Swril Pitchers Are Fun To Make

Just finishing up the handles on some of my new swirl pitchers. You can see some pictures of some of my older swirl pitchers here. And, if you hurry I might still have some available for purchase here . Also, stay tuned for an up coming CodyO Show where I will show you how to make your own Swirl pitchers.

The CodyO Show is helping other potters :)

It feels good to pass some knowledge along to someone else. In this case "The CodyO Show" was able to help someone all the way on the on the other side of the country. So, from the Pacific to the Atlantic I was able to pass on the a skill first taught to me by The Great Rudy Seehaver (a master potter who inspired many) and that is the skill to throw a ceramic pumpkin and turn it into a jack-o-lantern. Check out what this NY Giants fan and potter was able to come up with for their unique and very cool looking Jack-o-lantern:

I know it's the Giants logo but if you blur your vision it kinda looks like two eyes and a mouth also. Well done! Can't wait to see it glazed. If you missed the episode of The CodyO Show where I showed how to make your own thrown ceramic Jack-o-lantern click here for a rerun. Lets see what you can come up with!

Undiscovered Greatness Hidden in Etsy

CodyO's First Online Review!

Well, now that I have gone totally webular a lot more people are checking out my work from all the different sites. The blog called "Undiscovered Greatness Hidden in Etsy" has written a review of "The CodyOPottery Etsy Page". Etsy is a website where people from around the world can get together to buy and sell their handmade items. "Undiscovered Greatness Hidden in Etsy" looks like a pretty cool blog. They scan through the different artists and craftspeople on Etsy then write reviews on particular ones that stand out to them. They wrote a very flattering review of my Etsy page and it made me blush.

'09 Summer Pit Fire

We had our "Summer of '09 Pit Fire" at our traditional spot on the Oregon coast. Ah, nothing like laying on the beach with your beautiful wife, next to a warm fire, with the soothing sounds of the crashing waves in the distance, breathing the fresh ocean air, wail the pottery that you have put so much hard work into is in it's final stages, and is, at this point, out of your control and in the hands of the fire.


Just like last time we numbered each piece and kept good data on what we wrapped the piece in prior to the firing. Taking pictures is very helpful in this process. The more meticulous you are the better you will learn what works and does not work in the pit fire process. This is the science part of it.

Some of our work we did not wrap in anything but rather just threw it straight into the fire. Others we wrapped with various combinations of: Copper carbonate, Iron oxide, banana peals, steer manure, and seaweed. Sometimes we would wrap our work in news paper. This was meant to burn away. Sometimes we would wrap our pieces in tin foil. That was meant to isolated the piece from the rest of the fire's combustibles so that only the combustibles inside the tin foil would effect the piece.

This year's pit was different

This year we tried some different things then we did last time:

We wanted to avoid the cold spots that previously appeared around the edge of the fire. To achieve this we lined the entire outer wall with logs. We also found that this helped hold up the walls in the loose sand. Another thing that we hoped to achieve in this years pit fire was more reduction, which we did achieve. We made the assumption that where there was more reduction, there would be more vibrant colors (reduction is where there is lack of oxygen in the atmosphere. Many chemical reactions in pottery happen differently depending on the amount of oxygen that is in the atmosphere).

So, to achieve more reduction we wanted less airflow between logs and more smoldering. For less air flow we made a smaller round pit instead of a large rectangle pit. We also packed the pieces tighter together than we did last time. For a smoldering effect we used wood pellets (like the ones for pellet burning wood stoves) This also helped to create a a nice bed of coals.

Then we threw some more pellets on top of our work to create more smoldering and thus more reduction.

This resulted in our work being mostly covered with this deep charcoal black in varying proportions. Where the vibrant colors showed up was in the few spaces where the pottery got a little more air than the rest (but still got heavy reduction). Once the pieces are polished up (with furniture wax or shoe polish, one can come to really like the rustic looking shiny charcoal black. So, we have learned how to archive that.

However I still seek those vibrant varying colors of red, yellow, green, orange, black and white that I know pit fire possess. To achieve this I believe I will have to attempt to add a little more oxygen than I did this time. I don't want to add too much oxygen and have my pieces come out completely white. What I hope to achieve is the perfect contrast between oxidation and reduction. This I hope will give me the variation of colors that I am looking for. What I really enjoy is the trial and error in the pursuit of the perfect contrast.

