Defining My Pottery Style

Clay bodies:
Agateware, Patterned Agateware, Mosaic Agateware

Handles on cups are rare.

Wood firing preferred.

Slab seams are pronounced, usually with zigzags.

Glazes are clear, ash, or variations of Japanese Shino.

Decorations draw from Asian and Native American art.

Vertical lines are common but not ubiquitous.

Occasionally decorated with gunpowder painting or carbon scarring.

Simplicity of form akin to Shigaraki and Craftsman styles.

Only non-toxic metallic oxides are used.

Always functional.

Made to be loved by their user.

Five Agateware Paterns for Slab Method Pottery

I was inspired recently in my work by the different patterns in Damascus Steel. Most of my agateware up until 2 days ago was rather random like the agate stone. I have made the shift in my work from the random patterns, to slightly deformed geometric designs. When I figure out how to join the different pieces without any deformation, I will likely write a post on how to do it. The five patterns I will give directions for here are Vertical Bars, Ladder Pattern, Raindrop Pattern, Seigaiha Pattern (AKA "Waves"), and the Cherokee Friendship Pattern (commonly incised on Cherokee Pottery).

Vertical Bars

Ladder Pattern

Raindrop Pattern

Seigaiha Pattern

Cherokee Friendship Pattern

Metaphors in the Story of Taliesin

Taliesin was a Bard and Poet in the 6th century in Wales. But there are many writings that came about after his death which ascribe him Magickal powers and which tell fantastical tales about him. This is how mythology largely comes to be. Usually, when mythology is told or written, there is a purpose to the story; to explain natural phenomena, or teach a lesson most often. Occasionally, it starts out as a story to pass time. The legend of Taliesin's birth seems to be a metaphor for life in general, or perhaps of the changes one must go through to become a stronger, smarter, more inspired person.

This story starts with a woman who is variously attested to be a Goddess or a Witch depending on who is writing. Her name is Cerridwyn. She has a daughter and a son. Her son is slow and has a deformed face. Seeking a cure, she goes to a sacred place called the Ffaeryllt, which is home to the Fae/Sidhe (In romanticised accounts, they look like Tinkerbell, in ancient accounts such as the Book of Invasions, they were said to be short hairy people who were the first inhabitants of the islands before the Celts invaded.) From the Sidhe she learns how to make medicine that will giver her son the Awen (inspiration, wit, intelligence, talent; all rolled into one). The first 3 drops are the medicine and the rest of the pot is poison. Now Cerridwyn had 2 assistants. Gwion the Innocent and a blind man. She makes the initial mixture and puts it on to boil. Her assistants tend the fire and Gwion stirs the pot to keep it from burning. The blind man accidentally added too much wood and the pot boiled furiously. Gwion had to stir it faster, and accidentally got some splattered on his had, unconsciously he licked it. And he gained the cure meant for Cerridwyn's son. Realizing his mistake, he turned into a rabbit and swiftly fled. As he fled, the pot cracked and the poison seeped into a pond where horses were drinking, and they died. Cerridwyn became a dog and chased him. So he turned into a wren, and she turned into a falcon. Then he turned into a salmon, and she became an otter. In a final attempt to elude her, he turned into a grain of sand. She turned into a hen and ate him. You'd think this would end the story, but it's not bound by the laws of science. Cerridwyn gave birth to a son 9 months later. Knowing it was Gwion, she wanted to kill him, but could not do it to one of her own flesh, so she put him in a hide boat and set him adrift. He was caught by a salmon weir belonging to a man named Garanhir. The man raised him as his own and named him Taliesin, and he became the most famous bard. And that's the end of the story of his birth.

Gwion's transformations can be seen as a metaphor for the way people change over time to adapt to their circumstances. And after a period of change and hardship, there is rebirth. It can also be applied to any traditional craft. There are many steps that are involved to shape material into a useful object. And through these changes, a tree is turned into a table, creek mud becomes a bowl, and iron ore becomes a sword. They are all transformed through work and difficulty and reborn as something entirely different from their original form. So it can be applied equally to people and art, and I hope you have enjoyed this little comparison.

The $30 Anagama Kiln

The expense of building a kiln to industry standards is extraordinary. I'm not loaded. I have built several kilns out of cinder blocks. While not as good as refractory, it's 99c a block. One block is the size of 4 alumina bricks, which cost about $7 a piece. You can see the savings for yourself. Now, as I am presently renting, I have to be able to move my kiln when I leave. So I can't use mortar. I use cob to fill cracks and make the kiln as airtight as possible. This kiln is designed with mobility and workability in mind. It is not designed to be a large permanent structure or top of the line. It is not a production kiln, it is hobby size, and the cinder and concrete will not hold up to constant use or high fire. That said, when you are limited by cost and need something that can be moved, this is your huckleberry. I will edit this after it is posted as I construct my most recent iteration to add photos and diagrams.

