If you know pottery, you likely know the name Viktor Schreckengost (though few others do!) Viktor designed in many media, but his pottery and ceramics were especially celebrated, including the prized Art Deco “Jazz” bowls in the White House.

The famous Jazz bowls were a private commission, for a woman who requested a New York theme. The bowls were decorated Jazz-age images of skyscrapers, ships, stars, neon signs, a Champagne bottle and a tray of cocktails. Turns out the lady was Eleanor Roosevelt.

Later, his employer put Viktor’s Jazz bowls into limited production, and fewer than 50 were made. One of the (originally) $50 bowls recently sold for $250K!

Find out more about pottery in South Carolina here.

Tatsuzo Shimaoka, a Japanese potter who fused Japanese technique with traditional Korean styles, has died. His pottery typically took the form of table ware. Shimaoka felt that beauty was found in utility, and art in humility. They called his style the “craft of the people.” While he prized functionality, he also managed to create some great art along the way, some of which is displayed in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Mr. Shimaoka was declared a “Living National Treasure” by the Japanese government in 1996.

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Porcelain is beautiful, but it can be very fragile, not only in terms of its structural integrity, but also in its finish. So a lot of porcelain owners are afraid to use anything other than a feather duster on their fine porcelain.

But what do you do with all the dust, dirt, nicotine and other household hazards that happen to your porcelain? Well, you can clean it, if you’re careful.  Careful means not knocking the piece into your faucet while rinsing. It means lining your sink with towels or rubber pads, and so on. You can use chemicals like Formula 409 or Goo-Gone and gently, GENTLY hand wash. Be especially careful with raised areas.

The idea is take extra special care when cleaning your porcelain. If you don’t have the confidence or a steady hand, you may want to consult a professional.

To find out more about pottery in SC, click here.

In the pottery world, there are several types of clay, but there are six or so types that find their way into everyday use. These include:

Red: Your basic red clay is pretty easy to find. It gets its reddish color from its high levels of iron oxide.

Stoneware: Stoneware turns gray or white when you fire it.

China: As a primary clay, China is not very pliable. It is used mostly as a glaze with other types of clay.

Bentonite: Because China clay is not very pliable, you add a little Bentonite when molding.

Ball: Ball clay is often used in porcelain. You usually have to combine it with other clays give it strength and shape. By itself, it is very pliable, but it also breaks very easily. 

Fire: fire clay can withstand very high firing temperatures. Once it’s fired, it turns beige to medium brown.     

That’s your clay trivia for today. To learn more about pottery and ceramics in SC, click HERE.

I read about a method for mending cracks in pottery. Check it out…

First of all, this only works for pottery that hasn’t been glazed. But if you have a crack pre-glaze, you can mend it with a clay patch. The patch must be of the same material as the piece that needs mending. Also, the patch must be in the same stage of the firing process as the piece that needs mending. So if the piece is unfired, the patch must be unfired. If it’s been bisque fired, the patch must be as well. It makes sense, though I haven’t tried it. How about you? Any success with this method? Do you have other patching/repair ideas?

 To learn more about pottery and ceramics in SC, click HERE.

Glaze is a glassy coating applied to pottery, the primary purposes of which include decoration and protection. Glazes are highly variable in composition but usually comprise a mixture of ingredients that generally, but not always, mature at kiln temperatures lower than that of the pottery that it coats. One important use of glaze is in rendering pottery vessels impermeable to water and other liquids.

Glaze may be applied by dusting it over the clay, spraying, dipping, trailing or brushing on a thin slurry composed of glaze minerals and water. Brushing tends not to give an even covering but can be effective as a decorative technique. The color of a glaze before it has been fired may be significantly different than afterwards. To prevent glazed wares sticking to kiln furniture during firing, either a small part of the object being fired (for example, the foot) is left unglazed or, alternatively, special refractory spurs are used as supports. These are removed and discarded after the firing.

Special methods of glazing are sometimes carried out in the kiln. One example is salt-glazing, where common salt is introduced to the kiln to produce a glaze of mottled, orange peel texture. Materials other than salt are also used to glaze wares in the kiln, including sulphur. In wood-fired kilns fly-ash from the fuel can produce ash-glazing on the surface of wares.

Learn more about Pottery by visiting www.Pottery.sc

How to Get Started.
Most people get started in ceramics through a class in their community. However, some study ceramics in a college setting, and some are completely self-taught. There are many excellent books and videotapes to help you along, but there is no substitute for actually watching somebody do it and being shown what you are doing right and wrong. Please check our list of workshops and private teachers for just the right thing.

