Poetry and Madness 3

Posted on by

I am now just over half way through my sojourn here in Korea. 5 weeks to go. How am I going? 

Well, I’m only certain of two things, and that is Death and Taxes. I’m hoping that nether of them catch up with me here to spoil my stay!

Amazingly, I am just about where I would like to be in terms of my progress. I have almost finished all the throwing. From now on it will be all about drying, bisqueing, glazing and wood firing. Thankfully I don’t have to cut, split and stack all my own wood!

So far I haven’t really left my studio/flat for more than a few hours in 6 weeks. I work all day, everyday, and its starting to pay off. My making skills and my ability to see in advance what is happening to these massive lumps of spinning jelly-like, floppy, sericite paste, as it slowly degrades under the force of gravity back down towards the wheel head. I have learnt to feel what is about to happen and what I need to do in the precise moment and order to get the outcome that I want. Knowing when to stop is a key lesson. Perfection is out of my reach at this level, ‘good enough’ turns out to be the highest level of things that I can achieve at this time. But I’m OK with that. I’m just so glad to be able to be here and have this humiliating experience of failing at almost every turn. But I hope to achieve just a few elegant jars to leave behind, that I can be proud of.

Making a ‘good-enough’ Moon Jar is quite demanding for various reasons. Firstly, they are huge, needing 10, or 12 or 15 kilos of clay to make just one half. Secondly, They are made from porcelain clay that is quite floppy and non-plastic, compared to stoneware or earthenware clays. Thirdly, the shape is a very difficult one to master, even with good plastic clay. The aim is to make a very open, wide, fully rounded, bowl shape with a very small foot. This is the shape most likely to squat down and collapse if not made carefully. That is why it is made in two pieces. But even then, it’s not easy in porcelain.

So when these three elements are combined, throwing large lumps of floppy clay, into a very wide shape, but with a tiny foot, there isn’t much to hold it up. I can only offer ‘good will’ and the little bit of skill that I have to help it along.

I’m in awe of those early Korean potters here who managed this impossible feat of throwing, while working on a wooden kick wheel with absolutely no momentum, working these huge, beautiful rounded, flowing forms, while kicking with both feet, one towards, and one away, alternately, to keep the wheel moving. Keeping both feet in action while holding your hands steady in space is something akin to ballet. BUT, not just holding those hands steady, Actually applying considerable pressure to the clay the slow it right down as well.

I could have made more progress, if I’d worked alongside somebody who knew what they were doing. All I’ve got up my sleeve is what I’ve retained from watching some good Korean throwers here in Bangsan in 2018, eight years ago, during a Moon Jar conference. Not a lot was learnt, and most of it forgotten, What I’m learning here now is invaluable, as every mistake and failure is painfully burnt into my memory banks. 

You really have to have your wits about you. I’m learning how to best approach this difficult task. The order of moves, the thickness of the clay in different parts at different stages of the lifting and opening of the evolving shape. If it were just a simple ‘vase’ shape, coming up off the wheel in a straight line up and out, like an inverted cone, it would stand up more easily, but two of these straight sided vase shapes won’t make a sphere. A sphere needs to have a small elegant foot ring, then opening up and out in a curve, away from the wheel head towards the horizontal, then curving around and back, upwards to the rim. An ‘ogee’ line of curve. A completely impossible shape to be self-supporting in soft, floppy non-plastic porcelain.  Who was the genius who first thought of this extravagance in white porcelain?

I’ve dropped a few shapes while getting it right, but I have a better appreciation of the way to best get it done now. Added to the above is the tendency for the non-plastic porcelain clay to absorb water and dry out on the surface causing your fingers to ‘stick’ or ‘grip’ every so often. All throwers have experienced this at some point, but with small pots made from plastic clay, it is recoverable. If this happens while making a moon jar, it is the end of that pot. A stretch and wobble in the form that cannot be corrected is established and there is nothing that can be done to recover it. I’ve tried. Best not to waste any time on it. Just stop, wedge it up and start again. I’ve learnt to hold a wet sponge in my hand between my fingers, and to give a little gentle squeeze more or less continuously, to keep the surface lubricated, but only just so, to avoid any ‘sticking’, but not too much so as to saturate the surface and cause the form to go weak at the knees, resulting in slumping and collapse.

Another lesson was learning to ‘condition’ the new wooden plywood batts. Fresh batts appear to be OK, and would be for every other purpose, but not for large porcelain moon jar bowls. I lost two in a row before I realised that the fresh wood didn’t allow the clay to ’stick’ to the surface well enough. So that when I flipped the bowl over, up-side-down to place it on top of the base bowl, it just peeled off the batt onto the floor. Hard lesson, well learnt. I scrubbed the batts with clay slip and saturated the surface before using them again. success two days later. But so many little set-backs, one after the other, leading to losses is disheartening. But good life lessons in perseverance!

I have also come the the conclusion that 15 kgs is my maximum limit for lifting and flipping over large bowl forms. Any more might lead to a hernia?

I’ve also learnt to be very careful in staging my drying and stiffening technique to make the best connection between the two halves. I’ve had a few crack along the joint in drying. One from not taking enough care to get the consistency and stiffness just right at the time of joining. Too soft and the shape distorts or worse, collapses. Too dry and the pot stands up to the stress of joining and paddling, but the joint can be too dry and fail in drying. I learnt to stiffen the body of the form, particularly the lower section that will have to take all the weight, while keeping the rims soft and moist for adhesion. This is not just about drying it out, but allowing the natural tendency of clay to ’set’ as some kind of thixatropia sets up between the clay particles. Letting the form sit quietly over night aids this. So making a large jar takes time and patience.

However, if the rims are kept too soft, there is a good joint, but as the pot dries, the wetter rim part shrinks more than the rest of the pot, pulls in and the curve flattens out at the mid point of the sphere, making a flat spot. I’ve seen hints of it in a few of the old Moon Jars in Museums, but also on many contemporary moon jars. A successful join, but a compromised form.

So far I’ve made beautiful round spheres with cracks in their joints after drying, as well as well joined bowls, that didn’t crack, but with less than successful round forms, lacking elegance. They both met my hammer.

Another issue that I have had to come to terms with is picking up the joined form, which is now 20 kgs or more, leather hard, slightly soft and a little bit slippery and then turning it over, up-side-down, so as to be able to trim the foot. This kind of weight should really be a two person job. But Janine’s not here! So I have developed a way to do it on my own, slowly and carefully, but it is at the limit of my capacity now at this age. I’m not the man I once was. so I have to look after myself. Fortunately I have developed a large tummy in my advancing age, and this has turned out to be very useful in supporting the shape while I lean back and very gently manoeuvre it up-side-down with my hands. Note to self! Don’t wear a shirt with buttons!

A good Moon Jar is a complex piece of work, requiring sound throwing technique, staged drying, good timing, humidity management, correct joining and compression, careful turning and slow, even drying. And all this before we even start to think about glazing and firing! Yes, there certainly is some madness! But when it works, there is poetry!

I have made about 25 good large jars now, another dozen medium sizes and about 40 smaller jars. a couple of days ago, I had my first bisque firing with half of my work in it. I used the large trolly kiln up in the other studio area, up the hill. I booked the Museums truck to drive them up there, instead of walking up there and back 20 times carrying one jar at a time! Nothing broke or chipped on the way thankfully.

When I arrived here it was the end of winter and the fields were being ploughed getting ready for the spring planting. They have to wait until may around here to be safe from the last frost. I watched them prepare the paddies, plough them twice, to mulch in the previous crop stubble, flood them and then rotary-hoe them again a couple of times. They spend a lot of time working and reworking the walls of the field by hand with a shovel. Building up the edges above water line and then patting the surface down, compressing it with the back of the shovel. It takes hours. However, they save time elsewhere, by avoiding the back breaking work of planting out the rice seedlings. Forty years ago, I was in Japan and watched women doing this back-breaking work. These days they have very cleaver machines that they load up with trays and trays of seedlings. The machine then proceeds slowly across the paddy planting 10 seedlings every second at a spacing of 200mm, apart, doing 2 metre wide rows with each pass. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. So fast and efficient.

I’ve also watched the landscape change from brown to green as the frosted, burnt pasture responded to the warmth and light. There was a tall pasture that had over wintered here, shooting up to a flowering head. At first I assumed that it was a grain crop, but soon realised, as they mowed it down, that it was a fodder crop for making hay. I walked down the lane to get a good look at it, it turned out to be rye, which takes the cold well and is over-wintered here. The smell from the paddock was so sweet, almost sickly sweet. There was so much sugar stored up in those emerging flowering heads. Harvested before it set into grain and turned to starch. They make huge round bales and plastic coat them. I’m assuming that with some residual moisture, it must be some form of silage? Stored for next winter’s fodder?

I miss being able to harvest my own vegetables from my own garden. So much so, I planted one just outside the studio. A mixture of some seedlings to get things going quickly and some seeds in-between to fill out the space as the first plants mature and are harvested. This garden isn’t really for me, as I will be gone in 6 weeks time, before most of the produce matures. I created it for the other residents that will still be here after I leave.

I have also found time to build a wood fired pizza oven. Using a lot of broken bricks that were sitting around in small piles here and there, up around the wood kiln area. I built the oven up on top of a retaining wall, just opposite my wood kiln, so we can cook pizzas while we fire through the night. Again, this little side project isn’t really for me, but my contribution to the creative community that will be living, working and creating here for years to come into the future.   At a time when a lot of the world is in so much conflict and every thing that we thought was stable is starting to come apart at the seams. I am so lucky to be an Australian, Sitting out on our own in the Pacific, we are missing out on so much of that conflict. However, when the pooh hits the propellor, nowhere is safe!

Here the Koreans are technically still at war. There are still landmine warning signs in various places around here, as there was never any really complete clean-up of the mines after the conflict ground down to a stand-off. Something they take for granted around here, but I found it quite shocking when I first encountered one of those land mine warning signs on a strand of wire, not too far from here. on something almost like some sort of old disused fence. Luckily I had my phone and its translation app to tell me to stay well away. We are only a few kms from the final DMZ line here.

As the social norms that we thought might sustain us are broken, the rule of law is degraded and there is a huge up-sweep in the far right of politics, based on miss-information, fear, lies, xenophobia, hate and miss-trust. These events can lead to some feelings of insecurity and alienation. I want to counter that, by creating things that bring people together. Every Friday, I bake bread there in my tiny studio to share with the other residents. A wholesome mixture of wholemeal and rye, that you can’t buy around here. I have also started to host a weekly pizza night in my little space. Last week we also shared a kimchi a pancake night, made by the lady next door, using my huge bag of kimchi that I was given when I arrived here, while I contributed banana pancakes with a little ice cream and cinnamon on top.  I have also made rock cakes to share at morning tea and marmalade, as such a thing doesn’t exist here. I like to have a little on my homemade toast, whenever I feel a little twinge of nostalgia for home.

I want to help create a sharing, supporting community out of these individual artists. We are mostly here for a short time, so there is a constantly changing group dynamic. I replaced someone. Another person left after I was here just one month, I only met her once! Two more artists will leave at the end of this month, and I will leave and the end of next. 

However ephemeral life is, I want to leave a positive trace behind – at least for a while. I want to leave this artists residency in a better, more inclusive, comfortable and fun creative state than it was when I arrived. 

One pizza at a time!

One Month of Poetry and Madness

Posted on by

Sometimes I feel that I must be mad to be here. Relocating to a foreign land where I don’t know the language, or many people at 74, just to satisfy my curiosity about an ancient ceramic iconic white jar ceramic form. The result of which will most likely have no bearing on my career at all.  As, while I’m here studying Moon Jars with some intensity, there is a show of Moon Jars on in Sydney from which I was excluded, even though I have shown my Moon Jar inspired forms in that gallery in the past, and sold them there. But for some reason, unknown to me, my work isn’t thought to be good enough or appropriate for this show. I can’t pretend that I’m not feeling left out from a show I feel I should have been represented in.

