Product reviews

It's been a long month, but the holiday weekend gave me three lovely days to spend in the studio. On Saturday I showed a friend how to throw to a gauge, and in return she pulled out her Giffen Grip and told several of us we are free to use it whenever we want. The GG is a special platform that fits on the wheel head and holds whatever piece you need to trim at a steady center. I have only used it twice so far (trimming two large plates) and love it, love it, love it. The process of trimming went much faster without having to fiddle to center and hold the piece on center (sometimes I've used clay chucks that didn't hold their place, meaning I had to stop and recenter). If I were potting on a more professional basis, I'd say this item was well worth the $150+ price tag. As it is, I am very grateful that Dawn is willing to share--I jokingly told her she should charge 10 to 25 cents per item as a rental fee.

About a month ago I began compiling a reference document of profile drawings and photographs of different categories of Byzantine pottery. I was able to stop this tedious task when my copy of "Byzantine To Modern Pottery In The Aegean: An Introduction and Field Guide" by Juanita Vroom arrived. Don't get me wrong, this is not a "if you can buy only one book on Byzantine pottery, buy this one". But for someone concerned with matching vessel shapes to their decorative classification, this is invaluable. For example, because of clay availability I was working on recreating green and brown painted ware. I was able to look this up in Vroom's book, and see on one page a collection of profile illustrations showing the vessel shapes associated with this ware. I've since been able to get ahold of more red clay, so yesterday was throwing cup shapes for slip painted ware, which are noticeably different than the shapes for white ware. This is the volume that will live with me in the studio most of the time.

While Vroom's book will be living in the studio, my greenware is living in my livingroom. Things are starting to pile up, and I should have a full kiln load ready for bisque firing before the Christmas holiday. Unfortunately for me, the studio will be closed for a two week break beginning Dec 22.

Color change

After scouring resources and not finding a single source that said "bisque earthenware at 06 and glaze fire to 04" I worked out a deal with the studio where they will let me do the opposite (ie, bisque fire to 04 to burn off all the impurities that are messing with my glazes, and glaze fire to 05 or 06) as long as I store my greenware at home. Which is a challenge, but I am glad to do it in the hopes of finally getting a kiln load fired the way everyone other than them says earthenware needs to be fired. We are calling this an 'experiment' (I roll my eyes). The pictures today show a nice little white earthenware bowl with a stamped design I made using a cast pin made by someone I know in the SCA. I'm very happy with it, but the color chip at the end shows the color the glaze WOULD be if it had been fired correctly (in case this doesn't show well, the glaze is supposed to be light green, and it fired baby blue with a slight greeny tinge). I'm lucky the glaze acted so nicely on the white clay--this is the same glaze that turned purple and electric blue on red earthenware!

The good news is...

Of the four pieces that came out of the kiln today, only the sgraffito plate is useable. Which pleases me, as it took the longest to do. Not to mention that if SOMETHING hadn't come out right I might have burst into tears, or stormed off in a huff or something. I've included photos of my two most recent cups as well, mostly to cheer myself up. (I CAN make pots, I CAN make pots....)

Remember these?

I posted photos of the top two bowls after the bisque firing stage. They failed in the final firing! Pieces of slip and glaze are still flaking off, an hour after they came out of the kiln. The big bowl is another "Fail"-- for reasons I can't figure, the commercial glazes crazed over the slip I made--meaning, I'd eliminated the possibilities that had been causing problems before. [head, meet desk]

Bibliography addition

"Byzantine glazed pottery at the Benaki Museum"

Found it listed on their web site and ordered it last week, but alas things normally take 3-4 weeks from Greece so I expect to wait a bit. (I wonder why that is...stuff I order from the UK and France always arrives within 7 days...)

