Category Archives: In the pottery

A Free Kiln ?

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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!

The Poetry and Madness of a Moon Jar Facination

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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.

Moon Jars, clay and 3rd Tool Making workshop announced

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We have just completed the 2nd Moon Jar Making workshop, with the 3rd and last for this year going ahead next weekend. Great progress was made learning to throw and assemble the shapes that go to create a traditional, fully rounded, spherical shape pot on the potters wheel.

This morning our first job is to deal with a lot of fruit that has been falling off the trees during this last weekend of very hot weather.

Janine dealt with the peaches and I decided to juice the pears.

Summer is a busy time in the orchards and garden. Inadvertently, we grow more than we can eat in real time. so we cook, preserve, stew and bottle the excess, but also share the largess with the students that come to the workshops and give more away to our friends and neighbors.

I have a few people on my waiting list wanting to do a tool making workshop. If I can get two more takers, then it will go ahead on the 14th of March. Please reply if you are interested. Otherwise it will roll over to next year.

Tomorrow, I’ll be making clay again, as these last couple of workshops and the one already booked out for next weekend, will pretty much exhaust most of my remaining stock of aged plastic clay.

One thing flows into another at this busy time of year. I went up to Sydney and bought a pallet of raw materials to enable me to keep making clay into the coming year. There is $1,000 worth of clay body material on that pallet. By the time that I’ve processed it, paying my self a very modest wage, my clay costs $2.50 per kilo. If I were to add on some sort of margin to allow for running a business, insurance, wear and tear, electricity etc. Then the clay would cost $4.00 a kilo. $40.00 for a 10kg bag. Which is more or less what you pay at the craft shop.

It seems like such a lot of money, but this is the reality of modern life and business. Things keep going up all the time. Janine and I live mostly in a fantasy world of our own creation. Being so self sufficient and self reliant here, it’s easy to loose track of the price of things. The once a year purchase of materials, like this, apart from being shocked by the price, it is also a lesson in international trade and the actions of multi-national corporations’ cut throat policies. 

Ceramic materials that were once readily available locally, have nearly all been bought-out and closed down, with imported similar materials brought in to replace them, always from the 3rd world. I have to keep testing the new stuff to make sure what it is that I’m getting. You can’t just expect to do a simple substitution in your old recipe. I try very hard to use Australian raw materials for my workshop clay body. I buy in clays from Victoria, Southern NSW and Queensland to get a reliable consistent mix that is sufficiently plastic for wheel work. Regrettably, the fantastic plastic secondary kaolins from Gulgong are no longer mined. They are still there under the ground. But the sites are all locked up and then imported, very much more expensive materials are offered in their place. I used to buy the Gulgong kaolins at $400 a tonne. Now I’m asked to pay $100 for a 25 kg bag of the American kaolin that is the new substituted material. I don’t buy it. That’s a 10 times increase in price.

After tomorrows clay making session. I will have made up, mixed and twice pugged 2,000 kilos (2 tonnes) of clay in the past 12 months – and then given most of it away! Because I don’t charge for clay at my workshops, but I’m thinking that I might have to start. Maybe – First bag free, then $20 per pack after that?

I go into town once a week to do some shopping, mostly to buy protein. Usually milk, fish, tofu and then sometimes either chicken or pork. Always organic and free range where that is an option. It is the most expensive part of any meal, but we buy very little of it.  Everything else we manage to do for our selves. We make do with what we can grow. This leads to a bit of monotony at times, so I put a bit of effort into varying our meals. At this time of year, every meal is a variation on ratatouille. Tomatoes, egg plant, capsicum, zucchini, broccoli and celery. I have to mix it up a bit, one night with tomato, the next without, sometimes with tofu, another night with mushrooms. Always with fresh garden herbs, which at this time of year nearly always includes either sweet basil or pesto, but I keep it varied, sometimes with a Thai basil, coriander, lemon grass and lime juice with fish sauce. Another time with Middle Eastern spices. The next with an East Asian flavour of oyster sauce, fresh ginger, always with loads of garlic and alternately fried off good olive oil or sesame oil.

There is always something going on here. We seem to be able to keep ourselves busy.

I’m keen to pass on some of the skills that I have learnt over my life. There is more or less nil ceramic technical skills content being taught in the few remaining ceramic courses being offered here these days. It’s all part of the lobotomisation of education, combined with the enshitification of everything else. 

We offer a brief, small, quiet experience of information/skills transfer in a creative environment. It’s a beautiful learning space, well lit and airy. I like to tell myself that the staff are alright too!

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

Enjoy the moment.