But shit happens and life goes on. If this is the worst that can happen to me, I’m incredibly lucky! I know that I am!

I also know that stuff happens to us all at times. We just have to knuckle down and get on with it. Life goes on. Next?

I’ve been here in the Porcelain Village Residency for one month now. Actually, it was one month last Monday, but I was too busy to write anything down till now. In fact, as of now, its only one more week and I’ll be half way. Tempus fujit! This is my 10th visit to this place. A decade of my life circling and returning, just like the moon and earth. The attraction always pulling me back. I always think that this will be my last visit, but…

I’ve just made my 40th Moon Jar, so that’s good. Actually, I’ve made more than that, but smashed a few up. Especially the earlier ones. As they were not up to scratch. They got slaked them down for re-use, as the unique sericite clay here is very special and hard won, so not to be abused or wasted on inferior pieces. If there is no hint of poetry, then they get the hammer. My most important pottery tool is not my hand crafted stainless profile tool, that I would be lost without, nor my kidney shaped modified special throwing sponge, or my razor Sharpe tungsten turning tool. No! My most important tool is my hammer as it turns out. Can’t allow any feelings of attachment for a bad form. No matter how much effort I put in to it. Even if has taken 3 days to make. If there is no joy or love conveyed in the form, no sense of warmth and communication. If there is no sense of flowing, complete lyrical form and balance. If it isn’t speaking to me. In essence, no poetry, then where is my hammer?

I have to feel proud of the pots that I make and take responsibility for them, as many eyes are on me, simply because I’m the foreigner here. The only non-Asian resident. It could be said of me that I shouldn’t really be here making my weird tributary jars based on the traditional Moon Jar form. Which aren’t really Moon Jars at all, as I’m not Korean, and don’t fully understand the culture. I have been told that there was some ‘chat’ online by ‘important’ people, that for ‘others’ to even think of making something and call it a Moon Jar, is some sort of cultural imperialism and miss-appropriation of cultural identity and some sort of theft of an iconic national ceramic form? 

I haven’t seen the discussion, as I’m not on any social media, but it did make me think about what I’m doing here and why. I interrogate myself fairly often about how I live and what I consume, and how I might be more conscientious about my choices. I quizzed myself deeply over a period of some months, before I eventually applied for this position. For several reasons, not only the cultural theft angle, but also the carbon debt incurred in international flights. Added to that the fact that my presence here has robbed some young and talented artist of a place here and a chance to learn, go on and make important work. I don’t brush this off, or take it lightly. I was quite conflicted. Should I be here?

What helped me to decide positively was the remark, made last year, from the director of the Porcelain Museum in the nearby town, when he saw what I was making back in Australia. We exchange emails periodically. In my early exploration of this iconic form. I was calling what I was making an ‘homage to the Big White Jar’. As I’ve always had a fascination for them, but could never bring myself to make a ‘copy’ of one – even for my own use and satisfaction. But after a decade of visits here, getting more deeply connected to this place through its special 800 year sericite history. As it was the stuff of the soil here that brought me here way back then, as part of my 15 year, ‘5 Stones’ ceramic adventure. 

The Museum Director said to me that what I was doing was different from anything else being done there, and that it would make an interesting addition to the canon. So there was an invitation to follow up on. “Why don’t you apply to come and do that kind of work here?”

Because I’m from Australia, I’m in the opposite hemisphere. I live in the opposite seasons, I live apparently up-side-down on the bottom of the world. It got me thinking that the way to look at the Big White Jar, was from the opposite point of view. So I made them black with a coating of black slip. The dark side of the Moon Jar?

Because I have been doing a lot of sgraffito over the last few years, and because Koreans have a long history of the same technique, which they call ‘Buncheong Ware’, sgraffito seemed appropriate! The significant difference for me, as an antipodean, is that I do it in reverse. The Korean wares are made in dark clay and white slip is applied. I was making white pots and applying black slip then carving back to create my images. I think that it might have been this that caught The Directors eye? Who Knows? I don’t!

Emboldened by this positive response though, I decided to apply for this residency. As I understand it, The Director of the Porcelain Museum is not on the board here, or on the committee for the selection of artists for this residency. So I had to convince several other academic and cultural advisors who actually are the ones making the decision. I was quite unsure as to my suitability for this placement, as the application form clearly stated that applicants should ideally be under 40 years of age, and have at least a 4 year degree level. ie masters or better. I fail the first part, but fortunately I was OK on the last bit. I also had to supply 10 images of recent work, not made in an educational institution, or as part of any course of study.  I could tick most of the boxes.

Now since I’ve arrived and started work here, more things have transpired. The Director of the museum has offered me a show in the Museum’s Art Gallery. He feels confident that I will make significant work while I’m here. No pressure! I feel a little awkward about this, as other residents don’t get this offer. They get to show their work here in the Porcelain Village, where the residency is situated. We have a smaller on-site gallery here specifically for our use. The Porcelain Village Residency Gallery. I feel that it has created some sort of barrier between us. Why am I getting special treatment? And I can’t answer that, but I carry a twinge of guilt about it, even though I have made no overtures to be treated differently.

The Director has explained to me that because of the smaller, clean firing, low smoke, wood fired kiln that I built for the Porcelain Museum 2 years ago. There has been some interest in this aspect of the Museum activity. There are now 5 other versions of this kiln built, or in the process of, in Korea as a result, with more in the planning stage. He told me (through his ‘Chat GPT’ interpretation software) that it has had an effect on how some people view the institution now. I assumed that he was talking about the environmental aspects of cleaner wood firing? The Director has his own version of the kiln at his home studio, and has recently had a show of 300 wood fired porcelain bowls in a posh big city Art Gallery. So he is fully onboard with the concept of heavily reduced porcelain created without much, if any, smoke.

He intimated that the fired results from the wood kiln that I built here are significantly different from the traditional kilns. Heavier reduced, with quite a sweet grey/black carbon inclusion that works perfectly against the white porcelain, showing subtle hints of pink to orange flashing, and yet these effects are produced with virtually no smoke. Not many people have seen work quite like this around here before now apparently. 

Two years ago, when I built the kiln. I fired it using the local pine that everyone uses around here, and managed to fire it with a little smoke, however, keeping a clean, smoke free reduction using pine took a lot of concentration, and a lot of effort. I suggested at that time, that my kiln would fire cleaner with the use of hard wood instead of pine. Eyebrows were raised! So we sourced some local oak tree timber. This is not considered suitable for kiln firing here and is therefore a lot cheaper, and as it turned out, It worked very well. I also suggested that the local Acacia species that grows on the hill sides around the pottery, in fact, right outside my studio window, would also be worth trying, but this suggestion has not been taken up – yet!

The use of local oak instead of pine, has allowed us to virtually eliminate smoke, while still creating beautiful reduced effects on the porcelain surface and a lovely ash deposit. These are aesthetic qualities not usually embraced in the traditional Moon Jar aesthetic. In fact there is some push-back from conservative thinkers about this black surface on white porcelain. The Shock Of The New!  They’ll get used to it! 

It is quite lovely in its own right. Not the usual traditional look, but still very beautiful!  I’d like to see some of my large white jars come out of the kiln like this. The Director has encouraged me to follow this route, rather than the black slip train of thought that I started with. So I am now making work that I hope will come out largely flashed with grey to black carbon inclusions, but without slip. Time will tell.

He tells me that as I have created the conditions for this new surface quality to be created. This surface belongs to me when I’m here, so I should make use of it and take delight in making my version of the iconic Korean Moon Jar with an Australian wood fired surface.

So I’m set free from my worries about cultural theft and imperialism. I’m invited, even encouraged, to follow my own interests and ways of working, thinking and making. while adapting to local materials and fuels in my efforts to make the big white jar of my crazy dreams. Whether or not there is, or will be, any poetry in these pots of mine is yet to be discovered. The hammer will decide.

When I arrived here at the end of winter. I was wearing a T shirt, a shirt and a jumper, and feeling a little bit under-dressed. Now a month on, the weather is changing weekly, even daily. One month on, I’m now down to bare feet, shorts and a singlet. I’m told that the rainy season is about to start, half way through June through to half way through August, it will rain almost every day and the humidity will be 100% for most of July. Nothing will dry, everything starts to go mouldy. The only way to dry washing reliably is to use a dryer.

I’ve taken this onboard and decided to make the largest size of jars first and then work down in size to the smaller sizes last. This is totally the opposite way around for me at this time. Usually, I’d prefer to make a lot of smaller pieces first up, so as to get a feel for the sericite clay bodies that they offer here, and get to learn all about their shortcomings. Like photo-sensitivity – cracking if exposed to direct sunlight! Sounds impossible, but it is true. I’ve had to change my habits a bit to cope. The first one that I put out in the direct sunlight one afternoon, split open like a ripe fruit! It isn’t some hitherto unknown life-form, just that if the clay is exposed to direct sunlight, the clay dries out more on that side too quickly, and hair-line cracks form. Sometimes large cracks! This stuff isn’t clay of course. I have to keep reminding myself. It’s ground up rock dust that appears to be plastic in the same way as clay, but actually isn’t. 

Amazingly, I can manage to throw 10 kg lumps of the stuff into 450mm dia. bowls with a small foot, two of which are joined together, one on top of the other, in what potters call ‘top-hatting’. Once joined by pinching the two parts together, I then use the hammer and anvil technique, incorporating a wooden block on the inside of the form and a wooden paddle on the outside, to beat the joint together, compressing it. This should make a secure joint if done well. Or, a horribly distorted wobbly pot if not. It takes a little bit of nuanced practise to get it joined securely, but not altered from its intended form.

A bowl of 450mm. is considered to be the ideal size to throw, or so the potters around here tell me. This should give a finished jar of approx. 400mm dia. The size of some of the ancient archetypes. So that is what I’m doing. 

Throwing larger lumps of 15 kgs can result in a larger jar to impress people. I’ve had a go at it and lost a couple to slumping at the end of the throwing process, this stuff is rather floppy and doesn’t hold up well. I have completed one larger jar of 550 mm dia. to my own satisfaction.

Making really big ware is for the younger testosterone driven youngsters who need to impress to get noticed. I used to do it, but I’m neither young, nor needing to make an impression any more.

These days, I just want the satisfaction of making something elegant and beautiful that I can be proud of. Because, lets face it. All these pots will be staying here. I won’t be carrying a dozen 15kg jars home in my hand luggage on Jetstar!

The other residents here, Museum staff, and Korean friends will be the beneficiaries. My contract states that the Museum has the rights to the first choice of anything that I make here to add to their collection. After that…

I don’t know if my work will be for sale at the exhibition at the end of my stay? I haven’t counted those chickens yet!

I’m slowly filling all the shelving available to me in my studio, then the corridor outside, and finally in the kiln room. 

It’s a race against the on-coming monsoon rains, to get all the big work done and more or less dried in time, before the rainy season. At home I know my clay and its short-comings, as well as its strengths. I have a certain confidence with it. I have a tendency towards the ‘go fast and break stuff’ sort of work schedule. I do usually stop before I break stuff though, but I do get a lot done! Here however, everything is different, from photo-sensitivity, through kidney shape warping if there is a breeze blowing through the studio. and there usually is, because there are no windows in the studio. Just big doors at both ends, so there is usually quite some breeze flowing through. I’ve learnt to leave the freshly potted big jars on the wheel, running on slow to keep the pot rotating and keeping it from drying out on one side only while the initial drying takes place. Also Being a 200# mesh fine porcelain paste body, it has a capacity to blow up if heated too quickly, and then to crack later on in the firing if fired too fast! Temperamental!

If any of these big jars actually survive, I’ll be proud of them.

Poetry and Madness, Korean Moon Jar Residency

Posted on by

I have been in Korea for a couple of weeks now. I have been awarded a 3 month Artist in Residency position at the Porcelain Research Centre in Yanggu. This is the site of the original deposits of sericite porcelain that have been in use more of less consistently for the past 700 years. Most importantly, it is the source of the porcelain clay that was used by the old potters to make the famous Moon Jars of antiquity.

