gary navarre on sat 17 mar 12
I guess I really started something with my side ways reference to Mel's com=
=3D
ment a week or so ago about Northern Clay or other galleries turning away f=
=3D
rom displaying wood fired pots. What I was actually referring to was how ha=
=3D
rd it is to unload a wood kiln like the fast fire Joan Slack has because wh=
=3D
at would be the point if there were less of a market for the product. Or.it=
=3D
could=3DA0 probably be cheaper to buy new bricks than move what she has an=
y =3D
more than 25 miles, not to mention the 500 I'd be hauling brick if I want t=
=3D
o keep mine. There are just not enough new younger students wanting to comm=
=3D
it to wood firing available to take over an existing kiln and move it. Most=
=3D
schools have to buy new because of contracts or the money is no object gra=
=3D
nt. Joan has been trying to find a home/new owner for that kiln for over a =
=3D
year so if wood is still so popular how come nobody has scarfed it up? I do=
=3D
n't know where I got the idea that new wood kilns should have as many
old bricks from another wood kiln as possible so it will have magic but it=
=3D
works. =3D0A=3D0A=3DA0=3D0AGary Navarre=3D0ANavarre Pottery=3D0ANavarre En=
terprises=3D0A=3D
Norway, Michigan, USA=3D0Ahttp://www.NavarrePottery.etsy.com=3DA0=3DA0=3DA0=
=3DA0=3DA0 <=3D
...... New Pots=3D0Ahttp://www.youtube.com/GindaUP=3D0Ahttp://public.fotki.=
com/=3D
GindaUP/=3D0A=3D0A=3D0A=3D0A________________________________=3D0A From: Vin=
ce Pitelka=3D
=3D0ATo: Clayart@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG =3D0ASent: Saturday=
, Ma=3D
rch 17, 2012 5:51 PM=3D0ASubject: Re: [Clayart] pink pots from the wood kil=
n=3D
=3D0A =3D0AI appreciate Mel's comments about wood-firing.=3DA0 We have to k=
eep=3D0A=3D
experimenting.=3DA0 Any gallery that says "We're not interested in wood-fir=
ed=3D
=3D0Apots" is a gallery to be avoided, because they are close-minded and su=
bj=3D
ect=3D0Aonly to the shallow appeal of the latest fad.=3DA0 Consider that be=
fore=3D
the=3D0Arelatively recent introduction of natural gas and electricity (in =
te=3D
rms of=3D0Athe history of ceramics), EVERY pot in human history was fired w=
it=3D
h coal,=3D0Acharcoal, or wood.=3DA0 Those were the only fuels available.=3D=
A0 Not=3D
to drive this=3D0Ainto the ground, but we really have barely begun to scra=
tc=3D
h the surface of=3D0Apossibility of wood-firing, and kudos to those who per=
se=3D
vere and seek the=3D0Aelusive subtleties.=3D0A- Vince=3D0A=3D0AVince Pitelk=
a=3D0AAppa=3D
lachian Center for Craft=3D0ATennessee Tech University=3D0Avpitelka@dtccom.=
net=3D
=3D0Ahttp://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka/
mel jacobson on sat 17 mar 12
i have been sitting here and laughing at the
thought of `pink pots from the wood kiln`...but...
and but. ???
have any of you ever seen the blue/green celedons
of the ming period?...china. clean, clear, colorful, porcelain.
long time ago. some of the most sought after pots in history.
and, they cost more than $35.00 at the acc show.
they all came from wood fired kilns. no goop, scum, ash
or cracks. pure, clean pottery. not a blemish to be found.
it was how they were fired. they sat in tight saggers, in the
flame and smoke and ash. so, many of them were oxydized.
we fire hundreds of well glazed pieces in our wood fired kiln.
often they come out looking like gas fired pots.
it does not diminish the work of others that like fly ash, and
colored slips from their kilns. people fire every kiln for `effect`.
it is not the kiln, it is the look that a potter wants to get from
that kiln. heat is heat. if you fire to cone 13 in an electric kiln
it will give you a new look.
(get industrial coils.) if you fire your pots in a garbage can
it will be another look.
i could cover my pots with slips and wood ash and fill the pots with saw du=
st
and have no glazed pieces at all in the kiln. how would they fire
at cone 13 heavy reduction in my gas fired kiln? i don't know, but
it sure would be a different look. it might even look a little like
wood fired pieces.
dannon did a great deal of that when she lived in texas. i could not tell
they were fired in gas, cone 10.
i could fire my wood fired kiln to cone 5-6 with all the pots in saggers
and get a nice pink, orange too. if that is what i want to do.
it would still be a wood fired kiln.
i just opened my gas kiln. mugs for necea, some plates with new glaze
studies. a very nice blue celedon cup for hank murrow (1234). he will smi=
le.
they do not look like what i have made for the last 50 years.
it is new.
combinations of iron red, black ron roy temmoku, and white and pete's red.
it is a `look`. sort of a blend of hare's fur and red and white.
interesting. i will take a pix of one of the plates.
