Patton Pottery

new ash glazes

2010-08-27T08:08:00.002-05:00

Greg and I have been experimenting with some new ash glazes. Pictures are below.

Our original recipe is something we got from Randy Tobias. We couldn't ever get it to work quite right, but that's the nature of ash glazes (and glazes in general).

It contained unwashed hardwood ash, Redart, and 3195 frit. (I'm happy to give out formulas -- just email me.)

We've had trouble with running and with bubbles, and we've tweaked the formula a few times to see what happens, but without much luck. We had a better run this time around -- the things that we made worked well and looked good, and didn't seem to run or to bubble up too badly. We'll see how they look on jugs.

The first one is a combination of a couple experiments. There's a bit of Tennessee ball clay in there with the Redart, and a tiny bit of copper:

The second is Alberta slip with frit (in the same proportion as our usual Redart mix):

The third one is ash and Alberta slip, 1:1 with 4% added iron:

The fourth one is ash and Redart, 1:1 with 4% added iron:

The fifth is our usual ash glaze, though we're not entirely sure which usual, and it's been aging for at least a year (and it's apparently applied thinner than usual):

And the last is our usual ash glaze mixed 1:1 (wet) with our usual clear glaze:

puppets

2009-10-12T19:06:00.004-05:00

Even before I started making pottery, I wanted to make puppets. I've tried my hand at one or two, but I hadn't done any in ceramic until this last kilnload.

I'm still figuring out mechanisms, but the dark red one (on my ring finger) has gotten a working mouth, and the purplish one on my middle finger has found a new home on top of one of Randy Tobias's walking sticks. All is well so far. . . .

(Apologies for the big picture crammed into the small space to the left. . . .)

local pottery shards

2009-10-10T14:00:00.002-05:00

I always look down when I walk, so I find some interesting things from time to time. I've been suprised at how many ceramic fragments I find, and I'm particularly suprised at a piece I found the other day. . . .

It looks as though it's a fragment from the bottom of a locally-made jug, maybe from Edgefield (or made here in the upstate). The glaze looks like an alkaline glaze, and the piece has cutoff marks. The shape suggests a jug.

I'm by no means an expert on this sort of thing, so I might be off base, but it was a neat thing to find. (I just wish I remembered where I'd found the thing.)

These are two chunks of pipe from the old Travelers Rest Elementary. The top one has a really pretty glaze -- it looks sort of like a salt glaze, though that seems unlikely. (But see above, where I note that I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about here.)

And these were the oddest, just because of the shape -- the one on the lower right makes a pretty sharp corner. I found them near the old elementary school, as well. I seem to remember some old playground equipment that had tiles on it, but it was a ways off from where I found these pieces, and my memory may be a bit off.

In any case, these pieces will probably make their way into a new face jug sometime soon. Part of what I like about finding these fragments is that they allow me to incorporate some local history into my pieces.

insects and pottery

2009-10-09T09:28:00.002-05:00

I spotted a mosquito on an in-progress puppet head this morning:

I was going to say that it was the highest compliment I'd gotten, but then this happened a few minutes later:

So I suppose it was just an insect conicidence.

a brief tour of the Patton Pottery workshop

2009-08-15T10:33:00.003-05:00

Here are a few pictures of our workshop. Be sure to click on them, since Blogger cuts them off a bit. . . .

The picture below is the view just to the side of the front door of the workshop. Most interesting are one of Greg's disturbing assemblages (this one's a fountain) and the pottery chicken lamp (of unknown provenance).

Here's a view from the back door into the workshop. Greg was inspired by the Baltimore, MD tradition of screen painting:

Just across from the backdoor of the workshop is the kiln shed, and over the door to the kiln shed is this cheerful fellow:

More pictures are forthcoming, with any luck.

coffee cup design

2009-08-04T14:03:00.002-05:00

I bought these coffee mugs off a friend a few months ago:

If there's anything I don't need, it's more coffee cups. I couldn't resist these, though. The design is really slick -- the handle follows the curve exactly, and the cups are quite light. They're not the sort of thing I'd made (or could make without a mold), but they feel nice in my hand and they look good. The only disconcerting thing about them is the pinging they did when I first poured hot coffee into them. (My friend reported that they'd never been used, so maybe it's just the sensitivity of a glaze changing temperature quickly for the first time since firing.)

Every since I started making pottery, I notice and like all manner of ceramic items. . . I suppose that's how it goes for everybody.

Tough crowd.

2009-07-28T12:11:00.003-05:00

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190323107529

The other one sold, though.

churning

2009-04-24T16:07:00.005-05:00

I've been meaning to update for six weeks or so, because I bought a churn.

