Glynt Pottery and 2010 Snow Storm

Well, we've made it through the "epic" storm of 2010! All in all, we were okay. We only lost power for about 5 hrs on Friday night (Feb. 5) and it happened late in the evening so we chatted a bit by candlelight and then went to bed. Without the furnace running, it was eerily quiet and that's when we heard the unmistakable "Swoosh... Thwack." We jumped out of bed and looked out the window to see a huge magnolia branch lying on the ground right next to the studio. I was sure there would be some damage, but had to wait until the morning to check it out.

I dug a path to the studio at about mid-day and this is what it looked like (bear in mind that it kept snowing for about 6 more hours!). The cedar three on the right was bent almost to the ground from the weight of the snow.



And here's a picture of the magnolia branch. It appears to have caused no damage at all! It missed both my studio and my husband's workshop, it missed the table with the umbrella and it even missed the a/c window unit and the wind chimes on my studio!


Things are melting slowly because it's still very cold, but we are getting beautiful icicles!


We had about 2 ft of snow and we're bracing for more snow tomorrow! I've lived in this area for almost 50 years and this has been the snowiest winter I've ever seen. And a lovely one at that!

Oh yes, I did continue working in the studio through the storm. I have 2 space heaters that keep the studio toasty warm. I am working on several types of butter dishes, including regular dishes, butter bells and butter domes. I've never made butter dishes before so I don't know what'll come of it, but I will post the results.

Glaze Tests -- Phase 1

My pottery group at Manassas Clay decided to test some new glazes this session. I have been meaning to try some of the recipes in Mastering Cone 6 Glazes (Hesselberth & Roy, Glaze Master Press, 2002), so I chose to try the High Calcium Semimatte Base 1 on page 86. In their book, Hesselberth & Roy present several glaze recipes that they developed, which pass their safety and durability tests. I did not venture too far afield in these tests. I mixed the glazes presented in their book and a few other options where I tweaked the colorants. I did 10 tests in all and now I will narrow down the choices to move on to the next step of testing, which is to mix 1000 gram batches of the glazes and fire them on a pot rather than a test tile. These are the ones I've chosen to move on to the next step (all the test tiles can be viewed on my facebook fan page). I welcome and look forward to feedback with respect to the colors!