Cancellation in the 3rd Moon Jar Workshop

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I have a cancellation in the 3rd Moon Jar Workshop on the 31st Jan/1st Feb. If you are interested in the spot. Please contact me.  $300 all clay provided. 

I have been making use of the empty workshop for the last week, and have been making Moon Jars for myself. I love them to bits. They are so round and fat and gorgeous. I get such a good feeling as they come together and appear on the wheel as I assemble them, then adjust the form.

The trick is to make the correct shape bowl form to begin with. Practice makes perfect. I’m still learning, and enjoying every minute of it. I’m not a master thrower, more of a hard working slogger. I keep at it until I get something that I can live with. 

Of course not everyone of my jars work out the way that I hope and imagine. The pug mill is my best quality control tool. Clay is endlessly recyclable until it is fired. So I practice ’non-attachment’. If it isn’t up to scratch, then it gets pugged. It’s much better to have a number of attempts to get the pre-curser bowl forms right. than to persevere with something that isn’t going to reward you at the end.

I’ll be there to assist and guide you as you experiment and learn.

Moon Jar Summer School completed

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We have just completed our four day summer school, learning some of the techniques involved in the making of Korean Moon Jars. We made moon jars at the time of the full moon! Inspiration.

Moon Jars aren’t easy.

To make these big, round, full shapes, we practiced making the spherical forms in two pieces, which is the most common technique used in Korea for this difficult shape. There are a few virtuoso throwers who can make such a shape in one piece on the wheel, but very few. I’m certainly not one of them. All the workshops that I attended in Korea over the years, all made their Moon Jar forms in two pieces. Even the 14th generation, National Treasure, Moon Jar master, whose workshop I visited, had a throwing room full of thrown 1/2 pieces – bowl forms – stiffening up, ready for assembly the next day.

So I decided to teach this two part technique. We started with 1 kg to 1.5kg, then added another kilo each day, ending up with 4 kg. The object wasn’t to make full size Moon Jars. The purpose was to learn the technique of throwing and joining fat round forms. Repetition is very important in learning. We practised ’non-attachment’, if the pot wasn’t going well, then it is best to put the clay back through the pug mill and start another one. Some of these students came here last year to learn to make tall joined forms, so were familiar with the workshop and one of the joining techniques.

There are at least 3 common ways to construct the joint when assembling the 2 bowl-shaped halves used to make a Moon Jar. Each with its own level of difficulty. The easiest to throw and assemble is the flat top joint. We studied this in last years Summer School here, where we threw and assembled complex forms in 2, 3 or even 4 pieces. We were working fast and wet, so the flat top joint works very well. The two surfaces meld into each other perfectly. It also allows for some sloppiness in the measuring and sizing. The two pieces can be easily massaged into shape and it is a great way to learn a lot quickly. However, It works best on the more vertical forms. 

That said, it is the technique taught in Korea’s prestige ceramic university ‘Dangook’ university. I have watched the technique of the master thrower – Professor of Moon Jar making – teaching a throwing class using this technique. As long as you get everything level, concentric and perfectly aligned, it is the easiest to master. He made the two half-pots one day and assembled them the next. So that they were slightly stiffened. He used thick throwing slip slurry on the joint.

The next level of difficulty is the tongue and groove ‘V’ joint, where the rims of the two halves are thrown with a ‘V’ shaped hollow in the base section rim. The female part?, and the other half, the top section, is thrown with a ‘V’ shaped pointed top on the rim. The male part? These two complimentary sections fit together perfectly(hopefully), and marry up to make a very sturdy joint. But! Only if they are well formed and accurately measured.  The ‘top hat’ technique is used to join the two bowl forms. The base is firmly secured to the wheel head, then the other half is picked up by the batt on which it was thrown and quickly inverted and placed on the bottom half. Remember not to cut the top half bowl off its batt until it is inverted and placed on the lower half!

Taking the time to measure accurately is of the essence. It is also necessary to ensure that both ‘bowls’ are perfectly round. If they are thrown with a slightly oval kink in them, then a single measurement of one place on the diameter won’t be accurate. This joint requires patience and accuracy in the measuring. However, If you find that there is a slight difference in the two diameters when placing them together, as long as it is only minor – 5 to 8 mm.. You can cut off the top batt and place your hand inside the top bowl, then gently massage the ‘positive’ rim into the ’negative’ groove until it fits exactly. This will ensure a sound fit and secure joint, but may result in a slight wobble in the overall form. Probably not terminal though.

The beauty of this technique is that you can ’stiffen’ the bottom section by heating it a little. But make sure to measure it first. Then you can invert the top section straight away and continue throwing. This means that the form is still ‘fluid’ and can be reshaped slightly to make sure that you have a unified overall form. It is quite forgiving, but only up to a point. Don’t over do it, or you’ll loose the lot. Apart from being unattached to the pots that you are making, the other lesson of the week is to know when to stop.

