When the door rose, it hit the shelf and made the most awful grinding noise, which we later found, was the steel rim on the top of the raw materials table getting bent! That jarred the free standing shelves sitting on top of the unit, tilted them and these and other jars and bottles went flying, many breaking and opening splattering stains, oxides, under glazes and chlorides all over everything nearby.What a mess!
I picked some of them up already but left the biggest mess to deal with once I finish Jim's breakfast and my watering chores. These liquids, some of which, like the chlorides are not fun to deal with, so I'll be wearing rubber gloves to prevent absorption into my skin, and running back and forth to the sink to wash off all these jars. Some of those oxides splattered all over small, paper bags of raw materials so I am going to have to get out in the next day or two for more buckets and carefully try to get those materials out of the bags without contaminating them with the oxides, etc. covering the bags . I'll say it again "What a mess!"
Once that's done, if it's not too hot, I'll deal with other studio chores which I didn't get around to yesterday, whose time was taken up with a pottery club meeting in Jacksonville, rushing home and right back out to our sons place for dinner.
The meeting went very well and after the business of the day was complete, one of the members, Peppi Melick gave a wonderful demo using several layers of brushed on various colors of thick slip made from the porcelain clay body, on a thick (about 3/4"), round porcelain slab. The first layer was applied, and dried slightly with a hair dryer. Subsequent layers of other colors of the thick slip were brushed over various textures using found materials like small crocheted doilies, pieces of fabric, backing from needlepoint, etc. Each textured piece was first lightly spritzed with water, laid down on the clay and impressed using a small roller, followed by the use of the hair dryer to dry the slip enough for easy removal of the textured piece. Then a different colored slip was applied, dried lightly, then another piece of textured material was laid on top, rolled. When all the layers of slip (I think she did about 4 altogether), she lifted the slab and slapped it down repeatedly, stretching it until it was the size and thickness she needed to drape over her rimmed, bisqued bowl. She gently fit the slab to the bowl shape taking extra care to compress the area around the rim very well to avoid drying cracks.
The last step of stretching the clay created more complex patterns than those initially created with the simple found pieces of fabric she used to create the patterns. The fired samples she brought of the Tom Coleman Cone 6 porcelain were really lovely.
Oh dear, not so good but I guess accidents happen. Our garage has become a storage area since our door broke which I have mixed feelings about - should probably get it fixed before winter!
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