Then.... the next weekend:

The next free weekend that My wife and I had we decided to take a fishing/camping trip up the Trask river. We took the pit fire pieces that we were the least satisfied with from the previous pit fire and decided to just toss them in our camp fire.

The camp fire was your standard camp fire and we did not wrap our pieces in anything nor did we do anything special to the camp fire. It was just a regular old camp fire like you would have on your average camping trip. We used a small bundle of some wood that we brought with us but most of the wood used was a mix of the the different bramble that we found around our camp site

I suppose that the mix of different bramble from the varying native plants may have added to the variation in color that showed up on our pieces. Amazing! Our camp fire, without doing anything special, proved to be an excellent pit fire with good contrast between reduction and oxidation. And we got some really great colors!

The best part was that it was so simple. It was the same basic camp fire that we would be having anyway, so why not turn it into a pit fire? Another thing that is nice is that with pit fired pottery; if your not happy with your piece the first time you fire it, you can fire it over and over again until your happy with it. Each time the old colors from the previous firing will burn off and new colors will burn on.

For more detailed pictures of my recent pit fire pieces click here.

The CodyO Show "Jars"

What's in that Jar?
Ladies and gentile welcome to another exciting edition of The CodyO Show! In this episode I will be showing you how I make my very popular Raku chalkboard jars. When you leave clay bare in a raku firing the carbon gets trapped in the clay body and turns black and since the clay body is coarse it makes a perfect chalkboard. Also the glaze goes through thermal shock sometimes leaving a spider web of cracks which are also blackened by carbon. The one in the picture is currently being used as a herb jar.

I hope you enjoy episode #2 of The CodyO Show:









Click here to see more pictures of the finished product.

I will be firing these jars in an up coming episode of The CodyO Show so check back in soon.

Jack-o-lanters questions

I got a great question from a fellow potter:

"I love your tutorial on how to make a pumpkin! I see that you completely close the top, but do you leave any hole for air to escape while it's drying? Is it not necessary to leave an air hole while it dries to leather hard? I know it needs a hole for when it is fired (which is accomplished with the carving,) but I didn't know if it was okay to leave it completely closed until you carve it."

Here was my answer:

"Thanks for your interest. I'm glad to help. Your concern about having a place for the air to escape is a valid concern. The danger is that if the clay is allowed to dry too fast, or of the clay is too saturated with water, cracks will appear. To remedy this you can poke a hole as you suggested, but I have found that as long as I cover the pumpkin up with plastic and dry it to the leather hard stage very slowly, it is just fine. Then when you make your first cut into the pumpkin you get to hear the pressurized air escape. It's kinda cool. Hope this helps"

I hope this helps others who may have had the same question. Keep the questions coming.

Jack-o-lanters (continued)

Hopefully you saw episode #1 of the CodyO Show. This Blog post is a follow up for that episode. I have now turned over the pumpkin to Mrs. Olsen. This is the fun part for me because I get to just sit back, watch, and see what kind of crazy character of a jack-o-lantern Leah is going to come up with this year.



In this picture Leah is smoothing out any sharp corners in the verticle lines that I put in the pumpkin. It is easier to do that at this point because the clay is at a moister content known to potters at "leather hard".


You can almost hear the gears turning in Leah's head as she formulates a plan for this pumpkin's new personality. What will she come up with?

One thing that is nice about a clay pumpkin as apposed to a real one is that with a clay one you can add clay to create features. In this picture it almost looks like Leah is adding a beak to this jack-o-lantern.

Wow what a crazy looking creature! My wife has split the pumpkin's stem, which I think really adds to the whole bird look of the thing. A scary Halloween bird. I don't know. Maybe you see something else. Still, you gotta wonder where she gets this stuff. How does she come up with these crazy characters.

The CodyO Show "Jack-o-lanterns"

Happy Halloween
In the Olsen household our jack-o-lanterns are ceramic and raku fired. I make the clay pumpkin and my wife Leah makes it it into a scary jack-o-lantern the same way that you would carve any pumpkin. Then we raku it. The above picture is of last years jack-o-lantern.