The little town of Bangsan has one of the original sericite deposits, worked since at least the 1300’s. It also has an ancient kiln site and a very large and modern Museum, dedicated to the local porcelain history. It is this Museum and Porcelain Research Centre that makes this place so accessible and special, but there is also a small porcelain village just out of town, in a little valley of it’s own. Well, along with a few farms as well. It isn’t isolated. Everyone here in the village is an artist working with a view to the history of the site but making their own contemporary work.

There are a spread of residential houses/buildings over the site incorporating a studio on the ground floor and living quarters above. These are ideal for a family to live and work, but there is also a large new boomerang shaped complex incorporating 6 smaller, self-contained artists studios with a tiny apartment on a small mezzanine above. I’m located in one of this group, These apartments are small, so quite ideal for a single artist.

In the centre of the two wings are located the kiln room and the clay processing room. These are shared spaces. With 3 studios on either side. Each self-contained studio/flat, has its own kitchen, washing machine, toilet/shower room. As I’m a thrower, I have two electric wheels at one end in front of the glass wall leading out onto a very wide verandah. There is a large work table and banks of shelves/storage racks on either side of the room. It turns out that I am the only ’thrower’ here at the moment.

There are 2 pug mills in the central clay room and a slab roller. There is one 100mm dia vacuum pug for the studio fine clay body, and the other is a shimpo style barrel mixer, vacuum pug, not unlike a ‘peter pugger’ only fully stainless steel construction. This is for anybody to mix up or re-process their own special clay body. After use it is stripped down and left empty for the next person. It only needs 4 bolts to completely strip it down for cleaning. There is no screen for the vacuum, so that makes it so much faster, It’s such a clever little machine. I actually have one of these machines a home in my own studio, so I’m fully up to speed with it. I have been able to help one of the other residents with the strip down and re-assemble process already, as I have developed a couple of time saving tricks to make the job very quick.

The kiln room has 3 electric kilns, small, medium and large. There is a space for a humungous gas kiln that hasn’t been delivered yet, as this is the first year of occupation in this 6 studio complex, the mechanics of running this building are still being developed. There is a large gas kiln available for use in another building 200 metres up the hill a little way, that is shared by all residents of the village. 

Up there also, there are 5 wood fired kilns. A couple of 5 chambered climbing kilns built from raw clay bricks made on site, in the full traditional manner, plus an anagama and a very old fashioned traditional earthenware temp kiln for the firing of traditional ‘ongi pots. There is also one of my single chambered twin bourry box wood kilns that I built here onsite 2 years ago as a paid job. Because it is the smallest of all the kilns here. It is fired the most often, simply because it is easier to fill and fire by a smaller crew, or even by just one person. Whereas the large 5 chambered climbing kilns require a village effort. 

There are 13 residents artists here in Bangsan at the present time. Local Korean artists can apply to come and work here for periods of 3 to 5 years. Whereas international residents like myself, can apply for periods of 1 to 3 months. However, when I applied, the paperwork that arrived only had the 3 month option, with a possibility of another 3 month extension. I’m OK with just the 3 months. It is a little longer than I might have chosen, but I will get a lot done. In fact, because I’m here for 3 months, I’m actually starting a small vegetable garden just outside my studio for salad greens, lettuces, shallots and radishes etc.

The other residents will get most of the benefit, as I will be going just as it comes into productivity. There are two other residents here in this building that are keen to share in the garden work and rewards.

I had only been here for 2 days, when I was asked to go to a wood kiln firing in the nearby city of Yanggu.

This firing was in a kiln that I built here during one of last years 2 trips. I have been to Korea a few times now. In fact this is my 9th trip here. I always make sure to include a stay here in Bangsan/Yanggu in every trip. Although Seoul has a lot, great galleries etc. It is this small place that attracts me. Actually, it is always the very reason for the trip in every case. I discovered this special place on my first trip here back in 2016. I was searching for all the places in the world where porcelain was first discovered from first principals, by digging local sericite mica minerals from the ground and firing them. My search eventually lead me here. And I guess, that a tiny part of me has never really left.

I get invited back here once or sometimes twice a year to speak at conferences, take part in exhibitions, do demonstrations, and generally act as an international voice in the porcelain research conversation. As, I appear to be one of only very few people in the world who have gone out and foraged for unique local sources of porcelain raw materials. I suppose that I am very lucky in that I stumbled upon the local weathered Aplite version of porcelain stone around here and was able to decipher what it was and grind it up to make a single stone, porcelain body. The Director of the Porcelain Museum here in Bangsan, is one other of those very few people who has the same interest. We are porcelain brothers.

If I am the keynote speaker at the conference, as has happened twice, then I get my airfare paid for me. Which is nice but i would come anyway. I always come to do some job or other. It’s always work, some kind of work, to give a workshop, to speak at a conference, or build a kiln. This is the first time that I have come to just sit and enjoy making some pots for my own satisfaction. I intend to get some deeper insights into the very specific Korean Culture of Moon Jars. If I can make anything meaningful, I can show my work in the Art Gallery attached to the Museum at the end.

Because I arrived here in Korea at night, after an all day flight. I had to stay in Seoul overnight. I made use of this by staying for two days and visiting the four Museums that hold Moon Jars in their collections. The one in the National Museum is the best. A really lovely example. Next best is the Bernard Leach/Lucy Rie jar in the British Museum. I’ve visited it twice over the years, and although not quite as perfect in form. It is a much better example for me, as it has a couple of chips on the rim and foot that let me see inside the clay body composition. I really learnt more from this jar than the others. My Lovely Friend, Anne was in London recently, so I asked her to take some close-up images of the chips for me. Thank you Anne!

As it happens, there is a conference on Monday in a big city half way between here and Seoul, a few hours away. The Museum Director told me about it a week before I left to come here. It is titled ‘Clean and Smokeless Wood Firing’. I said, “that sounds like something that I’d be very interested in attending! Are you going? and if so can I get a life with you?. His answer was, “You are the keynote speaker!” So I quickly had to write a paper to explain my recent research in Korea, in a ‘PowerPoint Presentation’. Not too hard for me to do, as I know the subject very well.

I suppose that The Director is using the conference to promote his Museum and Research Facility and the work being carried out here by the staff and artist residents?

I really like the people here and have made so many friends, there is always a bit of initial bowing, then a hug, and finally a lot of chatter, most of which escapes me. However, if there is something that I need to know, out come the phones and translation apps. A conversation here for me is spent talking into my phone and listening to other peoples phones for the response. So different from my first trips to Japan 40 years ago, when I only had a paper dictionary. A conversation in progress

That first firing went very well, we spent 36 hours doing an extended stoneware firing with mostly unglazed pots, building up carbon inclusions and ash deposits on the fire face. I’m much too old to be staying awake for that length of time, I headed for bed at 11pm. and surfaced again at 4 am. to allow others to get a bit of sleep. The results turned out to be very good. I am always relieved first and foremost, before I’m pleased. I carry a lot of responsibility just simply because I designed and built the thing, and every one thinks that I can perform magic. There is no magic. I’m not gifted or special, I just have a lot of experience with these kinds of kilns. 

Last year, I got a phone call late in the evening in Australia, it was from one of the residents here in Bangsan who was firing my wood kiln and it had stopped going up in temperature. They were perplexed, so one of them rang me on FaceTime video. She said that the kiln wasn’t going up and that The Museum Director – Mr Jung, told them to ring me for advice. She said that he told them that this had happened when I was there once, and they asked me to come and look. Mr Jung told them that I just walked up to the kiln and performed some sort of magic and it started to go up again straight way. We need to know your magic please!

I am here to learn something about moon jars. A  three month, in-depth, infusion of Korean Culture, food, language and Moon Jars. I set to straight away have almost completed 9 so far, I still have to turn the feet on the last 4. It’s coming along OK for the initial attempts. I have 5 others finished, decorated and waiting for the kiln for a bisque firing. It’s quite full-on, but a great experience!

Autumn Fruit doesn’t ripen on the tree and disappearing honey bees.

Posted on by

We are currently picking avocados, kiwi fruit and feijoas. Non of these fruits ripen on the tree.

Avocados stay on the tree until they drop months later, possibly over-ripe by then. We never intentionally leave them on the tree that long, but there have been times when we missed seeing them and only found them when they drop to the ground, as late as Xmas! These need to be eaten immediately.

We usually start to pick them around the start of April, once they have reached a good size. That’s now! Our tree is a fuerte. They start to ripen about 2 weeks after you pick them. There are a load of other varieties out there that come on throughout the year. Theoretically, you can eat avocados throughout the entire year from your own garden. I’m looking forward to that.

I have planted 4 new avocado varieties this year, to cross pollinate our original 45 year old Fuerte (B). Avocados come in 2 tribes, Type ‘A’ and Type ’B’. You need one of each Type A and B to ensure a good crop set. I have planted 2 of each. Avocados are marginally self fertile, but do better if paired with an opposite A or B type. I have written about this previously on this blog. (In the Eye of the Storm, 7/11/25)

They are, Wurtz (A), Shepard (B), Hass (A), and Bacon (B), so that in the future we will have our own avocados through most of the year. 

Shepards ripen from Feb to April, 

Fuertes and Bacons ripen from April to July, 

Hass ripens from July to December,

Wurtz ripen from August to November.

This will leave us with some avocado respite over the summer in January – except for the few fruit that we didn’t see and will be falling from the Hass and Wurtz trees by then. Beware of Falling Fruit!

These new trees have doubled in size over the past 5 months since they were planted growing from ‘whip-sticks’ into small trees full of small branches and a load of leaves. I have them well protected from the bush wallabies and grey kangaroos. The little bush wallaby seems particularly fond of them. Wallabies don’t graze much grass, but seem to prefer to browse on leafy foliage.I know that the grey kangaroos are the ones that love to browse on cherry tress, as they will reach up over the 1200 high netting to pull down branches and strip them of leaves. The little bush wallabies can’t reach that high.

6 years ago, the last time that I planted out some new avocado trees. I thought that I’d put the netting around them the next day as I was a little bit tired out from the digging, planting and watering etc. BIG mistake! The little wallabies stripped the trees bare over night. Never again! I’ve learnt. I know the mantra of ‘No net – no fruit’, but I now have to add to that, No Net – No Tree! 

Procure your netting first thing, then dig your holes and do your planting later. The other important thing about having some gal-mesh netting around the tree, is that it can be used to attach a cover of gladwrap over the top of the tree for it’s first winter, to minimise the effect of the frosts while the trees are still young and tender. 

We are also picking Kiwi Fruit. A native plant from central China, possibly more correctly called Chinese Gooseberries. We have hundreds of fruit on the vines this year, it’s our best crop. These plants were all burnt to the ground in the big fire 7 years ago. They had a year under ground recovering, then popped up some suckers and haven’t looked back. The fruit are picked at this time of year, but don’t ripen until about 2 weeks after picking. They don’t ripen on the bush/vine, in the same way as the avocados. We pick and wait. We have to pick them in stages as we need them, but 2 weeks in advance, so there are piles of autumn fruit in various stages of ripening in the kitchen. As these Kiwifruit bushes/vines have re-grown from the root stock. I don’t know what variety they are, but they are lovely, sweet and ever so slightly acidic, just enough to tickle the taste buds. If they get over ripe and soft, they start to become translucent inside, all the romance evaporates, and they become mushy and slightly winey.

Feijoas likewise, don’t ripen on the tree, but will eventually fall to the ground when they are ready to fall, but not yet ripe enough to eat, as they are still hard and not ripe. They ripen on the ground. We collect them from under the trees and leave them to ripen for a week or two inside the house. When fully ripe, they do have the most amazing taste and fragrance that enriches the kitchen at this time of year. A sort of all-in summer fruit-salad flavour. It is a native of the northern parts of South America, but does well here.

