Monthly Archives: April 2024

Two Sericite Porcelain Workshops completed

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We have just completed the 2nd of our sericite porcelain workshops.  They both went well and everyone seemed to get something out of it.

We advertised it as intermediate to advanced level, and everyone was suitably skilled to be able to handle the slightly more complex and difficult advanced techniques.

We were aiming to teach those advanced techniques, and everyone was keen to extend their skills.

The weather has cooled down a lot recently, so we had to light the stove to get the air a bit warmer in the studio over night to speed up the drying process. At the end of the first days throwing. I lit the fire and kept it going until after 10pm with the ceiling fan running all night. With this combination of warm air and moving air , we managed to get nearly all the pots dry enough to start turning on Sunday morning.

As my contribution to our shared lunchtime meals. I cooked a couple of tarts to be shared for our lunches. 

I made one savory home grown spinach and cheese tart from our garden with 3 cheeses. Ricotta, for the main filling with finely diced fetta for a little bit of texture, then some gorgonzola for a little of that tangy flavour that it imparts.

The other tart was sweet for after lunch, and made from our home grown and preserved quinces in an almond frangipane base.

Both made in blind baked puff pastry casings. They dissapeared pretty quickly. It’s a very good feeling to be able to share our preserved summer garden goodness and excess with others.

During the week inbetween the workshops, I continued to make and fire my sgraffito porcelain pieces that I have been working on for a while. 

It’s good to see more of them coming out of the kiln now, all shiny and transparent with the images of the bowerbirds stealing our cherries from the Chekov orchard.

I will be taking part in the ‘Pop-Up’ Southern Highlands Arts Trail Open Studios sale on the long weekend of 8th, 9th and 10th of June. Save the date!.

Another big wet and preping for the 1st. sericite Porcelain Workshop

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Just like everybody else on the east coast of Australia just now, we have had a lot of rain.

Luckily, we only had 165mm. Some places had double that. But ours came all in a short sharp deluge over night. It fell onto saturated soil. 

So the water flowed freely across the ground and down the slope into our dams.

The dams soon filled and overflowed. We now have 3 new streams flowing across our land. They will not be permanent. All this water will soon drain away, but we will not be able to drive a vehicle, or even a ride on mower down there for a very long time.

Because we can’t work out side at the moment. I have been prepping for the up-coming sericite porcelain weekend workshop.

I stripped down the stainless steel twin auger pug mill and cleaned out the previous porcelain body mix. The Venco twin auger pug is very quiet and very fast at processing clay. I really like using it, but I don’t like having to clean it out! It is one of the slowest pugs to take to bits and clean out.

Twin auger design pugs are very good at mixing/puging. The sericite that I am working with now is 8 years old and although it was well wrapped, it had stiffened a little bit over time. An excellent feature of the twin auger design is that you can just dribble in extra water in with the stiff clay to soften it up. Normal single auger pugs that I have don’t handle this very well. I’ve tried it. The clay/water mix just slides around and no mixing takes place. However this is not the case with the twin auger design. One other very important feature of this pug mill is that it is entirely fabricated out of Stainless steel, so very suitable for use with porcelain bodies.

I spent half a day getting it working and puging the 1/4 of a tonne of porcelain, ready for the workshop next weekend.

I bought this pug mill 2nd hand after the fire. It came from a deceased estate. I was dying to own one of these stainless steel twin auger pug mills, and was lucky enough to find someone was dying, to sell it to me.

2nd Throwing Weekend Workshop Completed

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We have completed the 2nd wheel throwing weekend workshop here in the new pottery.

We are recently returned from the Easter long weekend at the National Folk Festival in Canberra. Beautiful music, and a chance to catch up with old friends that we haven’t seem since last years festival.

Now it’s back to work in the pottery finishing off some sgraffito pots that I left unfinished in the pottery damp cupboard. It’s a great luxury to have a damp cupboard in the pottery. We managed to get by without one for the past 48 years here in Balmoral Village in all 3 of our previous potteries, where we lived and worked on earth floors. I am very grateful to my friend John Edye, who sold me his beautifully crafted wooden damp cupboard with a water bath in the floor. It looks good and works a treat. Thank you John.

I’m enjoying the sgraffito decorating technique that I learnt from my friend Warren Hogden a few months ago, when Warren and Janine taught a sgraffito slip decorating workshop here. I was the TA, assisting at that workshop. But I was really engaged and enthused, so have tried my hand at this lovely, gentle technique, and I’m really enjoying it.

Thank you Warren and Janine.

I’ve been engaged with the idea of the bower birds stealing cherries from the orchard.