The most difficult joining technique involves throwing the rim of each half with a 45o degree complimentary bevel on the rim of each bowl, such that they fit together perfectly. The great difficulty comes when inverting the top half and placing it onto the bottom half. Unless the pots are perfectly round, and exactly measured. They wont fit and there is no way to recover them. Also. If you miss match them slightly, there is a risk that the top half will slide down over the edge of the base. There is nothing ‘flat’ to rest on. Nothing to stop it sliding. The 45 degree surfaces slide past each other freely. Only the perfect accuracy of the fit will hold it in place. I saw this technique demonstrated by a master Moon Jar maker from Incheon, near Seoul. He also made both halves the day before and let them stiffen beforehand, then used thick slip in the joint. With the two stiffened version of this technique, both halves must be thrown to the exact shape that you require to make the full round form complete once married together. There is no possibility of ‘correcting’ the form on the wheel once assembled.

The great virtue of using 2 stiffened forms like this, is that they hold their full, round, ballon-like shape well without collapsing. So you must know exactly what you are doing right from he start. As I pointed out at the beginning of this letter, Moon Jars aren’t easy. But as you start to ‘get’ the form right, and it all starts to come together for you. They are really rewarding.

It doesn’t matter which way that you do it, as long as it sticks together and doesn’t split apart when finishing off the throwing, cracking during drying, or dunting in the firing.

The bottom half is thrown with an more vigorous and upward inflection to the curve, while the top half is a fully rounded form. It takes practice to get the balance right.

Once the pot is assembled, the foot section of the top bowl is opened up and the joint is pinched together with fingers from inside and out. If necessary, the joint can be compressed from the outside using a ‘paddle’ against a solid little round ‘anvil’ block (see previous post on tool making) on the inside to counter the pressure and compress the joint. The final action is to throw the rim up from the shoulder using the excess of clay that was in the base of the bowl.

On the second day of the workshop, we had a massive storm with loads of thunder and lightning, followed by some intense rain. Then in the afternoon, we had the most beautiful double rainbow!

Moon Jar with full Moon

Moon Jar with Southern Cross

I will be offering another Moon Jar making workshop in the coming year, so if you are interested, drop us a line. The next workshop will be on the weekend of the last day of Jan and the first day of Feb.

Preparing for the new Year

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Well, Xmas is over, we survived the shopping madness by staying home and escaped the last minute rush to purchase more food than anyone could possibly consume. Janine and I stayed well out of it. We watered the garden and picked fresh vegetables made salads and tofu stir-frys. A very nice quiet time in all. I had no intension of going into town to check out the Boxing Day sales. I fact, instead, we had a lovely, small, family meal with our son and daughter-in-law, and took it very quietly. We shared a very nice bottle of wine with lunch. I cooked a somewhat rich potato dauphinois incorporating our potato and fennel, plus a tub of sour cream and garden herbs, which turned out very well.

I simmered the herbs in a little bit of milk to draw out the flavours, then layered the finely sliced fennel and potatoes with sour cream and poured the strained milk over and through it all. I finished the dish with a camembert cheese placed on top to melt through the dish. As if the tub of sour cream wasn’t quite enough, and topped it off the some grated 36 month aged cheddar.  I was happy with it and no one complained.

On the subject of potatoes, we have had a visit from a new and unusual bug into the veggie garden. Some sort of elongated, grey, shield bug. They group in pairs around the tender top shoots and suck the living daylights out of the growing tips of the potato plants. I haven’t seen these little critters before, so I had to look them up. They turn out to be a South East Asian ‘sweet-potato’ bug. Also known to be found in the North of South America and the Southern parts of North America. How they got here I have no idea. I can only surmise that with global heating, they are able to colonise newly warming fresh territories? So hello and hopefully good bye!

I’m sure that the garden shop will have any number of toxic sprays for them. However, they are quite susceptible to being squashed by hand! No poisons required, it’s highly selective, and no toxic residue is left behind. This organic ‘natural’ treatment seems to be working. I have noticed quite a few lady bugs on the potato leaves at this time also. Possibly they ere eating the minuscule shied beetle eggs? That would be nice if there was a local predator that could breed up to counter the new pest? Could life be so simple?

Someone once said that every complex problem has at least a dozen simple solutions – and they are all wrong! There is nothing quite so effective, accurate and environmentally friendly as well trained fingers. Time consuming, but 100% effective.

We have ended the year by making clay to prepare ourselves for the coming year.  I even sat down and threw a pot straight away to test out the plasticity of this new mix. It was beautiful! It will be even better after a couple of months in the cool, dark, clay store to age a little.