(i will bring it to nceca...but will post it today. later.)
anyway...i don't care what kind of kiln you have...i do care that you
makes great pots in that kiln. and the `look` will depend on you, and
you alone. and if you worry about what some `yahoo` at a gallery thinks...
well, shame on you.
mel
http://www.visi.com/~melpots/
clayart page below:
http://www.visi.com/~melpots/clayart.html
Vince Pitelka on sat 17 mar 12
I appreciate Mel's comments about wood-firing. We have to keep
experimenting. Any gallery that says "We're not interested in wood-fired
pots" is a gallery to be avoided, because they are close-minded and subject
only to the shallow appeal of the latest fad. Consider that before the
relatively recent introduction of natural gas and electricity (in terms of
the history of ceramics), EVERY pot in human history was fired with coal,
charcoal, or wood. Those were the only fuels available. Not to drive this
into the ground, but we really have barely begun to scratch the surface of
possibility of wood-firing, and kudos to those who persevere and seek the
elusive subtleties.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Craft
Tennessee Tech University
vpitelka@dtccom.net
http://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka/
James Freeman on sat 17 mar 12
On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 6:51 PM, Vince Pitelka wrote:
EVERY pot in human history was fired with coal,
charcoal, or wood. Those were the only fuels available.
Don't forget poop, Vince! Lots of pots were, and unfortunately still are,
fired with poop! I own two blackware pots made by Maria Martinez' niece.
They are absolutely beautiful, but I still won't touch them! Yuck.
Take care.
...James
James Freeman
"Talk sense to a fool, and he calls you foolish."
-Euripides
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesfreemanstudio/
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com/resources
pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on sun 18 mar 12
And...lest we forget...
Peat...and. Petroleums such as Heating Oil, disused Crank Case Oil,
Kerosene, and Gasolene...also Vegetable/Seed Oils new or reclaimed...also
Propane, Methane, Butane, Natural Gas, Coal Gas, Wood Gas, etc, were or are
used to Fire Kilns.
And, back when Aegyptian Mummies were so cheap and plentiful and a glut on
the market, and were being used to fire the Boilers of Steam Locomotives (
since they were a lot cheaper than Wood or Coal ), for all we know, someone
may also have even used them to fire their Kilns.
Dried Cod or other dried Ocean Fish of various kinds would also work pretty
well I imagine, to fire a Kiln with, especially if one wanted a Salt
Firing...( well, maybe not, but it would be worth a try anyway...)
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Freeman"
> On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 6:51 PM, Vince Pitelka
> wrote:
> EVERY pot in human history was fired with coal,
> charcoal, or wood. Those were the only fuels available.
>
>
>
>
> Don't forget poop, Vince! Lots of pots were, and unfortunately still are=
,
> fired with poop! I own two blackware pots made by Maria Martinez' niece.
> They are absolutely beautiful, but I still won't touch them! Yuck.
>
> Take care.
>
> ...James
>
> James Freeman
>
> "Talk sense to a fool, and he calls you foolish."
> -Euripides
>
> http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesfreemanstudio/
> http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com/resources
Vince Pitelka on sun 18 mar 12
I wrote:
"EVERY pot in human history was fired with coal, charcoal, or wood. Those
were the only fuels available."
James Freeman responded:
"Don't forget poop, Vince! Lots of pots were, and unfortunately still are,
fired with poop! I own two blackware pots made by Maria Martinez' niece.
They are absolutely beautiful, but I still won't touch them! Yuck".
Hi James -
Great to have you rejoining the list. Yes, I guess I forgot to give poop
its due. I grew up in the west, and to me dried cow-pies have always seeme=
d
completely harmless and benign, a world apart from the stuff we flush down
the toilet. In general, animals that eat only grasses tend to produce
manure that is pretty inoffensive. It has a rather wholesome smell and we
all know how good it is for our gardens. I know that a lot of livestock ar=
e
raised in pens or fattened in feedlots where they are fed all sorts of
things including feed made from deceased animals. That would never be the
case of the range cattle wandering the desert around the Rio Grande Pueblos=
.
Frankly James, I cannot imagine anyone being so lucky as to own pots by
Maria and Julian and never touching them. Yuck??? Listen, it is just
manure from grass-fed cattle, thoroughly desiccated in the desert sun, and
then burned to a high temperature. How could there possibly be anything
harmful in there? After so long, your bonfired pots certainly do not retai=
n
any of the burnt manure smell, and instead have that delicious soft gloss
that has resulted from the carbon impacted by the burning manure smothered
with more crushed manure at the conclusion of the firing.
