I do enjoy the drive out to Matsqui Prairie for these occasional salt firings at Herman Venema's country studio. The mountains you see to the North as you drive over the Pitt River bridge, reflected in the river, are spectacular. And further on, near Ruskin, there's Mount Baker, seemingly just across the Fraser River. When I arrived Herman and Dave were ready to start work,…
It was still snowing yesterday as I unloaded my bisque kiln. Three days non-stop is rather unusual for Vancouver. But we could hear the dripping last night and this morning we woke to dry streets and lots of fog and now we have brilliant sunshine. But the lack of winter tyres was enough reason not to drive in to Vancouver last night so I missed…
Last Wednesday evening Jason Walker was the presenter for TriCity Potters' monthly meeting. He lives in Bellingham, Washington state but is teaching on Wednesdays in the Ceramics department at Emily Carr University this year. Several of us had noticed his remarkable work at NCECA in Seattle (the light bulb beaker in the photo here was on display there), realized he lives nearby and decided to…
Today I needed to make two more oval lunch plates so I thought I'd take photos to show how I use the new cheese-cutter. To make a clear story of the process I've assembled the photos into a Picasa album. If you click on this link you can watch a slide show. It might inspire you to throw some forms for making plates yourself. https://picasaweb.google.com/112208740085943894765/MakingOvalSlabLunchPlates…
After throwing four earthenware plates with my usual red D'arcy clay and getting them trimmed I was happy to clean out my wheel and start work with grey stoneware. I did have fun painting the plates with my coloured slips because there were no restrictions on what I did to decorate them. It's been quite a while since I applied bands of colour and brushstrokes…