As we are hosting a 4 day summer school in the coming week, I cleaned out the pottery and transformed it back from a sales room for the Xmas sale and back into a throwing room. I took the opportunity to really clean down the benches and wheel tops, then gave them a coat of tung oil to protect the wood for another year. All this wood was milled on-site here from trees that we grew ourselves. I want to honour this timber and look after it. It’s just one small, but integral part of our 50 year history/legacy of living and thriving here.

All the timber now looks rich and glorious! While I was in wood working mode, I made a pile of paddles and wooden ‘anvils’. To be used in the coming workshop for forming and securing the joints of large pots. I made everything from off-cuts and prunings of trees in the garden and orchards, including apple, pear, cedar, juniper, pine and banksia.

Making beautiful pottery tools from timber that you have grown yourself is a very rewarding activity. I suspect that this is a special privilege available only to older potters, as you need to plan for it at least 40 years in advance! The old saying comes to mind – When is the best time to plant a tree? Answer, 20 years ago! We have earned these beautiful tools in more ways than one.

Every morning I wake up, I am gifted another 24 hours to enjoy the sunshine, fresh air, the people round me, the garden and the chance to be engaged in creative activity I really value this opportunity, and strive to make the most of it. In contrast, every morning I don’t wake to find that I am gifted $$$. A lot of people who chase money all their life, find that they have no time. In some ways, I am fantastically wealthy. I have never chased money, instead I have time. Time to be engaged in my creative life. I really value this meaningful and fully engaged life.

We recently hosted a tool making weekend, and taught other potters this evocative and rewarding skill. Beautifully hand crafted tools that you have made yourself embody extra meaning into the work that you make, if for no other reason than just from the emotional energy that you generate from the enjoyment of the activity of the handling and making. However, there could be more to it. 

In the pacific islands, there is a potent energy that they call ‘mana’. Not the christian goodies (manna) that drop from heaven, but a highly potent spiritual energy that is embodied in special objects at the time of their making, by unique and powerful individuals, or bestowed into objects by force of will by that unique, potent and powerful individual. It may be an object like a club, or spear, but also in jewellery and other personal objects. Such objects are highly prized and valued. The ‘mana’ is embodied in the object, and once they are passed on, that special energy is perceived and valued by the subsequent owners. I can understand this numinous like feeling embodied in beautifully crafted objects. Perhaps they can pass on something of the spirit of the maker? I like to think so.

Have a safe, creative, fertile, prosperous and rewarding New Year!

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

A Special Xmas Sale

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Janine and I will be open on Sunday the 14th of December for a A Special Xmas Sale!

Sunday 14th December. 9am – 5pm.

Steve Harrison and Janine King’s Pottery Studio, 

5 Railway Pde, Balmoral Village, 2571. 

hotnsticky@ozemail.com.au.  blog; tonightmyfingerssmellofgarlic.com

Half Price, Xmas Sale.

We are 1 1/2 hour drive south of Sydney. Please join us for our 1/2 price, Xmas sale, where everything in the gallery will be sold at 50% off! One day only. Sunday 14th December.

No tricks or gimmicks. Everything will be for sale at half of the usual marked price.

This is a definite once-off event.

We pride our selves on making highly sustainable ceramics, fired using PV sunshine or our own home grown timber. All our clay bodies and glazes are home made, on-site. We also offer tours of our workshop.

Please consider calling in and doing some discount priced Xmas Shopping.

We have never done this kind of thing before. It’s all new to us. Please come and take advantage of us!

We will also have a few of our friends with us;

Karen, who will be displaying her hand made jewellery. Roxanne, who will be showing some of her impressionistic paintings of my pots, and our son Geordie, who will be selling his hand made fruit cordials. Made from the organically grown fruit in our orchard and other fruit from local orchards.

Tours of the gardens and orchards will be available.

The Pottery studio and gardens.

Our son Geordie, making some of his ‘adult’ cordials.

Karen’s jewellery display.

Roxanne’s beautiful and expressionistic paintings of pots.

First Tomato of the Season

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We have picked the first red tomato of the summer, well before Xmas. Always an achievement, but not so special these recent years, as with accelerating global heating, we are so much hotter and everything in the garden is ripening earlier.

When we moved here to the highlands in 1976, we couldn’t get a ripe berry off our newly planted berry canes until January. These days the berry crop is all over and gone well before Xmas.

We are harvesting peaches, apricots, the last of the late sour cherries, as well as strawberries and blueberries. We don’t make any pots over December and January, as we are full time involved in managing the fruit from the orchards and the summer flush of vegetables.