And now.....

It's The CodyO Show! Episode #1 Happy Halloween (in September). Learn to make your own ceramic jack-o-lantern. You will need to start it in September to have it ready by Halloween. It's the first show. The sound is bad and I mumble a lot. There are a few guest appearances which gives the show a kind of Mr. Rogers feel. And, much to my surprise, I found out that when I throw I have a habit of moving my head around like Stevie Wonder. My wife says I have always done that and she just never bothered to tell me. I only have one other person comment about this and I thought that she might have been making it up. Oh well. I will try to keep my head still in future episodes

Glaze Tests

I had been working with cone 10 when I was taking pottery classes. Now that I am set up at home, I have mostly been doing post fire reduction pottery (raku) and I am in the process of formulating some cone 6 glazes so that I can continue more of my functional pottery. I decided to use cone 6 because I like cone 10 colors and cone 6 has a cone 10 look, but is more economical.



In this picture, I took a base glaze and experimented with different levels of cobalt carb and rutile. The top row of tiles all have 0.25% cobalt carb. The second row down has 0.5%, the third row down has 0.75% and the bottom row has 1.0%. For each of the four rows if you count from left to right the levels of rutile will be 3%, 4%, 5%, 6% and 7%

How To Pit Fire

Don’t be thrown off by the title of this post. This is not the only way to pit fire. This it may not be the best way to pit fire. This is documentation of a pit firing that my wife and I did in July of 07 that gave us good results. It was a lot of fun! My hope is that some potters who have never pit fired before might see this page and be inspired to try it, or that other potters who are familiar with the process might learn something from our method. Make a camping trip out of it and go pit fire!




We numbered each piece and took pictures so that we would remember which number went with which piece. This way we could remember what we wrapped each piece in and have good data on what gave us good and bad results.



We bisque fired everything to cone 04 and many of our pieces had red or grey terra sigillata added to them. Any of the pieces where we added terra sigillata were then burnished.


My beautiful wife and I wrapped our pottery in all kinds of goodies. Iron ox, copper carb, banana peals, copper wire and sea weed were known to give good effects, but we had fun trying all kinds of different things to see if we could burn some pretty colors on to our pieces.




On this particular piece I made a crater in it and melted some blue glass in the crater during the bisque fire. Now it is covered in iron ox, banana peals, seaweed, and some salmon skin left over from dinner. We then wrapped it in tin foil to keep everything together.





With some of our work we used tin foil to keep everything together and with some we used newspaper. The tin foil did not burn off in the fire so it only burned what we wrapped inside of it on to the pot, kinda like a sager fire. The newspaper burned off and got some of the effects from the fire as well as what was wrapped inside the newspaper. However, the effects from what was inside the newspaper were not as dramatic as the effects of from what was inside the tin foil. Both wrapping in newspaper and wrapping in tin foil gave nice effects. It just depends on what you are going for.

AT THE BEACH!

First, find a place to dig and get to work!

Layer #1: Hay. This is because we want smoldering under the pots, not a cold, sandy base.

Layer #2: Manure. Manure has organic components that can create some nice effects on the pots.










Layer #3: Charcoal. We let the charcoal burn until we had a nice hot base. Just like starting a barbecue.








Layer #4: A light layer of seaweed. Seaweed can sometimes leave some nice greens on you work just make sure not to use so much that you put out the charcoal. You can always add more later once the wood is on and the fire is going.







Layer #5: The pottery and the wood. Pottery first, then we carefully placed the wood around the pottery. We stuffed newspaper and hay in between the wood and then we lit the fire.

Let the sun go down.

Let the fire burn until there is a nice bed of hot coals covering your pots.








When the fire is starting to burn out, (if your at the beach) cover it up with sand. This way your pots will cool down slowly and you can avoid thermal shock.








Come back in the morning when the pots are cool.

From out of the sand:

When you dig up the pots, wear a mask because you don’t want the fine particles from the ashes getting in your lungs. You can polish any of the pieces that you burnished with shoe polish or furniture polish for a nice shine at this point.

And, of course, don't forget to clean up your mess.