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Last week we unloaded a series of Moka Glazed pots from the gas kiln. We sure have had a busy time here at Bulldog Pottery. We are happy with the results and always enjoy unloading this soft and buttery smooth glaze. The silkiness of this satin matte is so inviting to the touch. The variety of glazes we as potters can acheive amazes Bruce and I. We can formulate a glaze to be rough, shiny, bumpy, sparkly, transparent, and on and on. We are so excited to have Val Cushing our teacher from Alfred coming to join us this year for "Cousins in Clay". I sat in on his clay and glaze calculation class three times when I went to school in Alfred. Once for the credit, and the other two times just to sit back and take it all in. Val is a master of glaze and clay knowledge, and so good at presenting the material in a clear and comprehensive manner. He has also prepared an excelent manual/workbook that is incredibly helpful in understanding the materials and how to use them for clay and glazes.
No matter how we try to schedule our time we end up getting into a wicked crunch deadline when loading this kiln for some reason, and this recent one was no different. The last couple of days and nights I glazed and decorated most of the pots, hence all of the dots while Bruce washed and waxed and loaded the pots into the kiln--reminding us that we need to exercise.
We have been focused on organizing
Cousins in Clay this year. Gloria and Ed have been designing a website for the event and they also have designed an ad that we placed in the
Carolina Arts for the next two months. They are becoming the Bulldog Graphic Design team. If you pick up a Carolina Arts newspaper and see the ad in it for the month of April we wanted to let you know that the dates are a bit off. We printed the dates from last year 6 & 7 and not this years which are 5 & 6. It is funny, but no matter the amount of proofreading we did, something as important as the dates got by us. We will continue to work on the website and add other links soon. It is an exciting work in progress.
Here is Ed and Gloria polishing the feet of fresh pots that we unloaded out of the kiln. Maxwell is trying to entice them into a little ball play.
We unloaded our Moka glaze kiln yesterday and a grouping of molybdenum crystalline vases. We thought we would show you some of the pieces that came out. This morning we pack the pottery into boxes, load the van, and head to Charlotte for the "Potters Market"Mint Museum show this weekend. We have more vases that we will be firing in the next couple of weeks. We are looking forward to working on our spotted crystalline mattes and a new glaze test or two. 
