makes for a nice durable stoneware body, that usually fires to an offwhite to toasty light brown in reduction.  Clay that is more yellow or orangey red (more iron) seems to have a lot more imperfections causing problems in firing such as popouts, bloating, pinholing etc.

Anyways, I wanted to share a photo of what the clay looks like right out of the ground. Its very pretty and is almost amethyst in color. In fact, its probably about the pinkest clay I’ve seen since coming here.  It is remarkably clean and relatively free of debris, and it crumbles so nicely.

Over the weekend, the first batch of it was slaked down and mixed. This batch has about 85% of this ‘new’ clay and the rest is reclaim.  Unfortunately its still a little wet to try to throw so I’ve got some drying out on the wedging table.  Its very strange to see it next to our usual clay which I always thought had a bit of a pinkish tinge, but this new stuff is positively rose colored.