First Day of 2016

Hairy Woodpecker

It was 49 degrees F and overcast today at 1pm. Apparently the unseasonably mild weather will be ending soon. We certainly did enjoy it while it lasted. Chris has been painting his shed, and I went to the zoo w/ some of the grandkids on the day after Christmas. It was short sleeve weather!

 The bird feeder has been a great source of entertainment, as usual. A hairy woodpecker has been coming around to the great annoyance of the resident downy woodpecker. A local Cooper's hawk has decided to include our bird-feeders in its rounds and seems to have made a meal of one of the wrens as well as a mourning dove. The Coopers is a beautiful bird but I'm really unhappy that it's going after "our" birds. Chris has taken to shooing it away whenever he sees it.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Sales in my Etsy store left much to be desired this year. Among the many changes Etsy made last year was getting rid of "ceramics and pottery" as a category. Pottery is now found in "home decor" and "kitchen and dining" and it really gets lost among all the other stuff. Lucky for me (and many other Etsy potters), Amazon launched its Handmade on Amazon site just in time for the holidays. I opened an Amazon store in October and was really pleased with the results. In fact, sales on Amazon more than made up for the shortfall on Etsy. Also, I found that Amazon shoppers tend to buy higher-priced items.

People were out doing some serious shopping at the City of Fairfax Holiday Show in mid-November and the City of Falls Church Holiday Show in early December. I had my best shows ever this year. My ornaments and trinket dishes are big sellers. Although these are low-price items people buy them by the dozen and more. Several people bought between $60 and $100 worth of ornaments at one time. That's a lot of ornaments!

Cooper's Hawk

So all in all, it turned out to be a very good year. I ended up making a small profit even after paying for the new L&L kiln I got in September.

It was 64 degrees F in the studio with the space heater on low. I pugged 50 pounds of BMix5 together with about 25 pounds of Little Loafers reclaim. That got my blood flowing! Afterwards I carved two Starry Nights lamps. It took me about an hour and 45 minutes to get the two lamps done. That's a lot of work. I think I'm going to raise the prices again because, as it is, I have a hard time keeping them in stock. I still have 3 more blanks ready to carve.

This is happening in the studio today.

Last day of 2015

It was 55 degrees F and overcast today; everything still wet from last night's rain. It was a cozy 72 degrees F in the studio.

Working on several custom requests for January. As usual, there's a larger demand for Advent wreaths than my supply. I didn't make any wreaths this year because I find them a bit of a chore to make, but I had 3 that I had not listed. People still found me and asked for them so all were sold. Now I have requests for 3 more to be delivered in January. I need to find a faster and less fussy way to make them for next holiday season.

Last Spring someone asked for a purple yarn bowl with a moose design on it. When I had it ready I let the customer know but never heard back from them so I listed it thinking that it would linger in the shop because who wants a yarn bowl with a moose on it? Well, apparently lots of people do because it sold right away. The original buyer still wants the purple yarn bowl so I'm carving a moose on a yarn bowl again. And along the same lines, someone asked me for a yarn bowl with an alpaca design. Maybe I'll try my hand at carving alpacas.

My customers are constantly coming up with ideas for me to try out. The Starry Nights lamps are still best sellers and I had two customers asking for a variation on them. One customer wants a Starry Nights lamp that hangs on the wall. I'm noodling that idea and thinking that maybe it should be like a sconce or maybe an upside down shallow bowl. Another customer wants a cylindrical lamp (I can do that!) that's 15 inches tall to put on a sideboard in the dining room. That's a really cool idea, but I'm researching the issue of the snap-in socket and the light bulb. I'm thinking that a 4W bulb is not going to be large enough for that size lamp, but I worry that the lamp might get hot with a larger watt bulb. So, I'm doing research. I found a snap-in socket that can accommodate up to a 40W bulb and I'll test it to see what happens when it's left on for a while.

Other orders: teapots, personalized mugs, and brie bakers. Got my work cut out for me!

A Visit to the Heath Ceramics Factory

In mid-May I went to San Francisco for a mini family reunion to celebrate my niece's graduation. We are amazingly proud of her! Monica got a Master's degree from the Energy & Resources Group, University of California, Berkeley. Her Master's project dealt with electric vehicles. We had an outstanding time visiting the sights and going to great restaurants.

I spent one day with my daughter's in-laws, Bob and Cindie, who took me to Sausalito to visit the Heath Ceramics factory. What a treat! 

Heath Ceramics was founded in 1948 by Edith Heath (1911–2005) after her work was stocked by the Gump's store in San Francisco. The company has a production factory and store in Sausalito, a tile production factory and store in San Francisco, and a ceramics studio and store in Los Angeles. Today, Heath Ceramics is owned by Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey, and is known for its distinctive glazes and handcrafted stoneware. Follow this link to a virtual tour of the factory to see how things are made.
 
Heath Ceramics recently won the 2015 National Design Award for corporate and institutional achievement given by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.


