Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Pottery fresh out of the kiln at Bulldog Pottery

We are busy bees in the studio focused on glazing as many pieces as possible. We really enjoy these cups that came out with the olive green and amber on red clay. A definite contrast with the berry glazed cups a couple of images below. During the days (and nights) we have been listening to The Leviathan Chronicles. We have thoroughly enjoyed this action packed adventure and of course Christof and Nobi's soapbox's. We are just about caught up, with the last part of Episode 25 to listen too. Now we will wait and follow along with everyone else as they release more episodes of the Levianthan Chronicles. We love our itouch and listening to stories while we are in the studio. We have an ongoing list of them in our sidebar to the right.
Do you have any favorites?


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There are many kiln openings this weekend in Seagrove. I have been listing them on Three Corners Clay blog. Jugtown Pottery, Chris Luther Pottery, Westmoore Pottery, Avery Pottery and Tileworks, and Thomas Pottery are all having kiln openings at their studios this weekend, December 4, 2010. If I have missed someone sorry, please let me know and I will add your pottery on!

Below are a few crystalline glazes vases, fossil fish ginger jar and fossil fish bowl

Berry Cups and a glazed wall hanging with fly

Red Ant glazed porcelain wall hanging
Spider yunomis, and other cups cooking in the kiln with more insects in fanciful environments coming out on Weds. We must glaze glaze glaze......

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Bulldog Pottery Kiln Opening update

Here is a "wet" Yunomi that Bruce has made with a spider on it.
Spiders!!!
Well we have been busy spiders weaving out web of glazes and yunomis (a casual handle-less drinking vessel, taller than wide). Scheduling is always a conundrum for us and we seem to think that we are bionic humans. A crash is inevitable, but we are having a fabulous time in the studio. We have pulled out a small kiln load of of glazed cups to further proof our recent color tests. If you are interested in seeing two of the pieces that have recently come out of the kiln, go check out our facebook page. I have posted two of them there. When we are in a time crunch we find it a bit quicker to update our Bulldog Pottery facebook page than here at the blog.

These cups are bisqued and ready to glaze, Ed will be washing these pots today.

These are Bruce's red clay cups that he has drying upside down. These cups are now in a kiln ready for the first round of firing (that is as soon as our glaze kiln turns off).

I love the fluidity of Bruce's designs on his cups.

Thanks goodness for Ed and Gloria. They really have been instrumental in helping push our kiln opening through. I think they have sieved at least 20 glazes for us so far this cycle. The amount of prep time is always a mystery to us. Something that we have trouble planning into the cycle of potting life.

Bruce is brushing a glaze onto one of his ginger jars. When we work with our crystalline glazes they all get brushed on. This allows us more control and a sensitivity to the thick and thin application of the glaze. All of our glazes are touchy about application. We both handle the glaze brushwork a bit differently, which also gives us variation of effect that we like a lot.

We mix and use over 50 different glazes at anyone time. They are mixed in small amounts which helps us conserve space. Though at this moment space is needed. Will we be able to keep our new space more organized????

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Celebration of Seagrove Potters 2010 s'more images

This is a view from our booth Saturday afternoon

We wanted to show you some more images of the fabulous weekend.
A view down one of the rows. Bruce took this image on his tippee toes with the camera held high

The North Carolina Pottery Center set up a booth. They sold books and raffle tickets for a covered jar that Mark Hewitt donated.

Blaine Avery of Avery Pottery and Tileworks

The wonderful magazine Our State set up and handed out sample copies of their magazine and sold subscriptions.

A birds-eye view of Dixieland Pottery

Jugtown Pottery settin up Friday morning

Lucksware

Cross Creek Pottery

Lisa Luther and Dan from Dirtworks. Lisa was trying to dodge my camera, but I was able to snap this one! She was exclaiming "the best wine glasses ever" made by Chad. I wish I had gotten an image of them. They were large enough to hold 1/2 bottle of wine.

STARworks Ceramics. They were selling pottery tools and clay.