The zucchinis are going mad, so we are having a few meals of stuffed zucchini flowers. It’s a lovely summer time light meal. It achieves 2 important outcomes, by picking the flowers off the plant with the nascent fruit attached behind, it makes a colourful and delicious meal, but it also takes the fruit off so early that they don’t get a chance to explode into marrows if you just glance away for a moment or loose concentration, zucchinis fill out so very fast!  Managing zucchinis means defusing them every morning early before they expand like The Big Bang!

The heat also means fruit fly problems, we get in early in October/November with ‘DAK’ pots, male fruit fly lures, and protein lures for the female flys. I also spray a ‘spinetoram’ soil bacteria and dipel bacteria for the codling moths. I also place codling moth lures in half a dozen of the various trees that are susceptible to codling moth, like apples, pears and quinces. Everything we do is approved for organic gardening. Still, with all this effort, we still get fruit fly strike. It’s important to pick the fruit early and cook it to preserve it either in the freezer or in ‘Vacola’ vacuum jars, and stored for later in the year.

Last weekend I ran a couple of pottery ’tool-making’ workshops. I take small groups of 5 or 6 potters through the steps in making their own tools specific to their particular needs and preferences. There are at least a dozen specific tools that anyone could choose to make but to be realistic, a novice tool maker can only realistically achieve 3 or 4 really nice and well crafted tools in a day, so you have to chose what is most appealing and useful ti you. I don’t expect everyone to finish every tool on the day, but if all the roughing out is done and only the fine finishing is left to do. It’s best to take it home and do all that time consuming fine sanding and oiling at a later time. Best to make use of my skills and my workshop equipment to get as much done here as is realistically achievable in the time.

Making your own tools gives you 2 important outcomes, firstly the tool will be exactly what you want and need, unlike some of the rubbish that is sold in the ‘basic’ pottery tool set sold in the cheap shops. The only good item in that plastic bag is the sponge! the rest all need work. The best thing to do with badly designed tools is to cut them up or down to make them more appropriate. Don’t be afraid, just cut it, grind it, file it or whatever until it does the job that you want. If you can’t make it work for you, just put it away and make a good one from scratch. 

This is the 2nd important outcome. It gives you the skills and insight to design and make the exact tool for you for that particular job. If it doesn’t work, then you know how to re-shape it until it does work how you want. Just because you bought it – possibly at great expense – from a reputable craft shop, doesn’t mean that it will be the best shape for you. If it doesn’t work, don’t hesitate. Don’t waste time struggling with it. Take the initiative, cut it up or grind some off it, or possibly just put it in the ‘Down-To-Experience-Bucket’ and make a proper one. 

There is also a 3rd benefit. Making your own tools can be virtually free by recycling scrap material. There is a huge sense of satisfaction in sitting back and admiring a beautifully crafted tool that you made yourself from a branch off a fruit tree growing in your garden. Home grown organic tools. AND, so rewarding and satisfying. Making your own things feeds your soul. Re-use, re-purpose, re-cycle.

I made a stir fry of garden veggies and tofu for dinner to feed my soul and my belly.

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

More rain and tasting cider

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It’s been raining again quite heavily. We now have 4 different little streams flowing across our land, where the dams overflow, and the front lawn is under 25mm of water, like a slow moving shallow lake gently flowing across our kitchen vista.

We had 65mm of rain at one point. I thought about what to do for a while and came to the conclusion that it was probably best if I decided to do all those glaze tests that I had been meaning to do for a while. I certainly didn’t want to do any outside work. So I spent a day rolling out slabs and pressing out grid-tiles from my standard plaster grid-tile mould. This ensures that all my test tiles are the same size and shape, so that I can compare them at any time with tests made years before if needed. Tragically, I lost 3,000 glaze tests in the fire, so I’m starting again.

Weighing out glaze tests can be quite boring, especially when it goes on for days. However, it keeps me gainfully employed in the warm and dry pottery studio. I put on a CD while I work. It takes more than the length of a CD to fill one test tile with the infinitesimally small gradations of ingredients in the logical progression of the recipe. Each tile is 8 x 4 squares = 32 weighings and recordings.That’s 288 tests made in this sitting. Enough!

When I was doing my PhD, I did every test in triplicate, so that I could fine them in oxidation, then reduction and also in the wood fired kiln. As each kiln gives its own variation to the test. Having done that very thorough exploration, I’m over it and these days I only make the one series of tests, and fire them  in the kiln that I think will deliver what I’m looking for.