I bought myself a little bud vase from a display of seconds.  I suppose that this lovely item is considered a second because the matte glaze is shiny in places.

Visit to the Hillwood Museum

The gardens were in full bloom!

I took my Mom to visit the Hillwood Estate today. It was the DC home of Marjorie Merriweather Post, which she bequeathed as a museum when she died in 1973. Marjorie was the only child of CW Post, who founded the Postum Cereal Company that later became the General Foods Corporation. When her father died in 1914, she became one of the wealthiest women in America, at age 27.

copper red vases

She started collecting French decorative arts in 1919. She lived in Russia in the 1930s with her third husband, who was the US Ambassador. There, she discovered Russian imperial arts and began collecting them as well. She showcased her collection to family and friends at the Hillwood Mansion that she purchased in 1955.

I must say that this is not my type of thing. Seeing how some people lived in such opulence while most people lacked the essentials makes me a bit queasy. I am also not attracted to the intricate designs of the times but I did like the vases shown in these two photos.

Staff dining service

We viewed many different porcelain place settings from France and Russia, but the one that I liked best was in the kitchen. It was the staff's dining service by the English firm Furnival Limited, in the style of Royal Copenhagen's blue fluted design. There were three cooks at Hillwood, one cooked for Marjorie Merriweather Post and the other two prepared the meals for the staff, who ate the same food although maybe not presented as elegantly.

Mom in the rose garden

The weather was wonderful and, all in all, Mom and I had a good time.

Family Collaboration Time (Again)

Mugs w/ decals of Sofie's manga drawings

I transferred my granddaughter's manga drawings to decals and put them on some mugs. I still need to work some more on the glazes to find the ones that do well in the third firing needed to put on the decals, but I think they look great! 

Sofie was proud to put her initials on the bottom of the mugs, but when I told her that she could have them to give to her teachers she responded that she wanted to work more on the drawings. "It's not my best work," were her words. And so it starts, that second-guessing of ourselves, the feeling that what we do is not quite good enough... It made my heart sad to see it start so early in this generation. She is quite a talented artist. It's a joy to watch her develop this gift. I hope that she will learn to love her creations rather than focus on perceived flaws.

*****

Tumbler w/ line from Chris's poem

The other family collaboration was with my husband. Chris was into writing poetry and song lyrics in his twenties. I found a poem he had written that contains a line that spoke to me: 

"The trees were trying desperately to tell me something
waving their leaves frantically..."

So I made some tumblers and wrote those words into the leather-hard clay. To make it stand out more, I rubbed black underglaze into the words and glazed with my favorite green glaze.

Blue and White All Over

dress w/ parasol and ceramic bodice

 During March, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., presented Iberian Suite, a celebration of the cultures of Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking peoples around the world that also highlighted the influences that the region absorbed from other cultures. This global arts remix included dance, theater, and music performances, as well as installations and a literature series.

Two of the installations were of particular interest. One was an exclusive exhibition of more than 140 of Pablo Picasso's ceramic pieces. The other was titled So Blue, So White: Fashions Centuries in the Making. It was a selection of blue and white fashions created by various designers. Interestingly, one of the dresses not only incorporated it's own parasol, but also had a bodice made of blue and white ceramics.
 
This fashion exhibit also told the "story" of cobalt, which was first mined in central Iran in the 9th century. The Persians used the pigment on ceramics, which had a great appeal to the Chinese. They, in turn, began importing cobalt, producing sophisticated two-tone ware in the 14th century. 

In a story of early "globalization," in the early 1500s, Portuguese merchants began importing these pieces. Exports of Chinese blue and white ceramics soared when the Dutch captured two Portuguese ships in 1602 and 1604 and their cargo of porcelain was sold at auction. Blue and white tableware became very popular in Europe and local manufacturers--most famously, those around the city of Delft--began emulating the style.

Andí's collection of blue/white plates

In the meantime, azulejos, or wall tiles, derived from the Islamic styles of North Africa and Muslim Spain, became emblematic of the decorative arts of the Iberian peninsula and soon spread to the Americas, particularly Mexico and Brazil.

Thus, the continuing allure of blue and white ceramics.

 

Gifts of Hope

Serving bowl

I recently created some pottery carrying the word "hope" to support Family Services of Roanoke Valley, a private, not-for-profit organization that has served Roanoke Valley residents since 1901. Its mission is to improve life and restore hope to the most vulnerable, from the very youngest children to the oldest adults, through prevention, counseling and support services. Family Service is a dynamic, multi-service agency helping a diverse population of clients that spans the area's economic, ethnic, and cultural divisions.

The items I created, including brie bakers, mugs, and serving bowls, can be purchased at Amiable Qualities' Gifts of Hope, which allows consumers to purchase artistic items that benefit nonprofits and the clients they serve. Proceeds from the sale of all items are distributed to the designated organization they benefit on a monthly basis to allow the most flexible and efficient use of the funds by the nonprofit directly. For more information, check out Gifts of Hope about page.

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Mugs

 

 

 

Brie bakers