David Stuemplfe Pottery

Whynot Pottery

Rhonda McCanless. She has started a monthly newsletter "In the Grove"

Touya Studios

Johnston and Gentithes Art Pottery

Turn and Burn Pottery

Old Gap Pottery

Blue Hen Pottery and Beverly Dickson from Artifex Gallery in Troy

Monday, November 22, 2010

Celebration of Seagrove Potters 2010

Ed and Gloria opening night at the Gala

The opening night of the Celebration of Seagrove Potters.. "the hottest ticket in town" as quoted from John Chappel of The Pilot, the Celebration Gala opened this years pottery weekend with lots of smiles and happiness. The music played, bellies were full, people talked and laughed, and pots were touched and taken home. What more can anyone ask for? Life is fleeting and it is moments like these that are cherished and remembered. O.k. I know I am sounding like hallmark, but life can get complicated and we need to remember to take a step back and recognize how wonderful it is to be alive and be with people that are mighty fine.

Playing below is the Joe Robinson Jazz Band. They were great.

Plenty of space at the Luck's Cannery for people to sit around and talk, enjoy their food, and energize their bodies for pottery shopping.

Benjamin and Bonnie Burns of Great White Oak Gallery and Lisa (Bonnie's daughter). Bonnie was one of the potters that worked ongoing this year to put on the Celebration.

Customers and potters were engaged all evening long, here is Crystal King on the left

Michael Mahan on left, from the Ground Up

David and Mary Farrel of Westmoore Pottery

Benjamin Burns of Great White Oak Gallery and Milly McCanless of Dover Pottery.

We are busily getting ready for our December 4 kiln opening! We are mixing glazes today, gluing rings on vases, as well as drawing spiders and drawing ants!!! ...And at 3:00pm there is the clean-up at the Historic Luck's Cannery.

a few more Celebration images to come.....

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Celebration Opening Night

The third annual Celebration of Seagrove Potters opened up last night and what a wonderful time it was! We wanted to share with you a few pictures before we eat our oatmeal and take off for the days pottery adventure. The Cross Creek face jug/hard brick art piece is ours! I love this piece and had to add it to our collection. Cross Creek Pottery is located right down the road from us.

Here is an image of us right before the gala opened.


A couple of these miniature face jugs went home with me. They are created by McKay Pottery.

There are Seagrove Potter bloggers right next door to us.

Here is Tom from Tom Grey pottery.

and Meredith Heywood from Whynot Pottery.

Jennie from Turning Gemstones into Mud and Susan Greene on the right. Susan was one of the major organizers of the show.

More later. The oatmeal is calling and we must get ready to go!
Best to all!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Celebration of Seagrove Potters

Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke
Collaboration for Friday night Gala
Bruce threw the rimmed bowl and Samantha designed the crab decoration
the bowl is around 15" diameter

The 3rd annual Celebration of Seagrove Potters is this weekend. The Seagrove potters are working around the clock to make sure that their booths are full of wonderful pots for the pottery lover to choose from. The Celebration of Seagrove pottery show has a diversity of pottery for everyone's aesthetic taste.
We look forward to seeing all of you there!

Check out these Seagrove bloggers to see what they have going on for the Celebration!

Nov. 19 Friday Gala starts at 6:00pm-9:00pm
Nov. 20 Saturday 9:00am-6:00pm
Nov. 21 Sunday 10:00am-4:00pm

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Glaze Tests - A few results

After
and
Before


We unloaded the test glazes this morning and we are beginning to organize them so we can review, think, and talk about the results. Overall we are excited about the potential of the outcome. Some interesting new glazes came out that Bruce is developing.

This surface is intriguing to us and the glaze is on the Star Okeewemee clay so that is appealing as well. A little runny but we are used to handling that situation, though at the moment this time we are after glazes that we would not have to be concerned with the flowing issue. We may try a little adjustment with this one.

This black one caught our eye. It is thick and phat. A little bit more flux may help a bit. It is on our porcelain clay body.

This shade of yellow/orange may work for us as a contrast glaze inside of our cups and bowls. We are looking for color options and probably will do a few more colors in the next kiln loads.

This is an olive green over our red clay body with white slip that is taken away. This will be something fun to play around with too.
We will show more later. Back to work. Have a great evening. We have handles to pull on some mugs and some trimming to catch up on. Oh yeah and we will be throwing all of that clay we pugged this morning into cups and more pots, but probably not tonight.

We are getting ready to send out a newsletter in the next day or so. If you would like to receive our Bulldog e-news updates there is a place on the side bar to the right of the posts on this blog where you can fill in your information. The form is powered by Mad Mimi and your information will go onto our private e-mail list. We send out our e-news occasionaly, throughout the year.