It fills 10 pages of my glaze note book this time around. I have to keep detailed records of what I do and why I’m thinking that it might be a good idea. Sometimes, it takes so long to get the firings done at the temperature that I’m imaging will be best and in the atmosphere that I want, and in the kiln that will give me those ideal conditions, so that If I don’t write everything down in detail, then I can forget what I was thinking and why I went to all the trouble. Hopefully, it will help me to understand both the results and more about myself in a few weeks time, when they are all fired, and I can decode the results! 

Each tiles takes about one hour to complete. After two days of this, I’m pleased to do the last one – for the time being

When there comes a break in the rain, I get out and pick vegetables for dinner. This time is leaks, broccoli, Brussel sprouts and carrots. I’m planning baked veggies with a mustard infused béchamel source for dinner. I make a quick and warming lunch of pasta. I tried to steal the spaghetti from the supermarket, but the female security guard saw me and I couldn’t get pasta!

🙂

We decided to try is years cider with dinner. We made this batch of cider back on the 11th of February and bottled it on the 11th of April. So now it has had 4 months to settle down. It will be good to see how it has turned out.

See my blog post; ‘Autumns rewards,  Posted on 11/04/2025’ 

Janine thought that we should do a vertical tasting of the last 3 vintages. What a good idea! 

As we still have a few bottles of the 2012 vintage. This was the last vintage from the aged 40 year old apple trees in the previous orchard. From 2012 onwards there was a severe drought, so intense that we didn’t get to harvest any apples from 2012 through until the fire in 2019. So no cider was made. In 2015, our friend Val had a good crop of apples on her trees in ‘Lagan’, 2 hours drive, south of here, so she drove up a couple of washing baskets full of her apples. We were able to make a small batch of cider from those apples. We re-planted a new orchard in 2020 with different varieties of apples.

We opened 3 bottles to see and compare the difference. The older 2012 vintage was still very lively with good spritz, but a darker colour from its age, more akin to a beer in colour. It has a medium nose of sultry notes and a good firm cider flavour, just as we are used to. Completely dry on the finish. The 2015 from Val’s apples is medium in colour and flavour, and similar to above.

The 2025 is very pale with floral notes, a delicate palette and a dry finish, however, not very effervescent, because, as it is the first vintage from all the new apple trees in the new orchard, all planted since the fire, and this being the first year that we had a decent crop. I made the decision to cut the amount of sugar added at bottling, to ensure that there wasn’t too much pressure in the bottles. I don’t want to experience any exploding bottles. 

We make a completely ’natural’ cider here from our organic orchard apples. Nothing added at all except yeast. I have always used Moet and Chandon champagne yeast, as it has alway worked well for us. Back in the 70’s, you couldn’t buy cider yeast here in Australia, so i chose champagne yeast, as it is closest to what we wanted to make – a sparkling cider. These days I can buy any number of cider yeasts form the brewers supplies shop, but I stick with what works. 

I always leave the cider in the fermenter for 2 months to make sure that it has completely fermented out all the available sugars and is ‘dry’. Over the past 4 decades, I learnt to add one spoonful of white sugar to each bottle at bottling. This is the standard champagne bottling technique. This is to allow it to re-ferment, just enough to make a sparkling cider. Because these are all new trees and therefore an unknown fruit. I played it safe, and only added half a spoonful of sugar at this first bottling. So this batch has only a gentle spritz, but this is better than too much. 

After this test run, next year I’ll be brave enough to add the full amount of sugar.

I’ve never been brave enough to go with the wild ferment of naturally present yeasts that are on the skins of the fruit. When we had a small vineyard of 100 cabernet and 30 shiraz vines. I tried making one vintage of a macerated, whole bunch ferment. The wild yeast that was dominant on the skins at that time was very vigorous and resulted in a rather unpleasant distasteful wine. I didn’t like it at all and threw the whole lot out. So I lost a whole vintage. it’s nothing to do with money. It’s all about the investment of time and effort, and the expectation that there will be something interesting and delicious at the end, even if the amount is very small. For instance, we only make 30 to 36 bottle of cider each year, just enough to fill one fermenter. It’s enough.

Nothing is perfect, nothing is ever finished and nothing lasts. Good cider doesn’t.

Pug mills and working with soft clay

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Warning! This post might be very boring! 

Don’t read on unless you want to learn something about clay.

Janine and I have been teaching weekend workshops these last couple of weeks, and all of the preparation that goes into that to make sure that everything runs smoothly keeps us very busy. The whole exercise takes us 5 weeks in total. However, there is still time for other fun things like the garden, chickens and cooking

Over the week in between the two weekend workshops, I re-cycled all the clay from failed and re-cycled practice pieces that had made their way into the clay room to be stiffened up in the plaster basins. I have 5 large plaster tubs sitting in the direct light of the North facing window, this keeps them dry and ready for use, most of the time. Plaster saturates quite quickly if thin slip is poured into them, but they cope very well with soft plastic slumped pots that just need stiffening up. 20 mins on each side on a dry plaster batt, is all they need and it’s well and truely ready to wedge up and use again.