good tool, excellent results

I LOVE this tool. We had a home made version of this in the communal tub o'tools at the studio, and I started using it a few weeks ago. I love that it's multi-sided, and well balanced. The problem with the studio's version is that it's a light weight aluminum and dull as a board. The last two plates I trimmed came out looking very messy, I think the dull edge was dragging more than cleanly trimming, and with groggy clay the results weren't pretty. It took a while to find this version (a solid steel with excellent sharp edges) at a reasonable price. It's a Japanese kanna (not all web stores call it that...). The cheapest place I found it was Bailey Pottery (online), and it cost me less than $3.00. Of course there's also the shipping...so I ordered a few other things from them to make that part less painful. I got a couple of birch plywood bats, and am also very pleased with them. They're supposed not to warp, and they absorb water (I just don't *get* using plastic bats). Next time I'm at the studio I'll try to remember to take a couple of shots of trimmed items...

brief notes

It's been suggested to me that the weird glaze effects are due to the bisque stage happening at too low a temperature to allow all outgassing. This makes sense to me...but how do I convince the studio to bisque my stuff at 04? Maybe on occasion...like if I go on a binge and have a whole kiln load to go. Maybe if I save them some money on their electricity bills by getting people to unplug--or at least turn off--their wheels when they finish. But I digress.

I bought a bag of Campbell's lowfire white clay today, and it's fabulous.It is sturdy, but silky smooth. Such an extra pleasure given that Campbell's Virginia Red earthenware is so gritty I came to hate working with it.

small jug of some sort...

I didn't have the illustration with me at the studio today, but this didn't come out too far off. Can't complain about my memory today! Tomorrow I'll be back in the studio again (I took a couple of vacation days this week) so I'll put a strap handle on it, and paint some decorative stripes using underglaze.

Green gives you purple?!

Guess what happens when you put "Olive Green" glaze on top of red earthenware? Go on, guess. Think it just looks randomly dark (like it's supposed to?) NO! I got electric blue on top of purple! A nice effect, sure, but way out of place on middle Byzantine style bowls. Oi, the bright blue shows up even on the thinnest sgraffito lines. (head, desk).

I do rather like my very plain Byzantine cups and the yellow plate.

Two pots from Athens

I found a few photos on Flickr that someone took at the Byzantine Museum in Athens. The nice thing is that there are shots of the displays of Byzantine pottery. The bad thing is that they are low res photos, so I can't get good details on individual items. I love these two jugs, though. I tried replicating the one with the spout and painted decoration of eyes (which for some reason makes me think of an octopus) but the body collapsed while drying (actually, it started to slump on one side so I trashed it). I assume I let the clay get too wet while throwing. The other one, with the yellow stripes, I took a shot at yesterday. We'll see what happens...

Sgraffito in progress

So, how does one create sgraffito items like the bowls and dishes in the photo at the top of my last post? These pictures illustrate most of the process. First you throw the item using a dark colored clay. Then you coat the item with a layer of light colored slip (liquid clay). Then you wait for it to dry to leather hardness, at which point you get to bring out the sharp and pointy tools. I use a compass to draw nice even circles--and there are Byzantine pieces with compass wholes right in the center so we know they weren't just freakishly good at drawing circles. There are a variety of different tools to carve through the clay with, all which leave pretty rough edges and tiny clay dust all over, so a brush is useful to help clean up the piece as you go along. The plate and two bowls seen in the pictures have now been moved to the greenware shelf, where they'll finish air drying before being bisqued. After that, it's time for glazing...and the long, long wait until the studio has accumulated enough pieces to do a cone 04 firing (the final firing stage).

About those blue bowls--yes, that is a clay slip. The blue is made from adding cobalt (or so I'm told).

Inspiration

The items in the picture are from a Black Sea ship wreck called the "Pisa Wreck". One article says the brown (and amber, and olive) glazed pottery was ID'd as being produced at a particular Byzantine site, another says that chemical analysis scotched that location as a possible origin. They're of a type now referred to as "Novy Svet" ware.I love these pieces because they're so simple. I've done a few similar to this that are now waiting to be fired--I used commercially prepared light green and olive green glazes, so fingers crossed there won't be crazing or crawling for me to complain about!

There are also a few examples of Zeuxippos Ware from this wreck--one example is the piece with the fish sgraffito, sort of center left in the photo (which may not post large enough to really see). The style gets its name from the large number of pieces found in an excavation near the hippodrome in Istanbul, a location currently id'd as the Baths of Zeuxippos, hence the name. What I like about this style is that it uses clear glaze with only limited color mixed in, so you can see the contrast between the base clay and the slip. I mean to try replicating Zeuxippos ware, eventually.