We have 4 feijoa trees in our garden, but Geordie went to visit his friend ‘Mel’ at her nursery in Mittagong. She lives and farms on the site of the old Mittagong brickworks pits. Her plant seedling nursery is called ‘Brickworks Farm’. She even lives in the original owners daughter’s house. I turned up there to help Geordie harvest feijoas from under her hedge of these trees along the edge of the nursery. While I was there, Mel asked if I wanted some of her clay from the brickworks site. She had recently had a big hole dug and had kept a good pile of whiteish clay put aside for me, knowing that Geordie’s Dad is a potter.

I dried the apparently white clay sample in the sun and then trimmed off all the darker soil and organics with a kitchen knife, so as to get as clean a sample as possible. I crushed the remaining pale clay down to grape size or smaller, then blunged it in water. 7 kgs of clay in 7 litres of water, using a mechanical stirrer. The slip turned out to be a dark yellow colour once all the irony clay particles got dissolved in the water. I sieved the resulting slip through a 40 # mesh sieve, and then again through an 80# mesh fine screen. I left the slip to sit and settle for a few hours, but there was no separation of clay and water, so I tested the pH of the clay slip solution and it was 5.5 pH, slightly acidic. I poured it out onto a plaster bat to stiffen up for testing. Once it is plastic, I will put it through a series of tests to ascertain if it is useful.

I put the glaze kiln on early in the morning, and fired a moon jar in one of the electric kilns, the firing finished just after lunch, then I charged the car in the afternoon. As there was plenty of autumn sun. We finished the day with a couple of hours of wood cutting and splitting fire wood using the last of the solar power from the waning sun. This stack of split hardwood will keep Janine warm over the winter.

We went to the monthly organic gardeners meeting on Saturday. A lot of people there were telling us that there are no longer any honey bees in their garden (This is 10 km south of here). To the point that 2 gardeners told us that the only way that they could get zucchinis to set any fruit, was to hand pollinate the flowers using a fine haired brush. They had NO bees in their garden. It’s become a common story recently. I’ve heard it from others as well. 

Luckily, for us, we still have European honey bees in our garden. But for how long? I decided to spend a bit of time in the garden and did a bee count. I found that we have about equal numbers of European honey bees and native blue banded bees.

Blue banded bee.

Honey bee

I don’t know the reason for this sudden decline in honey bee numbers, but from a quick scan of the current info, it seems to be a combination of CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder, varroa mite infestation, small hive beetle attack, the increasing use of pesticides like neonicotinoids and habitat loss due to rapid expansion of subdivisions in the area? Balmoral Village doesn’t have any large scale land clearing – (yet), industrial intensive farming or new, large scale, suburban subdivisions, but they are creeping closer. So we are lucky to still have both our honey bees and our native bees in our garden. 

But for how long I’m wondering? Obviously, Janine and I don’t use any pesticides, we limit our interaction with the garden and orchards to organic methods of composting and mulching and only use approved sprays. I do use a bacterial spray called ‘Dipel’ that contains bacillus thuringiensis, to limit green caterpillar and white cabbage moth damage, but I only use it when the numbers breed up to high levels. Once or twice a year seems to work well enough. I also use some pyrethrum insecticide, made from chrysanthemum flowers. Our neighbour John Meredith, used to grow the special variety of chrysanthemum flowers, then soak the flowers in alcohol to extract the active constituent, and once watered down appropriately, used it as his home grown insecticide. That was back in 1976, before you could buy it in the garden shops.

I don’t spray the pyrethrum! I only use it inside fruit fly lures. I mix a few drops of detergent in water with sugar and Vegemite, then a few drops of pyrethrum. It works OK, but only marginally, as there aren’t that many dead fruit flys floating in the trap, but every one helps. I also use ‘DAK’ pots that lure only the males. They are sensationally effective. The bottom of the lure is littered with dead male fruit flys. Then I also buy in a lure designed specifically to attract female fruit flys based on a protein attractant. That works too, But we still get damage to our fruit from fruit flys. For the past couple of years, I have purchased ‘bugs for bugs’ parasitic wasp larvae. I can’t say that I have seen any worthwhile effect from those. Of course it is hard to measure, not like a ‘dak pot’ that holds its success rate inside for inspection. So we do a lot of different things to be as effective as we can be, but we still get fruit fly damage. Maybe this next season, I might try using some very fine mesh nylon netting over individual trees?

Always ready to engage with something new, organic and labour intensive, rather than resort to poisons!

These Busy Autumn Days

Posted on by

This week we have been working on several projects simultaneously, a few hours of each job alternately over the course of the day.

I start at 6:00 am each morning straight after I wake up, I walk over to the pottery and switch on the electric kiln. I need to start early as the days are short at this time of year. The kiln starts it’s firing program running on the battery supply of yesterdays sunshine. The kiln only draws a small amount of energy at the start of the firing, but ramps up over the day, such that it draws the maximum power at the end of the firing. I want the firing to finish when there is still some good sunshine available. 2 to 3 pm is a good time to finish.

I have programmed the glaze firing schedule to take 8 1/2 hours, more or less. Each of the electric kilns has a different and individual capacity to achieve any particular temperature rise at high temps. Depending on the age of the electrical elements. As the elements get older, they loose power, so the firing takes longer at high temperatures. One of the kilns, the big fibre kiln, has brand new elements that I have only just wound and installed, so is capable of 200+ degrees C per hour. However, one of the smaller kilns is quite old and the elements are pretty much worn out, so can only just manage 30 degree per hour at the top temps.

I like the firings to finish in the afternoon while there is still sufficient sun shine to recharge the battery before sunset. I’ve been doing a lot of firings this last couple of months. Firing my 20 or so moon jars, first to bisque, then stoneware glaze, and finally to 750oC for lustre, gold or enamel firings. To make sure that I stay within my energy creation budget limits, I only fire one glaze kiln each day. However, I can fire two small bisque kilns or two gold firings, and still have plenty of solar power for everything else. I was recently given a very old, and very large ‘Hilldav’ brick lined electric kiln from my lovely friend Robin. Thank you Robin! It certainly drains everything out of the system when it is fired. It needs 33 amps on 3 phases to run. That’s a lot of juice! Not many potters have that much power available in their studios. I save firing this kiln for times when I need such a big capacity to fit in larger work. When I got it, it has a broken door lock, that needed welding back on, it also needed a decent bit of work to control the rampant rust, repairs to the top, new insulation over the arch and work on the left front lifting lug and a new door seal. But it’s all good now.

On the left, the small and large fibre kilns. On the right the Big Hilldav and small Rhode brick kilns

While the kiln fires automatically, We get out in the garden early, straight after breakfast to beat the heat. There is so much that needs to be done at this time of the year. Autumn is the time for a big ‘end-of-summer’ clean out and replanting. The compost heap is now full to the brim again, but it will soon rot down to make more space for ongoing additions.

After lunch it is often too hot for us to be working out side, if it is a sunny day, so we retreat inside. Sometimes to help our son with his fruit cordial business, by peeling fruit, or processing herbs. Yesterday, Janine and I spent the afternoon outside on the verandah, Janine stripping lemon myrtle leaves from their branches, and me milling them down to a fine powder, before freezing them to preserve the lively, zesty, lemon fragrance.

Lemon Myrtle and Lemon Verbena are both deciduous, so the leaves need to be collected now and the plants cut back, ready to over-winter, before they re-shoot in the spring. They are hung under the verandah to dry. There is always plenty of citrus fruit ripening over the winter, for citrus fruit cordials. We grow 16 different varieties of citrus trees in the citrus grove. However, we need to collect, dry, mill and freeze the Myrtle and Verbena leaves into powder, now, while we have them, to fill out the flavour profile, as needed, when that time comes, later in winter. 

Milling dried Lemon Myrtle leaves into a fine powder, before freezing it to preserve the Zing!

After dinner I made an apple tart tartin, as we have plenty of apples at the moment.

An beautiful autumn desert.

Autumn in the veggie garden

Posted on by

Janine and I have been down in Canberra for the past week for the National Folk Festival. So many great performances, not to mention the many surprising and engaging side acts performing on the green and in the little spaces between venues.

The Spooky Men’s Chorale are always keenly anticipated to see what they have come up with over the past year, but I love all of their back catalogue too. A huge delight was a group of school kids from Tate in Victoria, playing amazing music with such enthusiasm on home made wooden marimbas. Amazingly uplifting and energising. While we were in Canberra, we took the time to visit the National Gallery and see the Aboriginal painting show.

Since we have been back, it was straight into the garden to do a big cleanup and compost all the spent summer plants and make room for the autumn planting of carrots, beetroot and peas. Plus more cabbages and cauliflowers.

I have made a special effort to select the larges knobs of our own home grown garlic, but as last years crop was a bit poor, I decided to buy in a couple of cloves of a few different new garlic varieties to help bolster our range. During the drought years, a decade or more, I collected and grew a range of different garlic varieties some did better than others in different years, but all did reasonably OK. I got used to selecting the largest and healthiest knobs for re-planting. I had a good range in my collection. hard stem, soft stem, large white, small purple, plus red skin and crimson and pink varieties. Then the weather changed, and it has been above average rain for the past 7 years since the fire and covid. Now, in these wetter years, my old reliable varieties aren’t as reliable any more and have almost disappeared. The knobs so small that, there isn’t any use in replanting them. So I’m back to buying in seed garlic again.

This year I’ve planted; Dynamite, dungansky, early purple and Spanish roja, as well as Moulin Rouge.

We’ll know in September what the best adapted varieties are for this year. I guess that it all depends on the weather.

We have been shelling and roasting hazelnuts, then picking the first of our huge crop of avocados and Kiwifruits.

The planted out rows or garlic in the new bed. 260 cloves planted out. Not every one will grow to fruition. I try and grow enough garlic to last us all year, but it never quite works out that way.

I always seem to need to buy a couple of knobs to see us through to the first harvest of the new crop. I suspect that it is because we use an awful lot of garlic when it is fresh and oily and gorgeous. We indulge ourselves, we perhaps get through half of the crop in a 1/4 or the year. Then, as it dries out and there is less of it, we use less, not so spend thrift. But we have already eaten too much of it, so we fall short at the end.

Or, maybe I just don’t plant enough?

A Free Kiln ?

Posted on by

I have been given an old electric kiln that is 44 years old. The frame is still in OK condition, but the ceramic fibre lining has collapsed, it is all cracked, shrunken, and falling to bits. The fibre in the roof and back wall has sagged, broken up and half of it has fallen in. Most of the element rods are also cracked and broken. It looks like it has had a hell of a life. I was told that it was once in use in a school, but I don’t know where it was originally from or it’s history before that. But it ended up being last used to slump glass. We were given the kiln when it finally became unworkable and the glass artist, (a relative of Janine), retired. And, I believe, spent its last years laying on it’s back and used as a top loader.

I’ve been given lots of things that don’t work in my time here, especially since the fire. I’m used to it. People say. “Steve, your handy. I’ve got this thing that doesn’t go, but I’m sure that you will be able to fix it. You can have it!” And occasionally, I can actually fix it! I surprise myself sometimes!  

Most things only need a different way of thinking to get around the huge problem of built in obsolescence. To find the creative alternative. It doesn’t have to look like new or be perfect. It just needs to work. Our pottery is full of old gear that I have rebuilt like this. In fact, there are less than half-a-dozen items that were bought ‘off the shelf’, as it were, brand new. We just don’t buy new stuff very often. Even my recently purchased ‘new’ electric car, was actually a used car, but new to me.

