Dirty Little Secret, Shhhhh

All potters have a foot fetish. It’s true. Some may not admit it. But this is a universal truth. Just go to any event with pottery and play spot the potter. The potter will be the one who looks furtively from side to side and just when she thinks no one is looking, she’ll lift that pot ever so slightly and have a look at the bottom. Oh, and just do not get me started on bottoms…..

So at this point you might well ask “what exactly does this have to do with the price of tea in China?” Well, over the past couple of days I have been consumed with making pots. And those feet have been an ever present concern of mine. See those pots up there in the top left? Just not quite right. There is no lift to them. They end abruptly. The list of deficiencies goes on and on.

So finally I have come up with a solution to this dilemma. (The life of a potter is a never ending search for the perfect foot.) I cut out little squares of clay with holes in the center. I cut them apart bevel the edges and glue them on with my super glue toilet paper clay paste. And that could be enough but I really wanted the feeling that these feet grew out of the body of the pot. So I added moist clay sculpted those feet into the bottom of the pot. After 16 of them I’ve gotten quite good at this exercise.

Much better don’t you think? You see the foot of the pot is like putting on the finishing touch for an evening out. After all you wouldn’t go to dinner in your very finest but in your bedroom slippers, would you? Maybe the grocery store, but certainly not to dinner. Not even I would do that. I have actually accidentally gone to the grocerey store in my slippers. It's OK. They know me at the local and no longer roll their eyes.

So what about that flat bottom pot I lured you into this blog post with? Well she’s gone off to the corner for unloved pots until I decide what to do with her. It’s a kind of purgatory for pots and she has a lot of company.

Raising lentils

I have raised pinto beans, lima beans, and green beans in my garden, but never, ever a lentil. But, Kelly, an amazing lamp work bead maker, suggested last week that I post a step by step on making lentil beads. I had no idea that anyone might be interested. And maybe nobody but Kelly is interested. So here is a step by step on how I raise lentil beads in my studio.

First things first, tools. Must have the proper tools. Needle tool, cookie cutter, water, sponge….a little spit. Yes, it’s true. I do sometimes lick my fingers instead of reaching for the water. Cornstarch from the kitchen. Actually, I think that Peter put a second box of cornstarch in the cupboard, hoping that I will leave that one alone.

I start by rolling out very thin sheets of porcelain (about 1/8”, 3 mm). These get textured on plates that I make from found objects, stamps I carve, really, just about anything that catches my eye. By the time the sheets of porcelain have been rolled across the texture plate it becomes even thinner, even translucent. Circles are cut and then the clay is gently tapped onto the back of a plastic painter’s tray. Previously I used a round bottom measuring spoon. But making one half lentil bead at a time was too tedious even for me. The set of measuring spoons has now been returned to the kitchen, properly scourged of all clay stuff.

I let those little disks of clay set up to an almost dry stage. The clay at this point won’t bend at all. Then the edge gets scraped back flat, scored, and a magick potion is applied. In the world of ceramics there is this innovation of paper clay. I use it on all of the larger handbuilt work I make but only just started using it on these beads. Sometimes the light bulb in my head is on a dimmer switch and it takes a while to figure out this stuff.

What, you might well ask is paper clay. Well it’s very technical with a very complicated formula. OK, just kidding. Like my tool set this is not particularly sophisticated. For my use, it’s just a 50/50 mix of paper pulp and wet sloppy clay all stirred together. I use soaked and blended toilet paper in my magick potion. Toilet paper is designed to break down in water so it’s just about perfect. Mixed with sloppy clay this stuff is the super glue of my studio.

Once the edges of the bead halves have softened up a bit, they get placed together, patterns aligned, and the edges are gently squished (technical term) to stick them together. I use a needle tool to poke a hole through them. I don’t always check for hole alignment in the beads but it’s kind a cool photo, don’t you think?

Once the beads are assembled they get wrapped up in plastic for the night so all of the moisture in the beads equalizes while they sleep. In the morning they get unwrapped a little bit, slowly dried, and then cleaned up.

Voila! There is a little pile of beads waiting for the first firing on their journey to becoming full grown beads.