As of today, I have 8 items sitting on the shelf waiting for their final firing, and 8 more at various other unfinished stages. With luck I'll have new pictures to post by next weekend. Assuming I remember where I put my camera!

Not crazed about this crazing

Xésta! I've discovered that at least two of my green glazed pieces have crazed, including my favorite piece, the tall goblet/tumbler that was first coated in a couple of layers of white terra sig. And to make it worse, the crazing is only on the inside (for now), in other words, on the surface that needs to be solidly glazed to be food safe. I am very angry with the studio about it. I get a lot of 'oh, so few people use the 04 glazes, we've always had a problem keeping them...' So, uh, why mix up huge buckets, eh? Why not fix your glaze recipes when people complain? More to the point, if firing fees INCLUDE the cost of glazes, but your glazes can't be trusted, are you still going to charge me for buying a pint of commercial glaze, or deduct it from the firing fee? Grumble. And goodbye, goblet.

Crazing again

My second sgraffito bowl has crazed. It also uses the amber glaze over the white slip. The studio is going to try modifying the composition of the glaze, but warned it will be 'trial and error' until it's right. I just realized tonight that it's not the the clay and glaze that aren't matching, it's the slip and the glaze. The two unslipped pieces I used that glaze on are perfectly fine. Best go email the studio with this extra tidbit of information...

New class, new tips

New pottery class met last night, and it was great--a large group and a really excellent teacher. Turns out a number of us are interested in sgraffito (though sadly all the others are 'modernists'), AND the teacher does sgraffito pretty regularly. She did a plate throwing demo, and before cutting it off the wheel she poured rather thick slip (almost batter consistency) onto the center of the plate and spread it around with a brush and then a thin metal rib. The wheel was still spinning the whole time. This technique is MUCH faster than brushing on many layers (which is what I've been doing) and gives a significantly smoother looking result. Another nice part was she brought the slip to the inside border of the rim, but left the rim itself uncovered--what a shortcut for when I want to do a piece with a thick band of original color clay at the outside! The only piece I made last night was a deep footed bowl, and getting the slip to distribute itself evenly was a bit of a challenge. I'll definitely be doing more with that technique. Laura (the teacher) did warn me, though, that pouring slip onto the piece while it's on the wheel doesn't work so well with shallow bowls--which are unfortunately common in Byzantine pottery--because the weight and the wetness can too easily overwhelm the body of the bowl and cause it to collapse. Laura has also promised to teach me how to carve more cleanly (thank goodness). And as at least one of my classmates wants to work on teapots I may have a chance to try a spouted pitcher--there's a lovely/slightly scary looking one I've seen in a photo from either Athens or Thessoloniki that really makes me think of an octopus. I'd love to make one like that some day!

Tricks of the trade

Sensible potters down at the studio fire test tiles so they'll know exactly what results to expect from different glazes on the particular clay they're using. Me, meh, that just ruins the adventure. Of course, the blue bowl above is one of many instances where I would have benefited from a more cautious approach. The container of slip was clearly marked white. It looked greyish. It fired blue. Yes, the bucket was mislabeled, lucky me. There was nothing at all wrong with the glaze on the other two items pictured (a Tudor era watering pot, and a drug jar/storage pot). It is the exact same glaze, just on two different clays. I'm still not ready for the thorough pre-planning test tiles approach. I'm just too impatient.

Crazing and crawling

Nothing really came out well from this kiln batch,except for the pieces with only a single glaze applied. The pieces that were slipped and/or slipped and carved, then glazed after the bisque stage all have problems. The main one is crawling--patches where the glaze didn't adhere and bits of the clay are exposed. I realized only after looking at the photos on my laptop that my golden brown byzantine bowl has crazed like mad. I'm not sure the full reason for either problem--I know in theory what causes crazing and crawling, but why it happened in these cases I don't know. I do suspect thermal shock on the crazed bowl, though. As I was carrying things to the car I heard the tell tale 'ping ping' of cracking glass (or in this case, glaze). The crawling is more worrisome, but I'm working on a slipped pitcher right now and will be particularly mindful when I glaze it to make sure there's no dirt or oil on either my hands or the pot! Oh, and I chipped the rim of my little yellow Byzantine cup. Very sad, all the way around. Back to the studio tomorrow, of course!