That is how we survived financially all these years, we rarely buy anything new. Only 2nd hand stuff, that no one else wants, or is less desirable. Second hand car, second hand house, second hand tools and equipment, we were always being offered stuff cheaply, or free, because it needed repair or just didn’t go anymore. However, If nothing turned up, I just built things from up scratch, using recycled material, or re-purposed from another job. The first two pottery studios that we built here, were made from re-cycled and scrounged materials, mostly wood. Tragically, they both burnt in fires. So no more building with wood for us. It is only this last studio that we built using a metal frame, but we spent a year scrounging sufficient old recycled corrugated iron to both clad it and line it, inside and out. Along with 2nd hand fittings and doors.

I decided to include a big arched window for the South wall of the new pottery facing the house. I wanted it to reflect the arch window that I made for the house back in the 80’s. No chance of finding something like that on the side of the road, so I welded one up out of marine grade aluminium for just a few hundred dollars. It actually turned out OK. I’ve never done that before. And can’t see myself ever needing to do it again. I never seem to get any good at anything much, as I only ever seem to do these jobs once, or maybe twice, but a couple of decades apart, just after I’ve forgotten how to do it.

The first thing that I did to get this old freebie kiln on the mend, was to make some new element mounting rods. As far as I’m aware, no one makes these ceramic kiln rods anymore in Australia. They are not hard to make, just time consuming. But I guess that you do need to know what you are doing. And in this case I just happen to know just enough to to it. That is to say, that I have had a go at home made kiln furniture/home made refractories about 50 years ago.

I needed to get these rods made early, as the only kiln that I now own that can fit in 650mm long ceramic element rods, is the big wood fired kiln. I can only fire the wood kiln in the cooler months, avoiding summer for obvious reasons. So I needed these rods made back in March, last year, so as to be dried out and ready to fire in May/June. As I was planning to do the rebuild of the electric kiln over this last summer break. I got a lot done, but it has taken me a long time. Principally because I don’t really like doing kiln work. I’m over it!

I mixed up a small batch of 10kgs of refractory clay body suitable for use as element rods. I used some old refractory ‘Puggoon’ kaolin, along with 3 sizes of high alumina grog. For years, I used to make all our wadding for the big wood fired kiln out of ‘Puggoon’ high alumina kaolin from Gulgong. I still have one big jute sack of it left in the barn. This special High Alumina wadding (HA) that I made up, after firing to stoneware, wasn’t just rubbish to be thrown out, but instead, I had created very useful, high value, HA grog. Converting what would normally be any one else’s waste product into a valuable asset worth over $6,000 per tonne.

I can also crush a very good quality HA fire brick down to dust in the rock crusher to make excellent grog.

This is not just re-use, re-cycle, but rather up-scale and value-add as well! Over a year, it’s amazing how much wadding/grog you can accumulate. A very long time ago, way back in the 70’s. Janine and I managed to buy 12,000 mixed fire bricks for a few hundred dollars, from a metal bath tub enameling factory that was being de-commissioned. This meant that we were able to build a very large 3 chamber wood fired climbing kiln. The biggest problem we faced at that time was that kiln shelves were so incredibly expensive. Without kiln shelves we couldn’t fire the kiln, so I taught myself how to make our own kiln shelves and props. Most of which, I still have! I developed a reliable recipe using crude ‘Puggoon’ HA Kaolin 50%, mixed with our own home made HA grog 50%. Our own crushed wadding and fire brick grog gave us a range of sizes straight from the crusher, coarse, medium and fine, It proved to be a good blend of sized aggregate. I learnt this technique when Janine and I worked with Harry and May Davis in New Zealand way back in the early 70’s.

My recipes and pictures of me making the kiln shelves and props were all illustrated in the book ‘Handbook for Australian Potters’ published in the early 80’s. Pages, 206 to 212. Below, I’m shown in my youth, in these images, taken by Janine, of me making kiln shelves, fearlessly declaring my independence and learning to be self-reliant. I’m a lot older and fatter now, but nothing else has changed. I’m still enthusiastically practicing self reliance!

These home-made kiln shelves weren’t very good. But they worked, and were good enough to get us going and in business, because we certainly didn’t have the money to buy enough of them to fill such a big kiln. So I taught myself how to make refractories way back then out of necessity. Now I’m financially secure enough to afford to buy element rods, but as a Nation, we don’t make anything in Australia anymore. Such items may be available from China? But I know how to make my own, So I do.

The refractory clay and grog mixture is so non-plastic and short, that it doesn’t hold together much at all. The clay is naturally short, crumbly and non-plastic, and when mixed 50/50% with fine grog it is, not too surprisingly, totally short, crumbly, floppy and useless. A bit like working with sand castles. I can’t extrude the rods vertically, they just snap off under their own weight. I have to extrude them down an inclined stainless steel ‘V’ shaped ramp, lubricated with a little used engine oil brushed on to it to ‘lube’ the process. The clay has to be pushed down the ramp to keep it compressed and avoid hair line cracks. If it can slide easily, it will distort, stretch, weaken and break. The thick engine oil, allows the clay to slide, but is sufficiently viscous to stop it from sliding easily. I use the thin stainless steel ‘V’ angle slide to carry the soft rods to the drying table.

Once dry, the rods have to be carefully carried and placed in the kiln very gently. The clay body is so ‘short’ that they snap so easily. It has NO dry strength. NONE! I broke a couple packing them, even taking care. Once fired to stoneware, they are more resilient. The final strength is achieved when they are used in the kiln. Each firing to stoneware, helps to develop the matrix of primary mullite crystals in the body that gives it high temperature strength and thermal shock resistance.

Now, with the element rods in stock, I recovered 2 rolls of ceramic fibre that went through the fire, (completely unaffected, but just a bit blackened, and now without their cardboard boxes), a box of 2nd hand refractory insulating bricks, slightly burnt, blackened and box-less, and a box of recycled and charred ceramic anchors, that also survived the fire. I only needed to buy some new stainless steel bolts to hold the anchors in place. 

The largest expense in rebuilding an old kiln like this is my labour, so I’m saving a lot of money there. The other big expense is the cost of the bulk Kanthal wire, so that I can wind up a new set of electrical heating elements on the lathe. I have done all the calculations and decided to design the new elements to use the best grade Kanthal A1 resistance wire, and run the whole thing at very low ’watts per sq. millimetre’ rating. This requires using more of the most expensive wire, but gives a set of elements that will last a very long time and make the kiln more or less maintenance free. The wholesale cost to me to purchase the bulk wire is close to $900!  Before spending time to wind them on the lathe and form them into hairpin element units.

I once had a phone call from a kiln maintenance guy who’s job was to go around the Schools, Colleges and Art Schools servicing pottery kilns. He told me that he had been doing this job for over a decade and had seen my kilns sitting there in the various kiln rooms, and he had never been asked to look at them. Constantly working on other kilns in those facilities. Apparently, my kilns had never needed any servicing.

It’s pretty unheard of for a pottery kiln like that to go for 10 years, fired 2 or 3 times a week, and not need any elements replacing or other work. He asked me directly, “What are you doing?” “How come they last so long?” I was pleased to hear that he was so impressed. I told him that I simply used the best material available and plenty of it, and did the best good job that I could. I don’t want to be going out doing maintenance. I want the things to last forever. There was one brand of kiln that had the reputation for having a certain degree of built in obsolescence. Those were his bread and butter, he told me. He loved the fact that they were rubbish,

I built around 300 kilns in my time over the 50 years. When I started my kiln building business decades ago, and rang the ‘Kanthal’ wire distributor, to order their best quality A1  high temperature wire. I often got the message that they would have to order it in, “as no one uses that wire in Australia very much, so we don’t carry very much in stock!”  I’d have to wait up to 2 months for the next shipment. It opened my eyes to the fact that other kilns being made here at that time, didn’t have the best grade of wire in their elements, possibly ensuring a certain degree of ongoing maintenance calls into the future?

I don’t actually like doing kiln work. I did it out of necessity. It was one of the ways that we found to earn the extra money that we needed to pay off the mortgage. Making pots was so much more fun, but financially unreliable. However, although I didn’t enjoy the kiln work. I found ways to make it more mentally challenging, by always looking to do things a different, or better way. I developed all my own designs. Got both a gas license and an electrical license to keep it all legal. Taught myself how to weld both stainless steel and aluminium, using a sophisticated solid state, AC/DC, pulse, TIG welder, and do all the sheet metal, as well as the electronics and learnt CAD design software. There was always something challenging to learn to keep it ‘alive’ and interesting. So although it wasn’t my first choice,  it was better than all the other alternatives. Like packing the shelves at the supermarket, being a delivery driver, or becoming a full time ceramics teacher. I was happy to just go into town one day a week to teach my special subjects at the Art School. I really enjoyed that. But it was only one day a week. I could cope with the driving once a week. I couldn’t see myself doing it every day. It was a 2 to 3 hour trip each way. A waste of my life if I was to do it full time. I couldn’t bear the thought! 

So we found half a dozen creative ways to cobble together a risky, uneven, slightly stressful, but fully committed and involved creative life. It turned out that we ‘got away with it’!  We managed to get through life without ever having to get a ‘real’ job! I was never on the dole either! Completely independent. Most of the other potters that we knew had a partner who had a full time job to smooth out the economics. But we were one of only a few couples, who survived working together with no one earning a safe ’salary’. We were both fully involved in this erratic, ceramic based, artistic engagement with self reliance and creative mini-capitalism. It taxed our inner resources both physically and intellectually, but was ultimately very rewarding in exact proportion to the effort that we put into it! I’ve never been motivated by the desire for money in itself. It’s necessary for a basic level of comfort, but after that it consumes people. Someone once told me that money is like manure. It has a great fertilizing effect when spread evenly, but stinks when it’s piled up in great heaps!

So all this life experience has now come in handy in the refurbishment of this ‘free’ kiln that was destined for the tip. Is anything ever really free?

I laid the kiln over onto it’s back, so that I could take out the broken and collapsing roof fibre and replace it, without the whole brittle ceramic fibre roof collapsing down on me. I only replaced the hot face and the 1st of the damaged back-up layers of fibre. However, I changed the overall layout of the ceramic anchors to triple the number. It was the lack of sufficient anchors that lead to the roof sagging and collapsing. Next, I stood the kiln up and added another hot face layer of 1400oC ceramic fibre on top of the shattered and spalling existing back wall. Best not to muck around with old fibre where possible, so I just covered it with a new layer. I also added double the number of ceramic anchors to support it. Plus, the extra 25mm of hot face fibre that I added will make the wall more thermally efficient.

I made a set of tools to do the fibre work. I made a special little plunger out of fruit tree pruning wood, to hold the stainless steel bolts in place while being installed. Its a gorgeous little home made improvisation to make a fiddly job a lot easier. I took the trouble to make a tapered mortise joint to hold it together. Sweet! No one knows it exists, just me. I know how beautiful such an unimportant tool like this can be. I enjoy the fact that it exists, that’s enough.

I added another layer of fibre to the floor, but didn’t touch the side walls, as they are intact, and well supported by the element rod support brackets. They will last for a while yet. 3 of the element rod support hooks are broken off. As these where custom made, and are no longer available, rather than go back to basics and make a new set from scratch. I will make 3 small support blocks to hold the rods in-situ in those spots.

I was lucky that we found a few old re-cycled ceramic anchors in the ashes and rubble after the fire. Janine and our friend Trudie hunted around for them at some point when I was fully occupied doing something else during the chaos. She knew that they had a value and might come in handy in the future. Now 6 years later, they have. Thank you Janine and Trudie ! Some are chipped and have a bit broken from the rim, but still perfectly functional, if used with care.

I have wound the new heating elements on my old lathe. I bought it 4th hand. It was at one time in use at the naval shipyards in Sydney harbour – a very long time ago. It was actually made in Melbourne by McPhersons, most probably in the 50’s or 60’s? So it’s as old as me!. That’s old! But very solid and reliable. (it, – not me!)

The next job was to renew the door seal, to create a secure tight fit during firing to protect the metal around the door frame. Once that is done I will use the oxy torch to form the heating element coils into ‘hair-pins’, I get them red hot , so that they become pliable, then I can bend them over and double them up into ‘hair-pins’. I can then fit them into the kiln on the ceramic rods, with both terminal ends sticking out the back of the kiln where they can be linked up to make full circuits.