At the end of the workshop, I get everyone to collect all the trimmings, turnings, scraped-off batt bases and thick slurry from their throwing water tub, and pour it all into a tall 20 litre bucket. 8 potters can fill it up pretty quickly. I let it sit and soak for a day or two, to make sure everything is equally softened, I like to get it to a thick and creamy consistency, not unlike Greek yoghurt – with some lumps.

I then transfer it all onto the plaster drying tubs. It takes 3 days to get stiff enough to lift it out and stand it up. This allows more air to circulate around the soft, barely plastic clay, so as to dry it out faster. The plaster basins then need a few days in the sun to dry out again. When we do back to back weekend workshops, the plaster does get saturated and ‘tired’! However, it always recovers with a few days of sunshine.

Once stiff enough, I put it back through the pug mill, extrude it and bag it ready for re-use. It’s easy mindless work. However, I say that in the full knowledge that it is only so if you already know exactly what you are doing and have done a lot of it before. There are so many little signs and issues that you need to know and be aware of to understand about pug mills and recycling clay. The joys and sorrows of owning a pug mill!

The clay can’t be either too soft or too hard, or the mechanism of the pug mill won’t work. A pug mill is in essence, a long tube with an Archimedes spiral inside. This spiral blade pushes the clay through the barrel. Some parts of the spiral at the beginning are removed to make the spiral into a series of spiralled chopping blades. This chops up the clay, mixing both hard and soft parts evenly, then the later, complete spiral section of the auger pushes and compresses the clay out the other end. Some of the better pug mills have a screen or screens half way along the barrel so that the clay is pushed through the mesh and comes out the other side as clay spaghetti. This exposes any trapped air bubbles which are then sucked out of the pug mill barrel by a vacuum pump, before the clay is recompressed and continues along the barrel.

There can’t be any little bone dry edges that have dried out too far. They are rock hard and dry and will clog up the vacuum screens. I have to constantly check when running my fingers through the thick slurry, that there are no small tools, profiles, kidney shapes, or chamois strips left behind by my students. Any of these will grind the exercise to a rapid halt. Requiring the pug mill to be stripped down, dismantled, cleaned, the offending ‘rubbish’ removed, then checked and rebuilt. It’s the best part of a full days job to to a thorough clean out. If it’s only a chamois, sometimes, I can get away with just removing the blocked vacuum screens, cleaning them only and reassembling.  This is still a good hour or so.

In the picture above, the orange vertical plate on the side of the blue pug mill barrel, half way along the barrel is where the vacuum screens are located and can be removed for cleaning. The white lid on top of the barrel is where the vacuum chamber sucks out the air. The vacuum pump is located in a box slung underneath the pug mill trolley, which is on castors for easy manoeuvring. 

So far, I’ve been very diligent in checking all the recycled clay pretty thoroughly, so I haven’t had any ‘accidental’ issues in the last few years. I did discover, quite early on that the new pottery shed, with its north orientated, solar passive design, does get a lot of direct sunlight in onto the clay processing area in mid winter. I’ve learn’t from hard experience that direct sunlight like this can cause the pug mill barrel to heat up and sweat moisture out of the clay on one side, which then condenses and trickles down to the bottom of the barrel. The end result is dry hard clay in one part and slurry in another. The dry, very stiff nuggets of hard clay get forced onto the fine mesh of the vacuum screens and clog it up. The rheological nature of the thin wet slurry in the other part of the barrel doesn’t have the cohesive strength to force the hard clay through. A complete strip down is required. This is a lesson that I learnt the hard way.

Rheology is a very interesting subject in itself. Clay can be either too soft or too hard to stick together and be ‘worked’ or shaped successfully. There are limits called ‘Atterberg’ limits that have been determined, which predict the upper and lower limits of water content in clay. If too wet, it just sloshes around and won’t hold a shape, when too dry, it is just crumbly granules. We need the ‘Goldie Locks’ range for our clays to ‘work’ successfully. For pressure extruding the range is somewhere between 17% and 60%,. That’s such a huge range. See graph. For pugging, it needs to be in a narrower range of 20% to 30%. depending on the inherent plasticity and texture of the clay body. For throwing clay on the potters wheel, it is often closer to 20 to 22%. I have found in practice over the decades that my wrists have their own personal Atterberg limit of around 25% water content or even a little bit softer rather than stiffer. 

