Mother's Day Sale This Saturday!

Please join me and 13 other potters in The Clay Connection's Spring Pottery Sale, just in time for Mother's Day. The event is being held at a new location: John Calvin Presbyterian Church in Annandale, Virginia on Saturday, May 8 from 10am to 5pm.

In addition to my pots, you'll be able to enjoy the work of Marvel Adams, Ginny Ainsley, Marianne Cordyack, Laurie Erdmann, Brigitta Feinberg, Bruce Glassford, Michael Hough, Klaudia Levin, Linda Moesser, Amy Wandless, Dick White, Becky Zweibel and Wendy Zaidman.

Admission and parking are free and visitors will be able to participate in a drawing to win one of Dick White's beautiful crystalline vases.

I've been a member of The Clay Connection since its inception and seen it go through many stages. I've become more active in the group since retirement and I'm excited about its new direction.

A new grandbaby!

I have a new grand-daughter that I want everyone to meet. Isabel Josefine was born at the end of February and here she is at 6 weeks. She's just gorgeous and looks just like her Mommy, my beautiful daughter, Andrea. Check out her Etsy shop and the beautiful photocards she designs.

Name that Glaze!

This is a test tile for a glaze I mixed last month as I was testing different colorants on a High Calcium Semimatte glaze from the Hesselberth & Roy book Mastering Cone 6 Glazes. The authors call this glaze "field mouse brown," but clearly it doesn't look brown at all and nothing like the example in the book.

I was not going to go any further with this glaze, but something about it made me give it another try so I mixed a 1000 gram batch and here are the results.

All I can say is Wow! I love this! I can't decide what color it is: it's black --or maybe it's very dark purple. It's got gray shadings --or maybe it's a very light brown. What keeps coming to mind is "Smoke."

And, clearly, it's not Field Mouse Brown! I think that I put a lot more cobalt carb than called for in the recipe... whatever it was I did, I hope that I can keep doing it.

Next step is to mix a 5000 gram batch and go for it!

New Green Glaze

Got some really nice outcomes from this firing. The base recipe is the High Calcium Semimatte from the Mastering Cone 6 Glazes book by John Hesselberth and Ron Roy. One of my favorites is this green (called "Spearmint" in the book). I especially like the difference between a thin and a thick application. The thin application (seen in the little cups and the berry bowl) has more orange/light brown tones while the thicker application (seen in the ring holder and the box) is more of an emerald green.

Spring is here!

Spring is finally here and the weeping cherry tree is still with us despite this winter's punishing snow storms and winds, and the best efforts of the carpenter ants and resident red-bellied and downy woodpeckers. This beautiful tree is again raining pink petals on the deck and life moves on.

Nature's awakening this March was accompanied by renewed activity in my Etsy shop. This has been a very good month for Glynt Pottery, so far, and I thank all those people who have shown an interest in my work, including several returning customers.

I was honored to have two pieces included in Etsy Finds this month.

This stoneware box was featured on March 13th. It was hand built from clay slabs that were impressed using a clay stamp. The box is 5 inches tall and would look great in any room of the house!

This double-walled bowl was featured on March 25th. This piece was thrown upside down on the potter's wheel. It looks stunning with an ikebana flower arrangement, especially if you were to arrange pebbles or small stones around the extra wide rim. It's also a great bowl to hold potpurri or sea glass, and it makes a great dip dish!

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!