New door lining and door seal installed

Forming the ‘hair-pin’ heating elements from the straight coils.

Heating and bending the rear element ‘tails’ into paired ‘loops’, so that I can link them together to make heating circuits of pre-calculated ampage and resistance to give precise heating of the kiln.

I have all the stainless bolts that I need, but I realised that I didn’t have enough of the correct stainless steel washers to do the connections. So I made some! As you do!

I’ve cobbled together this refurbished electric kiln for a little bit over $1100 for parts only. It is a bit less than 400 litres with a packing space of 320 litres, or 12 cu. ft. in the old units. I’ve upped the power from 16 to 20 amps x 3 phase, and used the very best quality Kanthal A1 element wire.

I have seen new kilns of this size for sale online for over $20,000. Quite a saving. This is how we survive, by the generosity of others, to whom I am eternally grateful, plus some good luck and a lot of scrounging.

I consider myself so lucky to be given this ‘free’ kiln. I have had to dig deep into my past skills and recover them from memory. I haven’t made kiln elements since before the fire, maybe 8 years ago, when I retired from building electric kilns. I am very lucky that my ancient old lathe survived the fire! Lucky, because it was in the old barn that burnt in the fire. Fortunately, because I stayed to defend, I was there and able to put most of the fire out, and control it to some extent, so that only half of the barn burnt. I said lucky, because the lathe could have been in the other half. What I lost was a lot of dried ceramic materials in paper ply bags.

I can’t remember the last time that I made kiln elements. But it’s all coming back to me, bit by bit, as I think about what the next step is. Luckily, I haven’t made any drastic mistakes!

My last job was to link up the element tails at the back of the kiln with stainless steel bolts and washers to complete the circuits. That done, I was able to pug it in and give it a run. My ‘tong’ tester revealed that I made a very slight error in my calcs, as the ampage on each circuit turns out to be 21 amps rather than the 20 that I had calculated. No problem. The kiln will be 4% more powerful.

This kiln isn’t beautiful. It just has to work! And as of now it does. Time will tell. I have had this ruin for a couple of years now. I didn’t do anything with it for the first year and a half, as I didn’t really need it. However, Now that I’m keen to make big, round, fat, pots inspired by Moon Jars. I need a larger kiln. This kiln has a 600 x 600 floor, and 750mm high. So plenty of scope to make a larger, fat, round jars.

I’ve out grown the small 450mm x 450mm. cubed electric kiln that Len Smith gave me to help me get re-started. I have been using it for the past few years and it works just OK, but is worn out and struggles to get to cone 8. I have purchased new element wire for that kiln, but I haven’t got round to making the new elements yet. I had to re-wire the old lathe after the fire burnt out the barn, so I’m working on lots of projects all at once. But now that I have the lathe back in working order. I can proceed on to the next job, which is Lens old kiln.

Nothing is ever finished, nothing lasts and nothing is perfect.

Nothing is affordable, nothing stays new, and nothing does exactly what you were promised that it would in the add!

Middle East War, The Price of Petrol and being a Fully Electric Solar Household

Posted on by

With the Middle East War, Everybody is worried about petrol! 

Except us.It has been over 12 months since I last up-dated my electric car review. I’ve also added all the other electric devices that we have included in our life over the past 20 years, just to fill in the picture a little bit more.

We first installed solar panels back in 2007, as soon as we could. We had to wait for the price to come down to a level where we could afford them. That price point came for us in 2005, but there were no licensed solar electricians to be found around us here in the Southern Highlands. Our electrician was enrolled to do the course and up-date his license, but we had to wait for him to finish his course and get qualified. We were his first job!. We started with just 3000 watts. 3 kW. We chose to buy Australian made PV panels from BP solar, made in Sydney. It cost more to buy Australian made panels, but we thought that it was the ethical thing to do to employ other Australians. Simplistic, naive? but socially aware, environmentally engaged, optimistic, Greenie thinking. Call me stupid, but who else is going to employ (y)our kids if we don’t choose to do it ourselves?

We have since expanded our PV up to 17 kW in 3 stages over the 20 years, as the price came down we went from 3 to 6 to 12 to 17.5.  BP solar is gone – turned evil and departed for the dark side. Our later panels we made in Adelaide by ’Tindo’ solar. Again more expensive than the Chinese options, but, as above, Simplistic, naive, socially aware…

We have been slowly converting our life over to solar electric power since then, replacing older worn out appliances with electric versions as it became necessary. 40 years ago all electricity was generated from coal, so we made sure not to use very much. When solar and wind power began to become available in the Australian market. We asked our supplier to sign us up. They told us that there was a waiting list that we could go on. We’d have to wait. Eventually we were allowed to subscribe up to only 10% of our bill to ‘green’ power. Which turned out to be a bit of a con-job, as a lot of that electricity was coming from Snowy hydro, which is actually coal power. 

Water is pumped up hill over-night using excess off-peak coal power to top up the reservoirs, then dropped down during peak periods to supply the breakfast and dinner peak needs. The coal generators run day and night at a steady rate which meets the average needs of the system. The coal lifted extra water is used to top up the deficit during peak times.

As more wind and solar farms were installed. We were told that we could increase the green power percentage of our bill. I rang and spoke to a representative of the power company and asked to be sent out the ‘green’ contract to sign. They posted me a dirty, black, coal-power 100% coal contract! I rang again and repeated the fiasco. Again they sent out the cheaper dirty coal power contract. It was many percentage points cheaper than the expensive green option. I guess that most customers would see that and stay dirty? 

I was told that the green power contract requests were over subscribed, so they were desperately trying to get people stay with the coal. As they were financially committed very long term to coal generation, and hadn’t seen the green revolution coming, then when it was biting at their heels, they then had to try desperately to dissuade people from changing.

We changed! And we paid.

We didn’t trash any working appliance or vehicle. We changed slowly as the need became apparent. One appliance at a time. To date we have change both cars over to electric vehicles. We now have an electric ride-on mower, an electric push mower, and an electric whipper snipper gadget for the edges and tight spots. 

We have also installed induction cook tops in the house and pottery. There is very little here that still uses carbon based power. We do still have the petrol powered fire fighting pumps, for safety reasons to do with being totally independent with high powered pumps. The equivalent electric powered fire pump would need to be 3 phase, and that would mean digging a lot of trenches around the block to install underground power cables. But crucially, we don’t have a 3 phase battery, so we would be very vulnerable when the grid goes down in a fire. NOT an Option!

So the petrol pumps remain. However, we only ever put one, or possible two, litres in them each year. They don’t need very much petrol. Unless there is a fire! I start them up every now and then to do irrigation, just to know that they are in good nik. They just sit there as an insurance policy against disaster. It’s instructive to know that a 4 litre tank-full of petrol in one of our 6.5 HP fire fighting pumps lasts about 4 hours on full throttle. The fire peak of a bush fire lasts about 30 minutes. Having done this research in person in a real life(or death) situation. I can tell you that one litre of petrol is all you need to save your life!

So back to a review of our electric cars; 

We have had our Hyundai ‘Ioniq – 1’, plug-in electric hybrid car for over 7 years now and everything about it has been a very good experience! It’s a very old design these days compared to modern standards. We were early adopters. The Ioniq series is now up to Ioniq 9!

This car has exceeded our expectations. We have settled into a routine with it now. We can drive anywhere locally on the battery, doing our local shopping and social visits very comfortably. If we need to go further afield, no problem, the petrol engine will bring us home. This car design is a decade old, so the battery is small compared to more recent arrivals. The battery takes us between 40 and 70 kms, depending on load and whether we are driving up hill or down dale. In comparison, the recently released Kia EV 4, does over 600 kms!

We have always charged the car at home from our solar PV panels. We have never been to a charging station. We have taken it on longer trips up the Queensland twice and down to Canberra several times. For these trips, we rely on the petrol engine. However, these trips are seldom done and are the exception.

For those interested in facts and figures. My log book tells me that by March 2026, we had travelled 67,400kms and spent a total of $2,143 on fuel. That’s about 1.5 to 2 litres per 100km, depending on how much you pay for fuel.

We are in the habit of putting $20 to $30 dollars worth of fuel in the car about 4 times a year. When we first purchased it. I filled the tank on the way home, as per normal practice with a new car. Big mistake! It took us almost a year to use up that fuel. It was sitting there going stale in the tank for most of the time. Stale fuel can be a big problem, so we have not done that since, unless we are planning a long trip.

When fully fuelled up with a full battery and a full tank. The fuel/trip computer tells me that we can go 1,150 kms!  It’s so smooth, quiet and comfortable to drive. I love it. I’d have no hesitation in buying another.

I love Janine’s plug-in electric car, so much so, that in December 2024 I bought a used, fully electric Fiat 500e ‘bambino’.  This recent electric version of the old classic ’50’s design is incredibly cute. It can go 300kms on a full charge, which is enough to drive to Sydney and back. 
It charges in 3 hours from 20% up to 80% on my roof top solar, but can also charge overnight from our battery if needed. I usually plug the cars in mid-morning, when there is plenty of sun that we are only getting 5 cents per kW/hr for when we sell to the grid. So it’s better off in my car. I charge it up about once a week. With the two back seats folded down, I can stuff an amazingly large packing case in the back. I surprised myself what I can get in there.

When you install solar, its like pre-paying all your electricity bills into the future all at once. In that way, my Solar power is completely free, but if you want to consider the price of the power I’m using myself instead of selling it, then the cost foregone, at 5cents kWh, that is $2 per fill. or about $100 per year for fuel, instead of buying petrol at who knows what price these days, as it goes up every week. That’s the new Trump price!

This little Fiat is the classic small, nippy car that I have always loved to drive, but now I drive on sunshine! Very tiny, very nippy and I can find a parking space anywhere. I like the engaged driving feel of this small car.
So now, after a year and a half of ownership, I can say that it is fantastic, and does everything that I need to, and want to do. And, it has only cost me approximately $100 in solar electricity each year. Fuel Crisis! What fuel crisis? I think that Trump’s war in the Middle East might push a few more people who were thinking about getting an electric car, to now make the change?

One new development for us is the fact that our local mechanic is now a fully qualified electric vehicle workshop. So the once a year check up is only a few kms away. We also know Paul very well, as he went to school with our son Geordie.

We are very pleased to be a fully solar powered household. We can run the house, the pottery, 3 electric Kilns and 2 cars on our solar. We even get a small payment every 3 months from the electricity company, for all our unused excess. We have not paid an electricity bill since 2006/7, when we installed the first solar PV panels.

The middle east war disaster will definitely affect us, but not as much as it otherwise might have.

We are careful to manage our solar power each day, or week, depending on what we are planning to do in the coming days, and what the weather holds. I choose when it will be best to fire the kilns, as kilns chew up a lot of power, so we try not to charge the car and fire the biggest of the electric kilns at the same time. If there is going to be rainy or cloudy weather. I stagger our usage to minimise our wasted excess. I have learnt that I can fire 2 bisques at the same time, or just one glaze, same power more or less, or I can fire one bisque and charge one car. etc. Having the 2 batteries also helps us to manage the odd spot of poor weather, as we can use yesterday’s sunshine to top up what we are doing.

I find it an interesting challenge, to use all of our solar power, so I don’t have to sell much at the low price. But, at the same time, I don’t want to have to buy any power from the grid. Even though I have a 100% green power contract. When I buy in electricity it costs me over 40 cents kWh. That’s the cost of green energy these days. So I would have to sell 8 times more electricity back to the grid to cover my usage.

The quest is to get to be as close to break even point as possible, without going over at all. I don’t want to give any excess away if I can, but worse would be to have to buy some back in. So I juggle the kiln firings and the car charging to fit the available sunshine.