Wheel and Hand building.
There are two main areas of ceramics, hand building and wheel.Most people think initially of wheel-thrown pottery, and think they need to purchase a wheel before they can do anything. However, hand building can be very creative and rewarding in it’s own right, and can be done with simple, inexpensive tools. In fact, the main tool is an ordinary rolling pin. If you really want a wheel, our advice is to buy one new. There are always many more people looking for used wheels than there are used wheels available, so it may take a very long time to find a used one. And with a new wheel you can be certain it will be quiet, spin evenly, and make your throwing more enjoyable. Once purchased they seem to last forever.

Kilns.
The next struggle often faced is obtaining use of a kiln to fire your work. In fact, this is one of the reason that many people enroll in community courses, for access to a kiln. But in addition, there are often local studios where you can fire by the piece or kiln load. Or you can check our kiln timesharing list to see if there is a kiln owner near you who is willing to rent you space. Purchasing your own kiln may be more of an option than you think. 7 cubic foot electric kilns, about the minimum size a potter would want, can be had for a little over a thousand dollars. Smaller kilns work well if you are doing jewelry, figurines, etc. and are even less. For a few hundred more you can automate the whole show; press one button and the whole firing cycle is managed for you.

Learn more about Pottery at: www.Pottery.sc 

We are all keen to make a mixture of minerals, take it to a temperature and wonder at transformations –or we should be. It is like pushing seeds into a garden and, with a bit of nurture, flowers open and spread their colours. Making crystals is like that: a lot of science, patience and beauty. Large crystals grown in a glaze even look like flowers. They often resemble lichens and three-dimensional fans and feathers.Crystalline glazes are those in which the oxides in the melt reform in new associations as the glaze cools to give a glass with crystals visible at the surface. A mass of crystals too small to be seen individually can give opacity and matt surfaces. Larger crystals can be grown upwards of 15 cm, appearing to float in a glassy matrix. These wonderful shapes, of distinctly different colour from their background are the result of manipulating the glaze formula and the cooling rate of the kiln. This is the science and the patience. The beauty manifests itself magically from these processes.

Typical crystal shapes are soft flat rounds which may impinge on each other in clusters, modifying the symmetry. A central star or bundle of needles can be seen in a smooth area before a fibrous ring fans out as a halo. Further haloes edge the shape where it meets the background glaze or matrix. The whole of this shape is coloured by the penetration of a colouring oxide into the crystal and is clearly seen against the background. There is often a delicate fringe of a slightly different colour where crystal meets matrix. The haloes can be deliberately placed centrally or around the border of the crystal. Where the glaze is thicker, as in the well of a bowl, the three-dimensional forms can be seen as fibrous fans filling the depth. Time is needed during the cooling of the glaze for crystals to form.

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A ball of clay is placed in the center of a turntable, called the wheel-head, which the potter rotates with a stick, or with foot power (a kick wheel or treadle wheel) or with a variable speed electric motor. (Often, a disk of plastic, wood or plaster — called a bat — is first set on the wheel-head, and the ball of clay is thrown on the bat rather than the wheel-head so that the finished piece can be removed intact with its bat, without distortion.)During the process of throwing the wheel rotates rapidly while the solid ball of soft clay is pressed, squeezed, and pulled gently upwards and outwards into a hollow shape. The first step, of pressing the rough ball of clay downward and inward into perfect rotational symmetry, is called centering the clay, a most important (and often most difficult) skill to master before the next steps: opening (making a centered hollow into the solid ball of clay), flooring (making the flat or rounded bottom inside the pot), throwing (drawing up and shaping the walls to an even thickness), and trimming or turning (removing excess clay to refine the shape or to create a foot).

The potter’s wheel can be used for mass production, although often it is employed to make individual pieces. Wheel-work makes great demands on the skill of the potter, but an accomplished operator can make many near to identically similar plates, vases, or bowls in the course of a day’s work. Because of its inherent limitations, wheel-work can only be used to create wares with radial symmetry on a vertical axis. These can then be altered by impressing, bulging, carving, fluting, faceting, incising, and by other methods making the wares more visually interesting. Often, thrown pieces are further modified by having handles, lids, feet, spouts, and other functional aspects added using the techniques of handworking.

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Recognizing Drip-Free Spout Pottery

Of course, the best way to do this is to simply “test drive” the South Carolina pottery piece in question. You’ll soon see if the spout is drip-free once you begin to pour the liquid. One other feature to look for that is a good indicator of a drip-free pottery spout is the direction of the spout itself. Good drip-free pottery spouts need to be horizontal or pointing slightly downward when the pot is full, tilted slightly, and just starting to pour.

Look for a pottery piece with a glaze or clay surface that wets poorly (the water beads up on it). This will be less likely to drip or dribble. With such a surface, you may not have to be as rigorous about having sharp edges and horizontal lips as described above.

Click here to read more about Drip Free Spout Pottery.