Ed likes to start his pottery designs as sketches on
a piece of paper to define shapes and forms before
he begins with clay on the wheel. Lisbeth often
explores clay forms more directly tapping
experiences in her exploration of designs in nature
and her travels.
Our
clay is a custom blend we have made for us. It has a
warm buff color with a medium speckle and is very
durable when fired. It functions as both a clay for
the wheel and for our hand built pots.
Our glazes are our own formulas and are mixed
“from
scratch” so they are unique, vibrant, durable and
food safe. Our glazes match with our clay to make a
functional oven proof, microwavable piece of
pottery. We glaze using a combination of underglazing, spraying and brush painting and
dipping to create our designs and colors.
Pottery is not a fast process. There is no immediate
gratification and a pot may “fail” anywhere in the
process.
A typical bowl begins after our clay is prepared
each day to remove any air and get it to the right
consistency. A typical bowl starts out with a
predetermined sized lump of the prepared clay. It is
thrown on the wheel on day one. It is then set aside
to dry, usually being dry enough to cut off the
“bat” by the next day. At this point the bottom of
the pot is trimmed, designs completed and our
“signature” button applied and the pot is signed and
dated and set aside to dry completely.
Drying
on the coast of Maine can take two to five days due
to our high humidity.
Once a pot is dry enough it
can be loaded into the kiln and “bisque” fired. Bisquing the pot makes it less fragile and prepares
the pot for glazing. Bisque firing takes 20 or so
hours and requires slowly raising the temperature to
the final temperature. It then takes 24 hours to
slowly cool the kiln enough to unload.
Bisqued ware is then gone over to take off any burrs
and check for flaws. Any bisque dust is blown off
with an air compressor.
To
glaze our pots, the bottoms are waxed to resist
glaze. Some pots have further design work and then,
depending on the pot or design, items are dipped,
sprayed, or brushed with glaze. The glazed bisqued
pots are air dried before being reloaded into the
kiln for the final firing.
We glaze fire to cone 5-6; a process that takes at
least 8 hours of firing in our electric kilns with a
cool down of twelve hours before we can open and
unload the finished pots.