Even when the fire burnt down our pottery in 2019. With our first PV installation gone, we were without solar for almost 3 quarters of billing periods. However, we had such a good unclaimed credit on our bill at the time, that we were able to go that whole time just using up our credit. We had new solar panels installed before the end of the year, and we were back on deck before the credit ran out. Of course, we only had the one electric car back then and no pottery workshop. So no kiln firings!

We have always been very conscious of living sustainably, so have built a very energy-efficient household over the decades. If we were not potters, I think that we could run our house on 3kW of solar PV quite comfortably. But with 2 electric cars, that would be better at 6kW. I’ve seen adds for 6 kW of Solar PV for $3,000. Can’t say if the deal was any good or not, but the price of solar is always coming down.

The Poetry and Madness of a Moon Jar Facination

Posted on by

I’ve been making of big round jars influenced by Korean ‘Moon Jars’. I’ve been fascinated by them for years, ever since I traveled and studied in Korea when I got to see them up close in the National Museum and also in potters workshops. I tried my hand at making my own version when I came back and have dabbled in making something inspired by them since.

Recently I taught a couple of workshops on the techniques that are used to create big round jars. After the workshops were over, I kept on going.

In the workshops, I made it easier and more achievable for everyone involved, by setting the starting point at 1.5 kgs. Nearly everyone enrolled in the workshops could manage this weight of clay. A lot of nice pots were made, but nothing too big. The more advanced throwers, were encouraged to progress in 1 kg increments, some reaching up to 4 or 5 kgs. Excellent! So encouraging for everyone in the room there to see that develop. However, we all progressed at our own rate.

After the workshops were over, I kept on practising. I worked my way up from 4 kgs to 5, 6 and 7, then 8 kgs. over a week or two. I could feel my skill level, confidence and success rate increasing and as I focussed on the end point of the big, open, wide bowl, that becomes 1/2 of the finished big round form. I made over 40 of these multi-kilo half-pot bowl forms and then a day later, I flipped one bowl over onto the other half, and assembled a (hopefully) beautiful sphere shape. As this is the technique used by the ancient potters.  Finally turning a small foot to give the form lift and elegance. Some of my attempts were more successful than others. A few were pretty good, but not sufficiently elegant enough. but that is what keeps me trying.

I’ve sold most of last years jars, so I’ve been keeping on with this now for another 5 weeks and made good progress. Well, as far as I’m concerned, I have. Others may differ! I haven’t ever been, and never will be, a ‘gun’ thrower. I never wanted to be. However, when I was younger and stronger, I did make large jars for a few years, and taught big pot throwing workshops, but these were mostly always in terracotta, using the coil and throw technique, a very different technique and medium. Those pots were all garden pots. That technique was ideal for someone like me who needed to take my time. To work slowly and intuitively. I’m never quite sure what I’m doing and if I’m making progress. I need time to absorb and evaluate. It doesn’t come naturally to me. I struggle. I’m not a performer. I hate the lime light. I need to make my mistakes in private. Learn from them and try again. I wish I was talented or gifted like some of my peers. But I’m not and I’ve come to be OK with that. I’m a slogger, who battles on and learns slowly through my misadventures. Slow learner! But I get there.

I did eventually make a stoneware, vitreous,  water tank for the house, that is still in use today. 40 years old and it hasn’t rusted out like all the other old tin tanks!

Other than that, I’ve always made small delicate porcelain bowls and other domestic wares. But now, after a decade and 8 visits to Korea, and much thought and study. I have, at this late stage in my life, become interested in the ancient cultural pottery form of the traditional Moon Jar. So exquisite, so impressive, so big, yet subtle. Fat, round, fecund and feminine. I love them. I love the poetry inherent in the form. They are so romantic and impossible! But also scary! Such a challenge.

Who could have imagined making the impossible? A huge, possibly 18 to 20 kilo jar, out of the most difficult and unpromising non-plastic material like fine white porcelain? Someone hundreds of years ago. Not only that. But they threw those impossible forms on a wooden kick wheel with very little momentum! This is the work of Masters.

Moon Jars weren’t called Moon Jars way back in time when they were made. The name is a recent addition. Originally, they were simply called ‘big white jars’. They were made exclusively for the Emperor and his entourage. They are said to embody the main elements of Joseon Dynasty Confucian philosophy, frugality, austerity and purity. I can identify with the first two.

They were eye wateringly expensive in their time. The clay was mined in and around the tiny village of Bangsan, way up in the mountains. A remote place, hundreds of kilometres away from Seoul. Where the only activity was growing rice and vegetables along the river flats – that is until the porcelain stone was discovered. 

Information board from the Yanggu Porcelain Museum.

Over time, an industry developed in mining, processing, testing and then shipping the pure ‘sericite’ stone, all the way to Seoul. There was no direct road route. So in the wet season, the clay was shipped down the river, on a very long, circuitous route, around and around, from one river to another, and eventually across the country, to Seoul. In the dry season, it was carried by porters overland, which was more expensive and took even longer. It made the production of ‘Court’ porcelain very exclusive, highly desirable and very expensive. Such pots were not for the general population. Not even merchant use. This was the realm of royalty, it’s privileges and excesses.

Records show that the clay, actually weathered sericite stone, for the making of white porcelain in Korea has been mined for the past 650 years, since 1371 in the one location. This unique porcelain stone was mined in an area/county called ‘Yanggu’. Right in the centre of Korea, and not too far from the current DMZ. Luckily for me. It is located on the southern side of the border. Who knows what is on the other side of the hill? Other than land mines! I have come across notices on fences up there, written in Korean, that when translated using my phone app. Read ‘Beware of land mines’. Do not cross!

I’ve visited this place many times over the past decade. Collected geological samples. Had them analysed, studied and compared the stones with others from different sites in Korea and also from sites in other countries. China, Japan, Cornwall and Australia. I have collected over a dozen different porcelain stones over the years, from 5 different countries. I’ve examined them, worked with them, ground them up and made porcelain bodies from them. Thrown them and turned them. Eventually, when I had achieved some success in this epic 15 years struggle to understand ’sericite’, I had a major exhibition of this Artistic Research in Watters Gallery back in 2017, that show was 15 years in the making, and some of those special, unique, pieces of my hand made, single stone, ground porcelain ended up in the New South Wales Art Gallery collection as well as in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. I’m really thrilled about that!

Korean sericite stones.   3 jars constructed from broken shards, collected from the old pottery studio ashes after the fire. 

Image from the Powerhouse Museum collection.

I’m thinking that I might keep on making these big round jars for some time. Until I’m satisfied that I really understand them. Eventually, if I’m lucky, I may end up with enough good ones to get an exhibition together. I love the form. It’s so full, round and generous. The Koreans revere them. Every potter there has a go at it. It’s a perennial project in Ceramic Art School courses. Some students continue on and make a name for themselves as Moon jar makers. There are a lot of very beautiful pots out there made by younger highly skilled, competent makers. I was lucky to spend a week watching Mr Chul Shin making his version of Moon Jars. Mr Chul has a very distinctive studio in the icheon Pottery village.

He told me through an interpreter, that it was not until he had made a thousand that he became confident.

These jars have become Korean cultural icons. It wasn’t always so, When Bernard Leach visited Korea in the early part of last century, he found one for sale in a bric-a-brac shop for a few hundred won. Today they sell for 4.5 million US dollars. His bargain purchase jar is now housed these days in the British Museum. But spent most of it’s life in Britain in the home of Lucie Rie on loan from Leach, until her death. 

My artist friend Anne was in the British Museum yesterday and sent me some images back. I have been there twice to see this jar myself over the years, but it wasn’t until I started to get seriously interested in them and started to try and understand them and make them that I wanted to learn more. I have looked at Anne’s images quite closely now and can see so much more that I hadn’t taken in, in my previous visits there. Images by Anne Spencer.

Isn’t it interesting how we travel through life in a kind of blur, not really taking in all that we see. Just impressions. It takes intense scrutiny to really see with intent. I know that I can only spend a couple of hours in any gallery or museum, before I start to develop Museum blindness or fatigue. I need to go out and sit outside. Go for a coffee or have lunch, then I can go back in and look for another hour. Then that’s it. If I stay longer, I’ve learnt that I’m just wasting my time. I need a couple of days or more, to really see the parts of a museum that really interest me. To really take it in! Maybe it’s just me? My limited ability to really see and understand? My acuity and skills of perception are apparently stuck in first gear.

I learnt more from Anne’s photos this morning than I did in my previous 2 visits to London to see the actual jar. The difference being that I am now totally involved in trying to really ’see’ them completely, to understand them, as I try to make something of my own, that has that unique special quality. My insights have expanded exponentially. This is directly related to my attempts to re-created the fullness of the form on the wheel – and failing, then doing it all over again. Slowly burning in those necessary synapse connections and pathways.

I have to admit that I really still don’t quite know what it is that I need to know. I haven’t quite ‘got it’ yet. Maybe another 40 ‘halves’ will get me closer. Half a tonne of clay may not be enough. I’m feeling more and more like I will need another half tonne and another 40 goes to really get to grips with it?

Looking closely at Anne’s Images, I can now see more of the subtleties that I missed before. I’m taken particularly with the rough texture of the body, the inclusions of organics that have burnt out. The subtle crazing where the glaze is just a bit thicker. I can also make out the slight differences in the atmospheric body and glaze colour development across the pot due to differences in the firing. I’m suspecting at this stage that this pot was possibly fired in an oxidising atmosphere early on in the firing, then going through a period of neutral atmosphere, eventually ending up in a reducing atmosphere towards the end of the firing. That’s my guess. Based on my knowledge of how ancient multi-chamber kilns were often fired.

I’ll only know once I’ve given it a go with my own clay and kiln, then I can re-asses and maybe try something else. And for what really? Just the academic reward of figuring some thing so esoteric out to a level of my own satisfaction. If I ever get a show together. I’m prepared to witness people walking past them and not taking much of it in. Just as I have done all my life up until now!

I’m fully aware that studying just one pot will not tell me enough. I need to see as many as I can to make a more balanced judgement. So far I’ve seen 3 in real life. not enough. There are about 20 or so of them out there, but they are all spread all over the world. The one I saw in the Yanggu Museum two years ago was more reduced, with the glaze showing a pale limpid celadon where it was thicker around the rim. Unfortunately, the only photo I could get was under a very yellow artificial light, so the jar looks rather blond.

However, in the end it doesn’t really matter how many I can see and study. What is most important, is that I can make something that I’m happy with and which represents my relationship with the this iconic piece of pottery. It’s hard to define the ‘feeling’ of a pot. Its neigh impossible to recreate that ‘feeling’ in ceramics. Principally because it is so ephemeral, so always changing with the light and with my moods. Always varied and different. It’s not the destination any more really, it’s all about the journey. This is the madness, looking for poetry in a ceramic form.

I’m also very aware that it is important not to make some sort of poor copy, or worse, a pastiche. I need to develop my own Australian version of this big round fat form. I’m working on that. Janine and I have been treating the surface of these full, round forms with black and white slips, then carving through them sgraffito style, to create our own version of the form. Something that relates to the original and shows it some respect and honour, but is in essence some thing of mine too. At the moment, I’m making them all black with black slip, then carving back to relieve a pale moon in the night sky. A moon within the moon jar form. Working in reverse like this came to me as I pondered the fact that we are here in the opposite hemisphere, up-side down and with the seasons reversed. So a reversal of the aesthetic seemed appropriate. I might call the show “a view from below”, or maybe not?

‘Howling at the Moon’  –  Jar.    A self portrait!

‘Autumn Moon’ – Jar.    A jar for this season right now.

We are working collaboratively on some of the forms, and others I’m finishing on my own. I am certainly doing all the throwing of these recent forms. It’s a great journey and we have no idea where it is all going, and that’s good.  I like that.

Nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect and nothing lasts.

Double glazing old timber windows

Posted on by

This is a little story about how we came to be replacing our old 3mm plain glass window panes with new double glazing units.