Materials:
3 concrete pavers 2'x1' 4"x2" ($21)
9 solid cinder blocks (a little less than $9)
mud
dried grass clippings

Tools:
shovel
small mattock
bucket or wheelbarrow
trowel
measuring tape
pointed sticks (whittle them)


You want to dig it out like this:

Then start building it like this:

Then put the top on:

Then you want to make cob. Use the dirt you dug out and mix it with dry grass clippings. Add water to make a thick wet mix. Fill all cracks and build the chimney in the back out of the cob until it is about 6 ft high. You want to form the cob chimney into a shallow cone with the top opening about 4 inches wide.

Next you want to form a lip on the top of the front of the firebox to direct the heat up and back. Use scrap wood or branches as supports until the cob dries. After it dries, and you burn out the supports, you can put a steel grate in the firebox to support burning wood and increase air flow.

Edited to reflect changes made after first firing.

Advanced Black Pottery

There are a variety of methods for blackening pottery. I will cover 4 methods here.

Smothering is one of the oldest methods. After pottery has reached the critical temperature in a pit firing, you cover it with dry leaves and a layer of soil so that little smoke escapes. You leave it until the pile cools and when you take it out, the pottery is black. This can have mixed results.

Another way is the sawdust method, where in a pit firing or bottle kiln firing you cover pots at critical temperature in sawdust or other finely ground organic matter. This method is the most common.

The modern method is to mix graphite powder with kerosene to make a black stain, this is rubbed into the pot at leather hard and the pot may be burnished afterwards. This method is the most reliable.

The candle method involves holding the thoroughly dry pot in the flame of a candle or oil lamp to blacken it. It may be carved afterwards to reveal the lighter color underneath.

Making Kanutsi

Kanutsi is an old food of the Cherokee people. Nobody really knows how old because the 3 ingredients were all available before the 1600s. It remains a staple to this day, with variations. It was typical in times of plenty to add in extra vegetables or meat. I do this more often than eating it straight because it is bland by itself. I use Kanutsi as a base for my chili when I make Indian Tacos because I was fed up to the ears with my fellow Cherokee people not making their own version of it because we have a long tradition of culinary achievement. There are Cherokee language names for over 700 edible plants. Hernan de Soto's expedition of murder reported that the Cherokee had vats of hickory nut oil that they fried food in, and that the farms were so expansive that they traveled among the fields for days before reaching town.

Kanutsi is simply corn and ground hickory nuts cooked in water. There are 2 ways to make it.

1: Put raw shelled hickory nuts in a blender with water. Blend until the nuts are finely ground. Pour into a pot and cook with dried corn until the corn is tender.

2: Grind shelled hickory nuts on a rock with a wood or stone pounder until the nuts are finely ground. Add to water and dried corn and cook until the corn is tender.

If you want to make stew out of it, add the following after the corn is cooked:
Chunks of squash
cooked and rinsed beans
chunks of meat
chopped red chilie peppers
garlic or Svgi
wild onions

Cook until the squash is tender and meat is cooked.

Ceramics: Beyond the Basics

Today I want to talk about ceramics a little more in depth than the basic step by step instructions I gave in the very first post on this blog. I studied under 2 master potters, and while I don't consider myself a master, I am quite capable of making anything within the two limiters of my imagination and the laws of physics. There is a major difference between me and the people I studied under. One of them was trained in Europe, the other in China. But I've always had a stylistic approach which differs from the perfect lines and perfect glazes they used. I'm inspired mostly by primitive pottery and the work of Kanzaki Shiho. My pottery has a wabisabi aesthetic.  Beauty from imperfection. It's not that I can't make it perfect. But rarity is also beautiful, and you can buy perfect pottery made in a factory these days. The imperfections make it rare as they are the tell-tale signs that it was made by hand. I'm not saying to make mistakes that would reduce its usability, I'm saying to deliberately make it unusual.

There are ways to have a stone-like broken appearance on just the outside: by applying slip containing crushed roasted shells.

There are ways to make ashes build up in certain places and make a dappled glaze: by mixing wood ashes and slip 1:1 and applying it, then dusting it while wet with dry ashes.

If you lean wood shavings up against an unglazed pot in the kiln, it will darken that area, and the edges of the dark area will have a wide range of colors.

There is also making agateware. Agateware, as the name implies, looks like agate stone. It has random patterns in the surface. You make it by mixing 2 colors of clay together, and making your pottery, then at leather hard you trim the outer layer off to show the pattern.

This bowl is one of my works in the agateware medium. It is not neat and orderly. It is random. Funny story about agateware, I actually developed it independently without fore-knowledge of it. After I made a few things out of it, my teacher pulled me aside and showed me a book with the same thing. I was shocked. I had actually gone a month thinking that I was the first person to do it. I had been calling it grand canyon ware because the multi-colored rock layers were my inspiration. We all had a good laugh about it. This probably happens every time artists of the same medium are inspired by the same thing.