I made a trip to the Pickens jockey lot and found this piece. The price was right, so I picked it up:

I'm not in any way expert on this sort of thing, but my guess is that it's from Georgia. Looks like an Albany slip glaze, so probably 1890s to 1940s (and almost certainly the later end of that range).

There's a pretty large ding out of the rim, and there's some sloppy glazing at the top. There are quite a few minor odditites, but it's in good shape overall. The clay is very soft, almost like eathenware. Reminds me a bit of Lizella clay, since it doesn't seem to be really vitrified.

I bought it because I thought it was pretty cool. I don't think it's particularly collectible, but it's nice to have a piece of semi-local history around the workshop.

ash glaze redux redux: tiles

2009-02-08T19:40:00.004-05:00

As promised, here are the tiles from the test glaze batches we fired a week or two ago. These are just four tiles with two of the ash glazes and a new decorative feature:

The first glaze was supposed to be a tobacco spit. I like how it turned out on the Lizella clay -- almost any ash glaze looks good on Lizella. It's got some matte spots and some shiny glassy spots.

The second and third tiles are a new version of our standard ash glaze with a bit of copper added in. The color of the kitchen wall is similar to the runs, and is washing out the tiles a bit. They look good in person. But things looked very very very different when we mixed up a gallon of the stuff. Every kilnload is an adventure.

The final tile has a couple swatches of a metallic-style decoration.

More pictures are coming with the next page update.

ash glaze redux: the magic of baby food jars

2009-02-01T22:16:00.004-05:00

One of the dubious benefits having a baby nearby is the vast number of little glass jars that pile up. They look useful, but they're generally not. (I'd make one of those under-shelf old-man nail-and-screw toolboxes, but we've already got a spot for nails and screws and brads and staples and tacks.)

I finally realized that we could use those jars to mix up test glazes. I've got to measure more carefully than usual, since a gram one way or the other can make a huge difference in an ounce or two of glaze. (We cheerfully mix units of measurement.) But I can get a sense of what a glaze might look like before we mix up a couple of gallons.

We ran just a few experiments in our last firing. Several of those were ash glazes. As I said in an earlier post (in which the pictures are now broken), ash glazes can get out of hand easily.

Our new mixes went well, though, and gave us some idea of what we want to mix up. We should have some excellent new colors before too long.

Current pictures are forthcoming, with any luck.

more cullet glass

2009-01-27T15:22:00.002-05:00

He's a rock star.

Again, I don't know what this glass will do in the kiln, but I'll be interested to see. In the meantime, I might try and affix some of this stuff to some eyes after firing (though that seems like cheating).

Face Jug of the Month Club

2009-01-26T13:59:00.004-05:00

So, I had an interesting idea:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190282610007

The auction is for a subscription (the only one so far) to my Face Jug of the Month Club. Every month or so, I'll send along a new face jug to the winner. I'll include my usual mix of creepy things and even creepier things. . . .

It'll be fun to see how things turn out.

In the meantime, here are some in-progress jugs:

The crazy shiny eyes are cullet glass, the kind that makes reflective road stripes reflective. I found a pile of it on the way home a few months ago. . . I just wish it would shine that way after firing, but there's no hope.

melting clay for eyes

2009-01-07T13:57:00.003-05:00

I spent a pleasant hour or so watching Peter Lenzo work this morning. He is a meticulous glazer.

The devil jug in the post before this one, which I still like after a few months, and which is therefore looking down on me now as I type, has got a melted left eye. I know that it's obvious, but what surprised me is how well it turned out.

To come up with a melting clay, I ran a series of experiments. I started with a base of Highwater Clay's white earthenware and added frit (Ferro 3195) in varying percentages (by weight).

For the electric kiln, cone 6, 80% clay and 20% frit worked best.

So I guessed that for the wood kiln, cone 10, 90% clay and 10% frit would work well. It did, by and large -- it produced the eye in the devil jug below, as well as this guy's eye:

But the same mix also produced this unmelted result:

A mystery.

2009-01-01T13:11:00.002-05:00

This blog has been neglected, among the various vagaries of our lives. Fortunately, we don't have any readers.

We're going to put in another wood firing with Michel Bayne in a week or so, but I still haven't had time to make it out to the shop. Today is slipping away, and tomorrow is booked. Such is the way of things.

Included in this post are a couple of my favorite pieces from this year. Note the heavy Peter Lenzo influence. (He's told me I don't need to pay any licensing fees.)

marketing theory and practice

2008-10-14T11:32:00.001-05:00

I have a theory that we'd sell more pots if this were a quasiliterate screed.

alkaline glazes: a failed first glaze

2008-01-31T16:13:00.000-05:00

When I finally started working with Greg on making pottery, we decided that we should mix up our own glazes. The commercial offerings we'd seen weren't all terribly impressive.