Michael McDowell has a source for Llama manure, so we use a mix of that and
sawdust to smother the bonfiring (and then bury it in dirt) when I do my
Ancient Clay workshop at Michael's place in northwest Washington State. In
that case, there is no noticeable manure smell at all in the fired pots. I=
n
contrast, when I arrived in Tennessee I was still under the mistaken
assumption that you had to use manure to get good blackware. The only dry
manure I could find in my part of Tennessee was from the livestock barns
used by the Tennessee Tech agriculture program. God only knows what kinds
of hormones and commercial feed those cattle received. I'll tell you, thos=
e
pots smelled so bad that you had to leave them outside for a year or two
before they could enter the home. It was a good discovery when I realized
that I could get blackware of equal quality smothering the bonfiring with
just sawdust.
Fondle those Martinez pots, James. They need to be touched, because the
tactile sensations are much of what those pots are all about. Do it as a
celebration of their beauty, and as a tribute to Maria and Julian and all
those other amazing Pueblo potters. Enjoying the tactile sensations is so
much of the pleasure of owning fine pots, as compared to the experience of
viewing them in museums.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Craft
Tennessee Tech University
vpitelka@dtccom.net
http://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka/
John Hesselberth on sun 18 mar 12
James, it is clear you are not a fresh-water fisherman. The biggest, =3D
fattest, and juiciest crickets are found underneath cow pies. Just lift =3D
one up and you will find bait that bream and bass and crappies find =3D
irresistible.=3D20
Regards,
John
On Mar 18, 2012, at 3:44 PM, James Freeman wrote:
> Nope, Vince and Snail, your excellent and irrefutable arguments
> notwithstanding, I'm still not touching it!=3D20
www.frogpondpottery.com
www.masteringglazes.com
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don=3D92t want =
=3D
to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No =3D
one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is =3D
very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life=3D92s change =3D
agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new =3D
is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the =
=3D
old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. =
=3D
Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, June 2005
John Baymore on sun 18 mar 12
Mel's and Vince's great comments on this subject cut to the core of the "wo=
=3D
odfired" stereotyping business here in the USA. "Woodfire" and "anagama" a=
=3D
re NOT synonymous.... nor "woodfire" and "round and brown"..... nor "woodfi=
=3D
re" and "crusty".
I've been firing with wood since 1969 when I built my first kiln..... a woo=
=3D
d fired one because that was all I had available to me for fuel. My curren=
=3D
t 5 chamber noborigama here in NH is now over 30 years old. A huge portion=
=3D
of my woodfired wares are, and always have been, glazed wares. Some chamb=
=3D
ers get fired cooler, some fired hotter, some in reduction, some in oxidati=
=3D
on. Some glazed pieces go into saggars, some are in the open stack and get=
=3D
subtly changed by the flyash. I get great yakishime / shizenyu / youhen =
=3D
(fly-ash and fire change effects) from that same kiln also. The range of "=
=3D
looks" of the work out of one firing can be huge. I built that kiln exactl=
=3D
y FOR that reason, as well as the incredible fuel efficiency that the nobor=
=3D
i design brings over the anagama design.
One kiln, one firing, many "looks". All woodfired.
Personally, I wood fire because I want to wood fire. I get the results I w=
=3D
ant. I don't consume effectively non-renewable fossil fuels. I put less C=
=3D
O2 in the air than I might otherwise. And I enjoy the process even at well=
=3D
over 60. "Trendiness" has never figured into it. I wood fired before it =
=3D
was getting "popular... and I'll wood fire after it has lost it's "fad" sta=
=3D
tus and as some threads here talk about "falls out of favor". There is and=
=3D
will continue to be a market for my work because I will work at that aspec=
=3D
t of things.
best,
....................john
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:51:20 -0500
rom: Vince Pitelka
ubject: Re: pink pots from the wood kiln
I appreciate Mel's comments about wood-firing. We have to keep
xperimenting. Any gallery that says "We're not interested in wood-fired
ots" is a gallery to be avoided, because they are close-minded and subject
nly to the shallow appeal of the latest fad. Consider that before the
elatively recent introduction of natural gas and electricity (in terms of
he history of ceramics), EVERY pot in human history was fired with coal,
harcoal, or wood. Those were the only fuels available. Not to drive this
nto the ground, but we really have barely begun to scratch the surface of
ossibility of wood-firing, and kudos to those who persevere and seek the
lusive subtleties.
