Not About Pottery

I took a day off yesterday and went to Metamora Indiana with some old bicycling buddies to ride the steam train. The locomotive was built as a switch engine in 1930 and worked full time until 1950. It has now been restored and they truck it around the country on a flatbed trailer to pull various excursion trains.

Metamora is an old canal town and the canal is restored for a few miles. There is a canal boat that they pull with horses and an operating grist mill as well.The canal goes through a covered bridge that is a wooden aqueduct that runs across a creek that runs below it. Pretty cool.The highlight of the trip was that we saw a bald eagle flying up the Whitewater valley. Magnificent.

Xenia Rail and Art Festival

The picture at the left may look familiar( Same as last time) but the message is different. These were a big hit at the Xenia festival. I sold half the baking dishes and three fourths of the handled soup bowls that I got out of the kiln last week. It's nice to pick a winner sometimes.

There really wasn't a crowd but traffic was pretty steady and people seemed to really like my work. There were 35 tents that were a mix of community organizations, railroad and model train enthusiasts, and art. There were some painters, jewelers, and photographers as well as a woman who made slab built items from clay. (I'm sorry but I can't find polite words to describe it and refuse to call it pottery). I had a flurry of sales in the morning and they kept trickling in through the afternoon. Many people bought more than one piece and I ended up with my best day except for the big Clay Alliance Spring Fair.

New Pots

People have liked this color combination this summer so I made a kiln load of these "Market Pots" recently. Nothing fancy or elegant, just good serviceable ware that you can bake in, serve in , and throw in the dishwasher. I have a show in Xenia, Ohio this Saturday so I'll take a couple of cases of these along and see if I picked a winner or not.

On another note, I just received a booklet from Dan Finnegan " Eddie Hopkins A Potters Life". Eddie was one of Dan's mentors at Winchcombe Pottery and the booklet is a memorial retrospective on his life and career. It has plenty of wonderful pictures and gives a lot of insight into the life of a great production potter. Dan may still have a few copies @ $20 ea. ppd. Check his blog for details @ http://www.danfinneganpottery.blogspot.com/.

Hot Time, Summer in the City

Sunday was the fourth Second Sunday sale of the summer in Waynesville. Thirty artists were signed up to show. We ended up with two women set up on the sidewalk and three of us in the tent area. All of us in tents were potters so it was a mini pottery fest. Temps were in the nineties and although there were cars in town there was almost no foot traffic. I don't think there were twenty people in the booth all day. Finally at 3:30 I had a couple of ladies come in together and buy a couple of sets of bowls to salvage the day.The guy across from me sold two or three small items and the woman up the way didn't sell any. I was king of the potters but in the world of the blind, the one eyed man is king.Here is a picture of rush hour at the sale.

New Pots etc.

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. We were supposed to fire the wood kiln at Maplecreek in June but were unable to get enough folks together to do it. That pushed us into July to try again. We had enough people signed up to load on Saturday the 18th but when we got the pots together we were short 1/2 stack in the wood side and a whole stack in the soda side. You can't fire a kiln with that much empty space so we all ran home to put together a final batch of pots for Thursday night so we could fire on Friday. As luck would have it I had a lot of greenware waiting to bisque fire and Jean Ann was kind enough to let me jump in and fire them in time for the loading.

Thursday, I finished teaching my high school girls at 3:00, rushed home, jumped in the motorhome, and headed for the kiln. Several other people had brought pots so we wadded and loaded and wadded and loaded until 9:00 pm when we finally got it closed up and ready to fire. I was in bed by 9:20. Friday morning came at 6:30 and I stumbled up the trail and had the kiln started by 7:00. The first shift is not too frantic so I worked by myself until 3:00 when I was very glad to see Carol Osborne arrive. By a little after 6:00 I was pooped and when a couple more people showed up I passed the torch and headed for home. Everything hurt for three days but I forgot about that Saturday when we opened the kiln. OK, enough words, here are the pictures.