We wanted a variety of colors, but the glaze we most wanted to make was an alkaline glaze -- something that would connect our pottery to the folk tradition that began in South Carolina.

We had some successes later on. . .

. . . but I want to talk about the failures first. They're much more interesting.

We misremembered the first recipe we got -- what we heard was a 3:1 ratio of clay body to lime. Nothing else. For our cone 6 firing.

We didn't know that was a problem at the time.

We did some things right. We weighed everything out very carefully and wrote down exactly what we'd done. We were keen to try the glaze, so we didn't try it out on test tiles. We hadn't even made any test tiles yet. . . .

So the glaze went onto two or three mugs and went into the kiln. We waited out the firing, and anxiously opened it when things had cooled down a bit.

The mugs that had been glazed in our first alkaline glaze looked like sandpaper. They felt like sandpaper. They _behaved_ like sandpaper: the grit would come off, but only if we rubbed vigorously, and it abraded whatever we used to rub the mugs.

We tended to underfire the old kiln just a bit, so we refired the mugs when we got the new kiln. The glaze improved, but the mugs are still unusable -- there are spots that look great, and there are spots that look rough. Like sandpaper.

I'll see if I can get a picture of the mugs to post here. They're still in the barn, as a warning (and because they look pretty cool, as long as they're on a shelf ten feet up).

Greg's African face jug

2008-01-17T15:09:00.000-05:00

I've got a great piece of Greg's up on eBay at the moment:

There's a similar piece of African artwork -- a bust -- that Greg used as a model. He shaped the face before he added the upper part of the jug and spot, then added in the finer details to finish the jug.

The glaze is our homemade iron oxide glaze.

I think the piece is amazing -- it's one of my favorites of Greg's, and I'm sad to see it go. It'll make a buyer quite happy, though.

altered face jugs

2007-09-27T20:52:00.000-05:00

I began altering the wet clay of face jugs in May -- I'd been turning for six months at that point. We'd just gotten back from several shows in Georgia, where I had the opportunity to talk with a few potters about composition methods. The face jugs I found most interesting had been shaped while the clay was wet. The potters hadn't just added clay, and sometimes hadn't added any clay at all (or nearly none). They shaped the face in the wet clay, then added details as necessary. (One potter said he'd throw the jug up to the neck, shape the face, then throw the neck. . . .)

When Greg and I got back in the workshop, we started experimenting with the technique. It seemed to fit our general aesthetic, whatever that might be. :)

Pretty soon, Greg came up with the Fat Ghoul jug, pictured at left. I really like the shape -- the bulbous head combined with the strong features, and the fairly deep-set eyes and sharp browline. The poured-on ash glaze completes the look. (At the edges of ash glaze, there's a wet-looking area that's darker than completely unglazed clay. It's more pronounced on the Lizella than the redstone that's in this picture, but it adds to the creepy effect of a piece like this one.)

While Greg was coming up with this monstrosity, I produced a few pieces in Lizella (which was a new clay to us at the time -- Greg still hasn't really had the chance to give it a go). I found the wetness of the clay perfect for this sort of project. The Lizella also took the ash glaze even better than the Highwater redstone clay we usually use.

I've continued to experiment with shaping the wet clay of jugs, occasionally going so far as to add no details except the eyes. I've experimented with a couple different ways of shaping the face: I've thrown bottomless jugs, or cut off the bottoms, and I've cut a poking stick that has just the right curve to press out from the inside of a jug. I've also used a few classic works of art for reference.

One of my favorite pieces so far is a bust face jug of an old man, pictured at right. I used a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci as a reference, which gave me new ideas for the shape of the face as well as which details to emphasize. I was quite happy with the final product. . . even though it looked nothing like the source material. On the plus side, I can probably use the same piece for reference again. . . .

(And even as I was working on my sculptural skills, I let my potting skills slide. I made the bottom too thick on this guy, and it suffered during bisque firing.)

We've been trying to keep things new in the workshop: new glazes, new techniques, new clay, whatever new ideas occur to us. We hope it's interesting to viewers. It certainly is to us.

a bit of history: Town Drunk

2007-09-05T17:20:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite recent pieces of Greg's is his Town Drunk jug, pictured to the left. It's tough to get a good sense of scale from this photo, but the jug is a large one, even for Greg. It's a generous gallon. . . at 10 inches high, it's an inch or so shorter than his usual gallon jugs, but a good bit broader.