Janine and I built our own house here in Balmoral Village, back in 1976. We were lucky to be able to find and then purchased the old derelict school class room, built in 1893. It wasn’t a house, just a single room school classroom. The last time that the school operated was during the 2nd World War. 

When we discovered it, it had squatters in it. It was in a very poor state, but structurally sound, being built of very solid double brick construction. However most of the timber work had been eaten out by white ants/termites.

We lived in that single room for almost a decade, camping in there while we bought and installed new guttering on the roof and a water tank to collect our drinking water. Originally, we cooked on the open fire and heated our bath water on there too. We learnt to sponge-bath our selves in a galvanised metal tub, in front of the fire in Winter, but we had an outside bucket shower for the summer. We dug a deep pit latrine and eventually installed a small cast iron wood fired stove to cook our vegetables. All very romantic – for a while! But we were young and full of hubris, so everything was exciting and comfy enough. We planted a vegetable garden and started an orchard. That was our first year.

Not too much else really happened for some time as we were crippled by the cost of the mortgage. The interest rate at that time was an unbelievable 23%. per annum. We couldn’t get a housing loan from a bank. They wouldn’t touch us, because we were artists. Very unreliable apparently! We couldn’t take on anything else until we managed to pay off that exorbitant 2nd mortgage, which was the most expensive of the two. Our other mortgage was only 17.5%. So fantastic! we were so lucky to get that 5% reduction. It made our life so much easier!. As luck would have it, I earned a reputation for doing weekend workshops all over the state, so what started as an occasional weekend job soon became a regular event. I was also very fortunate to get intermittent teaching at 3 or 4 different Art Schools on 4 days and 2 nights a week. Janine worked two days and one night. That was how we managed the mortgage. For two and a half years, I had just one day at home each week during term time, it was quite exhausting. I had to get up before dawn to get the very early 6:00 o’clock bus down to Picton station for the early quarter to 7:00 am. train into Sydney. Then another bus up to the Art School, to arrive at 9:00. Then the return journey of bus, train, bus back home after dark at about 8 at night, Except for the nights that I taught the night class, in which case I didn’t finish til after 9 pm, so slept over on a friend’s floor on a camp stretcher. I am forever grateful to those beautiful people, Marg and Graham, who helped me to get started during those first years.

After a decade of ‘camping’ in that one room class room, we had paid off both of our loans. I gave up one of my teaching jobs, the 2 days at Alexander Mackie College, and the one night class at St George college. I also halved the number of weekend workshops that I took on.

We started to think about extending our single room house, adding a kitchen, a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms. It ended up taking us about 10 years to build, quite simply because we did everything ourselves, slowly, manually, to save money. We managed to do it all without extending the mortgage.

We did all the construction work on our own to save employing trades. I drew up our own house extension plans myself and got them through Council’s planning dept (after a few corrections). We dug the footings and cast the concrete. We had a wheel barrow brigade of friends and neighbours on that day to help move the concrete. In the 70’s we all pitched in together on each others building projects around the village. 

I learnt how to lay bricks to build the footings. I wasn’t very good at it, but that didn’t matter, as all the brickwork below floor level was going to be cement rendered to match the old building. That design feature was such a stroke of luck, as it hid a multitude of my not so good bricklaying mistakes as I learnt the skills needed.

I taught myself how to construct a timber frame out of local hard wood supplied by the local Mittagong sawmill. Some of the eucalyptus trees were even felled down in the deep creek gullies behind the village here in Balmoral. We were lucky that Janine’s brother, who was a builder, came to live in Wollongong for a while, about an hours drive away on the coast. He would come up occasionally to help me lay out the footings, or level up and square the frame, then later help me to set the windows that I had made over the 6 months prior. Everything took time, but time was free, we had enough of it if we waited… Paying trades was prohibitively expensive. The only tradesman that we had to employ by law was the electrician. I managed to find a friendly one who let me run all the cables myself, leaving the tufts of wires hanging out where power points and switches were needed. He came back later and did all the connections and testing. Money was the one thing that we didn’t have much of, so we learnt to be frugal. Recycle, repurpose, reuse.

As we were both part-time/casual teachers working 2 days a week during the 36 week term time. That limited us to a total income of 150 days of paid income per year. Neither of us has ever had a full time job or earned a salary. Nor have I ever been on the dole either. These part time/casual jobs didn’t really earn enough money. So I kept on doing the weekend workshops all over the state, and even a few interstate, even in New Zealand! So as to make more money. Our income was so small and unreliable that we couldn’t borrow any more money. This meant that we had to build our house slowly, very slowly, using our meagre wages to pay for materials only. We would save for a month or two and then buy the concrete for the footings. Wait and save again, then buy the bricks for the footings. Wait and save until we could afford the timber for the bearers and joists. Bit by bit. Step by step. All the while spending the time in-between, whilst saving, using the materials that we had acquired to complete the next phase. So it went on like this over a few years, until the frame was complete and we had a roof on, but no walls! I wrapped the walls in silver paper to protect the timber from the weather, but the sisalation got blown to pieces in the huge winds that we experienced over the next couple of years. I finally had to nail plywood over the top of the sisalation to hold it in place.

We had a fantasy dream to build the house out of sandstock bricks to match the old school room. It would look best if it was in some sort of harmony with the original. Either that, or build a steel and glass cube box that was totally different, as is the modern way. But steel and glass cubes cost enormous amounts of money. Needing architects, engineers, cranes and structural steel ‘I’ beams and plate glass are priced like gold. All so far out of our reach, we didn’t even bother getting quotes. So we stuck with what we could manage on our own and could afford. 

I kept buying small numbers of sandstock bricks here and there from garage sales and demotion sites where ever I saw them, but only in tiny numbers. What we needed was 10,000 bricks. The years dragged on.

One day we were down in Mittagong on a Friday afternoon doing the shopping, when we saw that a huge excavator was starting to pull down the old Railway Station building. It was being demolished to widen the platform for the introduction of the new ’so-called’ high speed train, the XPT. It wasn’t high speed! It was actually slower than the steam trains. I asked the station master what was going to happen to all the demolition rubble. He told me that it was going to be buried at the local tip! WHAT!

I told him that I would finish the demolition and clean up the site and remove all the demolished building materials for them free of charge. I’d even be prepared to buy the station off him. He asked how much and I said $10 ! He laughed. Said try again. I said $100 and he said OK. That was it. We shook hands on it. I bought the ruins of the old railway station that importantly for us was built out of the same old local sandstock bricks as our school. I paid a coupe of friends and we spent a week, sorting, cleaning, stacking bricks onto pallets and had them picked up and taken to our place each evening, so that no one would steal them from the side of the road. Each day our friend Robert helped Janine, who had just given birth to our son Geordie, to unstack the bricks on the side of our driveway, so that I could use the same pallets over again the next day to move more bricks. That is how we managed to build our house out of matching old sandstock bricks. So fortunate. So lucky, Such a fluke!

The house had laid idle for a year or so while we solved the brick problem. I had spent the time making all the windows for the house, including two quite lovely arched feature windows. It took the best part of a year to get all the windows made, as I had no idea how to make a window when I started. I didn’t know anything about glazing windows either. I had to teach myself how to steam wood and bend it to make the timber arches. I wanted to use double glazed glass, but it didn’t really exist here in those early years. I was told that it had to be imported from Germany at eye watering expense. So I settled for plain 3mm glass, and even that set me back a bit at the time. Glass was always so expensive.

The total cost of the house was $23,000 spread over 10 years. Made up of little quantities of money that we saved up in small amounts over months to buy the materials as needed. Our ability to save this money, set the pace at which we could build the house. The other limitation, was that I was doing all the work. I only employed my friends for a day or two here and there when the job at hand was just too heavy or difficult for me and Janine to manage alone. At the end of the decade, we had a more conventional house with a kitchen, a bathroom and 3 bedrooms, and we achieved this outcome with no extra debt.

Janine had come up with the final design concept that we used. The old school faces West, so Janine had the idea to add the kitchen extension on to the north side making the new kitchen/living-room/dining room north facing and therefore solar passive. She conceived of flipping the orientation of the new addition to the school 90 degrees on its axis, facing it north. It was a great idea. Thank you Janine. 

After almost 40 years now, we are finding the kitchen is getting too hot in summer. We had to close the old heavy winter curtains during the day in summer to try and keep the heat out. I added a huge sheet of perspex onto the inside to try and create a poor mans sort of double glazing, It didn’t really work that well. It helped a bit in winter with retaining the heating, but summer is our big new problem here with the huge increases in global heating.

Last year I decided to replace the old single pain 3mm. glass with new argon filled, double glazing. There is now a factory in the local town of Moss Vale that manufactures them. I spent $1800 on 12 new panes of thick double glazed glass. The inner pane has a special metallic ‘low-e’ coating that reflects back the infra red wave lengths of light that used to carry heat into the room. I had to rebuild the old 3 metre high arch window frame glazing bars. I glued and screwed on new 30 mm x 10 mm. extensions to the glazing bars, using some old cedar that I had scrounged many years ago for nothing, sure that it would come in handy for something eventually. These glazing bar extensions made it possible to accommodate the new 20mm. thick double glazed glass units. That was 12 months ago. We really noticed the difference this last hot summer. The kitchen was really cool – without curtains. So different!. That month long, part time exercise of rebuilding the big arch window was spectacularly successful. I managed to do it all in-situ, so there was never a big hole in the wall.  I did rely heavily on my friend Andy, who did the ladder work outside, while I did the inside work. Together, we got it all done in a day.

Going on the success of last summers window glass up-grade. This year, I decided to replace all the small panes in the multi-pane double hung windows all around the rest of the kitchen. I couldn’t fit double glazing in them, as there is no room in the double hung timber frames to allow for a 20mm thick argon-filled double glazed glass pane. I did a bit of research, some years ago now, and came across vacuum filled double glazing. (or should that read vacuum emptied, double glazing?) I kept my eye on the concept over the years, and as the price slowly came down. I was encouraged to take the leap! 

The gap between the two glass panes is only 0.3mm., that is like the thickness of a human hair. The big difference is that the gap is filled with nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! It’s a vacuum! So its like having a thermos flask in between the glass. These 4mm thick hardened glass panes also have a ‘low-e’ infra-red reflecting coating on the inner sheet facing out. Being only 8.3 mm thick in total. I thought that I could fit them into the old, wooden, double hung, frames that I made 40 years ago, and they could still be lifted up and down in the same runner slots. Or so I thought. As it turned out, they certainly could fit – just. I’m thrilled that it was possible. I paid my friend Andy to help me again, as I didn’t know if it was going to be possible, and time was of the essence, as rain was threatening. Andy is great. He has so much building experience and he adds a sense of calm and professionalism to the situation. He is also younger than me and doesn’t mind working on a scaffold or a ladder. Thank you Andy!

We had to take out the old windows, leaving a hole in the kitchen wall while we figured it all out. As the panes were so much thicker, going from 3mm up to 8.3 mm. We had to carve out the seating groove in one place in each wooden frame to allow for the thicker glass. It all went surprisingly well in the end. So I consider myself very lucky. I thought about it a lot before hand and planned it well, but didn’t know until the day, if it would actually work. Such good luck! AND the rain held off too.

We’ll know this time next year if was as worthwhile as the argon filled double glazing was. We have completely re-engineered the thermal efficiency of the house now. Re-imagine, re-furbish and re-new!

I’m still somewhat amazed that we were able to carry it off without any serious glitches.

Life is a work in progress. We’re working on it. We have been very lucky all along the way, but I’m very aware of the old saying. The harder you work, the luckier you get! I’m also very aware that I’m incredibly fortunate to be living in a civilised, peaceful, first world country like this, where opportunities do arise. We are also very lucky to live in a land with no missiles or bombs. 

I’ve been told that the most important choice that you make in life is to choose the right parents. Choosing the right country where those parents live also helps!

Nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect and nothing lasts.