Vince
Vince Pitelka
ppalachian Center for Craft
ennessee Tech University
pitelka@dtccom.net
ttp://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka/
John Baymore
=3DE3=3D82=3DB8=3DE3=3D83=3DA7=3DE3=3D83=3DB3=3DE3=3D80=3D80=3DE3=3D83=3D99=
=3DE3=3D83=3DBC=3DE3=3D83=3DA2=3DE3=3D82=3DA2=3D20
=3D20
adjunct professor of ceramics
=3DE7=3DBE=3D8E=3DE8=3DA1=3D93=3DE9=3D99=3DB6=3DE5=3D99=3DA8=3DE3=3D81=3DAE=
=3DE9=3D9D=3D9E=3DE5=3DB8=3DB8=3DE5=3D8B=3DA4=3DE6=3D
=3D95=3D99=3DE6=3D8E=3D88
=3D20
New Hampshire Institute of Art
=3D20
President; Potters Council of the American Ceramic Society
=3D20
River Bend Pottery
Wilton, NH USA
=3D20
http://www.JohnBaymore.com
http://www.nhia.edu/new-facultypage-5/
Snail Scott on sun 18 mar 12
On Mar 17, 2012, at 7:22 PM, James Freeman wrote:
> Don't forget poop, Vince! Lots of pots were, and unfortunately still are=
,
> fired with poop! I own two blackware pots made by Maria Martinez' niece.
> They are absolutely beautiful, but I still won't touch them! Yuck.
>
Seriously? It's just carbon by the time the smoke enters the clay.
Even in poop form (cow pies), it's pretty dang innocuous. In
desert climates, they dry to form frisbees of grass 'felt' which are
neither smelly nor squishy. And since the carbon doesn't come
off the clay, I'm not sure what about them could be construed as
yucky.
Since I moved to the Midwest, I don't fire with cow pies anymore.
(It's not the 'getting them dried out' part that turned out to be the
hitch; it's that around here, cows poop on grass, which velcros
the darn things to the ground - can't get them up in one piece!)
I fire with wood when I do primitive-style workshops now,
(around here, wood practically grows on trees!) but I still use
horse poop for the carbon inside the saggar - makes the nicest,
richest blacks, and since my neighbor's horses constantly get
loose and make 'deposits' in front of my studio, it doesn't get much
easier. Even my squeamish city students admit, when the materials
get handed out, that it's really no big deal.
Now, changing a diaper? Yuck! Won't get me near one of those!
-Snail
Vince Pitelka on sun 18 mar 12
How much wood would a wood-firer fire if a wood-firer could fire wood?
A wood-firer would fire as much wood as a wood-firer could fire if a =3D
wood-firer could fire wood.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Craft
Tennessee Tech University
vpitelka@dtccom.net
http://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka/
James Freeman on sun 18 mar 12
Yuck??? Listen, it is just
manure from grass-fed cattle, thoroughly desiccated in the desert sun, and
then burned to a high temperature. How could there possibly be anything
harmful in there? After so long, your bonfired pots certainly do not retai=
n
any of the burnt manure smell, and instead have that delicious soft gloss
that has resulted from the carbon impacted by the burning manure smothered
with more crushed manure at the conclusion of the firing.
Nope, Vince and Snail, your excellent and irrefutable arguments
notwithstanding, I'm still not touching it! I maintain a general rule not
to touch anything that has been in an animal's butt. Human butts too. I
don't discriminate!
I posted a snapshot of one of the blackware pieces to my Flickr page (
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesfreemanstudio/). You can click on the
image for a larger view. I believe the particular form is called a Wedding
Vase, but not certain. By the way, the piece just visible to it's right is
a woodfired pot by our own David Hendley, and the one behind it to the left
is a woodfired pot by Shane Mickey. I have touched both of those.
I'm not sure where our other blackware piece is. It was a round vase with
a concave neck, and stylized feather forms etched into the burnishing.
I'll photograph it if I can find it. Too darned many pots around here!
All the best.
...James
James Freeman
"Talk sense to a fool, and he calls you foolish."
-Euripides
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesfreemanstudio/
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com/resources
James Freeman on mon 19 mar 12
On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 7:26 PM, John Hesselberth
wrote:
James, it is clear you are not a fresh-water fisherman. The biggest,
fattest, and juiciest crickets are found underneath cow pies. Just lift one
up and you will find bait that bream and bass and crappies find
irresistible.
John...
No, not a fisherman. I try to avoid eating or playing with things that
have spent their life marinating in their own, albeit dilute, bodily
waste! Also, would the poop-crickets be the reason why said fish are
called "crappies"? I've always wondered about that.
Take care.
...James
James Freeman
"Talk sense to a fool, and he calls you foolish."
-Euripides
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesfreemanstudio/
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com/resources
Pottery by John on mon 19 mar 12
James,
That is a lovely Southwestern Blackware Wedding Vase. If you don't want to
touch the vase, you do NOT want to know about what the ceremony entails
using the vase to join the wedding couple. Pure water in, drinking from two
spouts, you can imagine.
Regards,
John Lowes
Sandy Springs, Georgia
http://wynhillpottery.weebly.com/
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