I particularly like the expression on this guy. . . his eyes are expressive, but a little unfocussed. The simple punctuated pupils accentuate the vaguely blank look. The ears and nose are generous, and the lines show some wear in this character's life.

My favorite elements, of course, are the tiny jugs affixed to the head. When he began working on the face, Greg had just finished making a batch of small jugs. He turns these on the wheel, more or less just like the big ones. Usually, Greg decorates the small jugs just like the big ones, but he's been seeking out ways to add more and more detail to the jugs he's making. Greg planned out the additions carefully, then joined all the little jugs in a sort of crown around the head of the big jug.

Each is a separate vessel, so they can be played like tiny little jug-band jugs. (Three of them in a row are tuned to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb", which is a nice coincidence. :) They could each hold a tiny bit of mixer, but I digress. . . the really interesting elements to me are the visual complexity all those little pieces add, and the story. He's the town drunk, so he's got liquor on his mind.

The jug has provoked some great reactions. People have suggested new names (the best of which was Pothead), admired it, and commented on the detail. Most people realize immediately the amount of work that went into this piece, since it's clear that the little jugs are also handmade. One boy at a recent show even launched into a long story about the jug: if the little jugs were pressed in sequence, a diamond would rise up from the middle spout. Of course, an ominous voice would warn those present to beware. . . .

I'm impressed by Greg's imagination, but I'm really impressed by the spark it gives to viewers. They react to his imagination by coming up with ideas of their own.

Hiawassee Mountain Arts Festival, etc

2007-08-29T15:23:00.000-05:00

We're back from a nice weekend at the Hiawassee Mountain Arts Festival. The venue there (the Georgia State Fairgrounds) is really nice -- a wooded lakeside loop surrounded by a series of small booths. The festival was well run and quite enjoyable.

We also had the good fortune to meet quite a few nice people. Lots of people seem to be interested in face jugs, whether or not they're interested in making a purchase, and we're always glad to talk about them. A good source for information on South Carolina potteries is the book Great and Noble Jar. A few of the early details are up for debate, so you can hear Greg's and my competing theories as to what went on. :)

Meanwhile, we've got an update to make, but our webpage is inexplicably down. I hope to have our webmistress straighten things out before too long.

lots of news and little news, all at once

2007-08-21T10:08:00.000-05:00

Not much by way of posting in a while. . . in a sense, being busy has kept me away from here, but in another sense, there's not much to report. :)

Our various travels to various shows have been a lot of fun. I had a good time at the Spring Meaders Homeplace show, and Greg introduced me to quite a few potters I hadn't met previously. The Georgia Jugfest was an interesting show as well -- it merits its own post, so I'll put that up later, with any luck.

The Chattanooga Market is a really great venue -- check it out if you're in the area or visiting the city. It's a really great collection of people with a variety of interesting handmade or carefully grown products. And there are pizza and beer vendors. . . .

I'll post more later. I'd like to talk a bit about our glaze mixing, and more about what goes on in the workshop, and I'll do so in some future posts.

Patton Pottery now on Etsy

2007-02-13T12:15:00.000-05:00

In addition to selling pottery through our site, we've started selling at http://etsy.com -- it's a really neat place, full of all sorts of handmade items.

Check 'em out.

Joel

patton-pottery.com online!

2007-02-07T17:32:00.000-05:00

We managed to get everything photographed, and I recoded the page over the course of a week or so. And as soon as I got the page up, we needed to update with 2 full kilnloads of new wares.

Greg and I have been turning like crazy out in the workshop. Greg is making roosters and banks. . . the first rooster just came out of the kiln and he looks good. The other roosters are going to have to wait until Duke Energy comes out and buries a new power line for us, so that we can fire up the big new kiln.

I've been making some smaller and larger pieces than usual. . . I made some pepper pigs (little tiny salt pigs) for my friends over at Alchemy Spice Co, and I also made some 1/2-gallon jugs, the biggest I've made so far.

Check out the web site and drop us a line!

welcome

2007-01-15T15:06:00.000-05:00

Hi all,

The Patton Pottery blog is born out of a desire to mark my own pottery progress. I'd also like to give customers and fans a little insight into our workshop.

Patton Pottery is the Patton brothers' pottery workshop. Greg Patton started making pottery somewhere around 2002, and began making pottery full-time in early 2006. Joel Patton (that is to say, I) joined him in late 2006.

We turn a variety of wares, but focus on pieces in the Edgefield, SC tradition. Of particular interest are face jugs, which have been a tradition in Southern pottery for several hundred years.

Our current main site is http://patton-pottery.com , which is due for an update -- please check it out, and let us know if anything strikes your fancy. Everything's for sale. :)

thanks,
Joel