Some people say that you should work to your strengths. I think the opposite, I work to my weakest point, and as that is my ancient wrists. I have adjusted my clay body recipes over time to include more very fine plastic particles, slightly more course non-plastics and more fine sand. This combination allows me to make softer clay mixtures that are still easy to pug and easy to throw on the wheel when very soft.  I am limited by what is still available on the market here. So many materials that we used to be able to get have been removed from the market, as the Australian companies that own clay mines were purchased by multinational players who shut them down to force us to buy their imported products.

Luckily, I was trained in the 60’s and 70’s when clay technology was still taught in Art School. I even went on to teach it myself for a few decades. So, I can develop and test my own clay body recipes. A skill soon to be completely lost, as us oldies retire and die out. I can still obtain Australian mined and milled ceramic materials from NSW, Vic and Qld, but the options are constantly diminishing. When I have been shown commercial plastic clay bodies over the years, I have always found them to be far too stiff for my wrists to feel comfortable with. Possibly because of a lifetime of damage due to hard work with my arms, wrists and hands?

So dry lumps of clay on the pug mill screens stops everything in it’s tracks, until the screens are removed and cleaned, and this can be a big job, depending on the maker and model of the pug mill. We are lucky here in Australia to have the ‘Venco’ company, who under the direction and vision of Geoff Hill, manufactured pottery equipment here since the 70’s. His version of  ‘Harry Davis’s, genius design’ of vacuum pug mill was an excellent piece of machinery. The smaller, cheaper, models require that the entire machine be diss-assembled to get to the singular screen. However, the larger, and more expensive models are designed so that the screens are accessible from the outside of the barrel and can be accessed directly for cleaning.

So now I have learnt to keep my pug mills covered with silver insulation foil when not in use, and this has solved the condensation problem. There is always something new to learn, even after 50 years!

Once pugged and bagged, It’s not the end. Good clay that has been well made needs to be nurtured a little. Clay is alive, in the sense that it contains live microbes, or should if you want it to develop the best possible plasticity. We live in the bush here in Balmoral Village. There are few Government services. There is no Town Water Supply available. So we have to collect rain water in dams and water tanks. Water stored in the ground has more bacteria live organisms than Chlorinated and sterilised city water. My clean rain water will allow the naturally present bacteria and other organisms to grow and develop in the clay. This might sound shocking, but it is just natural. Clay ‘ages’ as the organic action develops between the clay mineral particles. The water is drawn closer to the surface of the fragments and the air is slowly excluded and passed to the surface by capillary attraction. In this slow gentle way, clay develops its full plasticity. It is very noticeable after say 3 months. But a year is better! Of course, no-one in their right mind would make clay and then not use it for 3 months! Would they??? Yes muggins does. I have stored and aged porcelain bodies up to 15 years.

There is a distinct difference in the clay after a period of ageing. Clay body made with chlorinated water inhibits the natural growth and ageing, so does not develop the same plasticity.

In the old pottery, there were a lot of eucalypts growing around the building, and consequently there were a lot of gum leaves in the rain water. These made the water a little acid with their tannin. It turns out that tannic water is just about the very best additive that you can put into clay to improve its plasticity. Our gum leaf infused tannic rain water was a pale, transparent grey/brown colour. Some fancy companies that manufacture commercial Porcelain bodies, buy in, at great expense, a product called ’Totannin’, that does much the same thing. Our clay really responds to any time left wrapped in plastic bags, sometimes double bagged, for long term storage. Then stored in a cool dark place and not touched for as long as you can bear it.

Each Friday evening, before the workshops, I bake a loaf of bread and a tart. This time, its beetroot and French goats cheese over a bed of slow cooked onion jam. This has always proved to be a very popular lunch contribution at the workshops. Every one brings something to share for lunch. There is always just a bit more than we need. Everyone eats well and the selection is broad, varied and delicious.

We spent the first day on the wheel, throwing all the forms that we will work with on the following day. I demonstrate each step in the process on each day. 

Teaching a throwing school in winter is always just a little bit of a challenge. The pots don’t want to dry out over night to stiffen up to the point where they can be turned, trimmed, manipulated and handled with ease.. I get the pots to dry faster, by stoking up the slow combustion stove to the max, and keep it going well into the night, to ensure that the pots evaporate off enough of their moisture to be workable. It’s a juggling act, but I manage to muddle through, and at the end of the weekend, everybody gets to take home their finished works.

In the orchard, the early peaches and nectarines are flowering. There is only 3 more weeks to spring, and lots of plants are starting to come back to life, buds are swelling and even the lawn is starting to grown again. This last part isn’t so thrilling though, as this means a few hours of lawn mowing several times a week.

Spring blossom always offers up so much positive energy, the a promise of warmer weather and a bountiful harvest to come.

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

Enjoy the moment.