I’ve fallen behind a couple days on the father’s day thing because Mom had to work on Sunday so we celebrated on Thursday. Sunday just seemed like another day. Anyway, Sofia picked out this card and was very excited about my reaction. I don’t think she chose it because of the sycophantic kitty but because she thought the dog, second row, center, looks a bit like Sunglasses. I got a real kick out of it either way…
On the clay front, Jeff Campana is dropping by to pick up a sample of the clay I use for his “Cone 6 Throwdown” where he puts a number of clay bodies through a rigorous test to see what commercial clay he is going to use in the future. This will end up being quite a compendium because they are written well and Jeff is rather exhaustive in his evaluation. I’m looking forward to the finished series and believe it will be valuable for students (or anyone) starting out and trying to decide on a clay body. I took the following series of pictures not so much to reveal a process as to show one of my favorite parts of the process. When I used to draw in school, we taped our paper to a drawing board about 3/4 of an inch all the way around and when we deemed the drawing done, the tape would be removed, leaving a nice white frame free from smudges and that was the final act of the drawing. Consequently, my good friend and I referred to this very satisfying activity as “pulling off the tape” and it came to mean any procedure where you finally got to see what something was really gonna look like. Unloading a kiln is like this. Anyway after painting the resist on and etching the exposed areas, black slip is applied and when it’s dry, the “pulling off the tape” part of the procedure is sponging the excess slip that finally reveals a good idea of what the pattern will look like…
Sofia's Dad's Pots 
June 23, 2009 at 11:01 am |
NOW I see how ya do it. Man, I love that card! But cats ae the naughty ones!!!!
June 23, 2009 at 11:13 am |
I so LOVE that square pattern. Thanks for sharing the process!
June 23, 2009 at 1:15 pm |
Tim Sullivan has a term he uses to explain at least SOME of the popularity of wood firing. He says that many potters are “decoration averse”. You are most definitely not “decoration averse”.
Good looking pattern.
June 23, 2009 at 2:48 pm |
Buonasera jim,
thanks for your visit and your appreciation on my work. As you already understood my English is not very fluid, so I have to translate the writing of Jeff carefully. The process of work that you have shown is interesting, thanks, I had already understood the use of the ?reserve?= riserva in your works (riserva in Italian is the method to protect with the shellac=gommalacca or wax a portion of the surface of the clay so that with the sponge you can remove the clay unprotected). Shellac ?
Ciao
filippo
June 23, 2009 at 8:58 pm
buonasera filippo… you have it correct, it’s shellac. i should refer to it as riserva maybe?
June 23, 2009 at 9:28 pm |
I would love to see the finished product after the final firing of this pot~~~
June 24, 2009 at 9:09 am |
good ol shellac…thanks for the demo..
June 24, 2009 at 8:18 pm |
….and That”s why YOU are the man! You make the prosecess look so easy, but it’s so not.
June 26, 2009 at 11:10 am |
Great photo sequence of the process. You make it look so easy! In reality, it’s lots of time, practice, experience, talent, skill, patience, willingness, and dogged determination! Nice work!
June 30, 2009 at 12:50 pm |
This Kitty is not such a brownnoser because I keep looking at this post and there are bits that I don’t get. Is the bowl leather hard during this process? You apply the resist, whats the etching of the exposed area?
June 30, 2009 at 4:18 pm
hi kitty, the bowl is completely dried and unfired… the little squares are painted on with resist and the spaces between them without resist are still just dried unfired clay. water will dissolve these areas and etch a certain amount of clay away.
July 1, 2009 at 7:53 am |
Mucho gracias , entiendo totalmente el proceso. Continúe su buen trabajo.