The beginings of a bibliography

All items in this list are in my possession-either electronically or hard copy--and most I've even read. Not bad for a few week's research. God bless graduate school training. (hmm, never thought I'd say THAT in print!)And, more pertinently, god bless JSTOR. (For those who aren't familiar with it, JSTOR is an online database of full text articles from peer reviewed journals.)

1. Aravantinos, V., et al. (2003) “Plataiai in Boiotia: A preliminary report of the 1996-2001 campaigns.” Hesperia, 72, 281-320

2.Armstrong, Pamela (2005). “The Earlier Byzantine Castle at Torone.” The Bulletin of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, 3(5), 7-15

3. ----- (1989). “Some Byzantine and Later Settlements in Eastern Phokis.” Annual of the British School at Athens, 84, 1-47

4. ----- (1980). “Thebes: Excavations on the Kadmeia.” Annual of the British School at Athens, 88,295-335

5. Dark , Ken (2002). Byzantine Pottery. Tempus Publishing LTD

6. Dawkins, RM and JP Droop (1910/1911). “Byzantine pottery from Sparta.” Annual of the British School at Athens, 17, 23-28

7. Frantz, M. Alison (1938). “Middle Byzantine Pottery in Athens.” Hesperia, 7(3), 429-467

8. Gerstel, Sharon E. J., et al. (2003). “A late medieval settlement at Panakton.” Hesperia, 72, 147-234

9. Heath, Sebastian and Billur Tekkok, eds. (2007-2008). Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery at Ilion (Troy). (No location): Project Troia

10. Kontogiannis, Nikos D. (2008). “Excavation of a 13th-century church near Vasilitsi, Southern Messenia.” Hesperia, 77, 497-537

11. MacKay, Theodora Stillwell (1967). “More Byzantine and Frankish pottery from Corinth.” Hesperia, 36(3), 249-320

12. Megaw, A.H.S (1968). “Zeuxippus Ware.” The Annual of the British School at Athens, 63, 67-88

13. Morgan, Charles H. (1942), “The Byzantine Pottery.” Corinth, Vol. 11, 1-343, 345, 347-359, 361, 363-373, i-vii, ix-xi, xiii-xv. American School at Athens

14. Papanikola-Bakirtzis, Demetra, Eunice Maguire and Henry Maguire (1992). Ceramic Art from Byzantine Serres. Urbana: University of Illinois Press

15. Rice, David Talbot (1966). “Late Byzantine Pottery at Dumbarton Oaks.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 20, 207-219

16. Vroom, Joanita (1998). “Medieval and post-medieval pottery from a site in Boeotia: A case study example of post-classical archaeology.” Annual of the British School at Athens, 93, 513-546

17. Waage, Frederick O. (1933). “The Roman and Byzantine Pottery.” Hesperia, 2(2) (The American Excavations in the Athenian Agora), 279-328

Coffee cups, but no coffee

I am charmed by the handled cups found among the Byzantine pottery at Corinth. So many look like what we'd call a coffee or tea cup, and of course this was long before coffee was drunk (although I'm sure there were some sort of brewed 'teas'--like the hot water and anise drink listed in one of the monastic typika). I'm posting some examples from Corinth...

I've tried making one -- not a straight replica, but one generally correct in shape and color. Right now I only have a photo of the cup in greenware form; it's been bisqued and I glazed it last night but as I'm about the only person at the studio who works in low fire clays I expect to have to wait awhile for the finished product. So far the clay hasn't shrunk as much as I feared it would...still learning how to gauge that! I'm using "Carolina Buff" clay, firing at 06/04. At bisque, the clay is a nice peachy/pink color (although I'd have preferred something more tan...).


Throwing tip: plastic coke bottle caps worked beautifully to shape the handles while I was waiting for them to dry enough to apply. Having them already circular made the process much much easier.