The singularity of nowness has descended upon my shoulders. I awoke at 6:30AM and actually swung my feet around and onto the floor and stood up. Previously in my life, like last night, I had been productive in the studio. I had thrown some bowls intended to end up as knitting bowls and trimmed and decorated one of the dryer ones. This particular clay is a very wet porcelain that needs a deft, tough touch to get to shape. Once you have the thickness, you can run your finger up and down the inside of the bowl to give it definition and shape; a chance to make it unique. Depending on the humidity, it is raining today, the pots will dry enough to trim and handle overnight. I am glad for the rain and humidity. It slows the evaporation which lessens the chance for distortion when shrinking. It's a problem in the summer when you can throw a pot in the morning and have to trim in the afternoon. Actually, it does make a good routine and I do get a lot done during the fast drying months. If needed, I can cover the pots in thick plastic to slow the drying.
Being awake, and I mean wide awake, at 6:30AM was a totally different way to start the day. I remembered to eat breakfast, made a pot of coffee, put on the shorts and shoes I had on the night before, grabbed a ginormous cup of coffee, and headed to the studio to see what needed to be done. At the least there would be trimming. At the most, the completion of the bowl to its purpose. In this case, a knitting bowl.
I was very glad to have something to do as long as I was going to be awake.
I unlatched and threw open the huge shop door to let the air in and the clay dust out. As it is garbage day, I threw the studio refuse container onto the hand truck for the bumpy trip to the street where the 90 gallon plastic container barely half full sat, waiting for the truck to come and squeeze its guts like mustard onto a Polish dog on top of the kraut.
What I ignore time after time is that the studio refuse container can get too heavy to lift into the 90 gallon plastic container. Today, in fact, I had to unload about 1/3 of the load by hand before it was light enough to lift onto my shoulder and dump in to the 90 gallon plastic container. Now the container was 3/4 full and heavy. Call me paranoid, but I think they weigh my garbage. Then again, they probably weigh everyone's garbage so they know when their trucks are full. Whatever.
Making the knitting bowl should be a delicate process. Undue, unnatural force is being used with a semi-fragile substance with leather hard clay. It is malleable enough to work with but dry enough to hold its shape. The possibility of distortion is a given. In a perfect world...
I trim the bottom of the bowl first. Before turning the bowl upside down on the wheel, I turn it in my hands, learning it, seeing where it needs to be trimmed, feeling the bottom to see how deep of a foot ring can be made. I like to make a definitive foot ring but sometimes do not leave enough clay at the bottom to do so.
I place the bowl upside down on the wheel and center it then secure it. I start the wheel and take a larger trimming tool to take the rough edges off first. Once that is done and everything is uniform, I go to smaller, more detail oriented tools for the personal touch. I work on the belly and the body first, scraping the body smooth with my finger amputating metal rib. This takes the throw lines off and the body becomes smooth. A smooth porcelain body becomes a canvas for beyond imagination design. You can create emotion with color. I love to create.
Once I have the belly trimmed, the foot ring, if there is one, is trimmed. When everything is trimmed to satisfaction, I take a damp sponge and wipe every thing down with the wheel spinning at what ever speed you like. This leaves the bottom wet for a minute or two so I don't handle them at all. I stare at the wall for two minutes or until I think the pot is dry enough to sign. I have a metal scribe a student made for me that I sign my name with on the bottom of the pot. Then, if there is carving or decorating to be done, for example, put a bird on it, this is when it would be done. Each piece is usually worked on until it is done then the next goes through the same process. Then they are set on a drying rack to completely air dry in order to be bisque fired.
The production of a knitting bowl requires a quiet mind. I admit that I had headphones plugged into my iPhone and was signing loudly and rocking out last night in the studio. I was wedging the clay, kneading it as if I were making bread. This is a physical effort to which I attribute the definition of my shoulders. That's why I had the tattoos put there. Hardly any sagging. :)
With the wedging and the rocking out out of the way, it was time to take off the headphones and to center myself and listen to the clay. Sometimes it is a dance between hands and particles of clay that seem to have a mind of their own. Porcelain is a thirsty clay meaning it needs a lot of lubrication. Water. That's where delicate balance comes in. Too much water, the clay will become saturated and unable to hold itself up. It slumps. Not enough water and you get caught on a dry spot that catches your finger if only for a second but long enough to produce a wub in the pot. Very hard to fix and not really worth the time. Just make another.
The way I do it is to keep the water going in and out. That way there is very little standing water at any time in the pot. When pulling, I will sponge out the water before a pull, then squeeze water from the sponge onto my fingers that are running along the rim of the pot. That puts the water evenly on the outside and the inside and not to much on the bottom. Then I pull. When finished pulling and shaping at each stage I sponge the water off the whole pot. At times, I will grab the amputating metal rib and scrape the water off the outside of the pot while using the spong e to remove water from the inside of the pot. Okay, was that redundant enough?
Once the pot is thrown, its been shaped and sponged off, I take a piece of chamois cloth, completely soaked, and run it on the rim of the pot, pressing slightly to compress the rim. This lessens the chance of a chip later in its life.
And after all that, and the trimming and decorating comes the quiet mind part. I will carve a channel into this bowl, taking a piece of it out of the pot. Do not think doom and gloom. Think: if this part of the process goes well, a very useful tool, a knitting bowl, will emerge. Also Think: by carving a channel into a round object and removing a piece thereby disrupting the symmetry, the bowl itself will react uniquely in the drying process.
I start with a French Curve and trace two arched lines for the path of the cut. I determine where the notch the yarn comes out of and take a 1/4 inch drill bit and drill a hole. I take a little brush tool, kind of like a baby bottle brush only really small, and clean out the hole. Then I pick up the fettling knife that I have sharpened. Fettling knives are supposed to be kind of dull so you can't cut yourself. Yes, I'm typing this with tape wrapped around a finger that was the victim of the sharpened fettling knife. Never mind about that.
I insert the knife in the drilled hole and press slightly, following the line I traced. The bowl is sitting sideways on my lap and I am pressing down on it. This is where I could lose the bowl with a cracked rim from too much or uneven pressure.
My fingers are supporting the clay as I move the knife along the line. If the clay is too dry, it could crack and a chunk would come off and the knitting bowl becomes yard art. I stop, pull the knife out of the clay, and start to move the knife back and forth in a sawing motion on the rim where the lines for the opening are. This is to prevent a big chunk of clay from separating from the rim. It's not surefire but it's the best I've got.
If all goes well, you've just cut a j shaped notch
into your bowl defining its future use. From this dy forward, this is a knitting bowl. Soup will never work. If you don't believe that, just try it.
No matter what I decide to do to the bowl before or after, once the notch is cut, you have a one of a kind dedicated use item. It's a beautiful thing.
They are set on a wooden shelf to dry. When bone dry, I load them into the kiln for the first firing, the bisque firing.
This day is just that. Spring rain has slammed into the ground. It figures. They just sprayed the orchard yesterday. Now they have to do it again. It is nothing more than kaolin, a fine clay that covers the bark and prevent the piranha from carving away at tree flesh. The rain has dictated this day from demeanor to transaction. It is totally zen. This one day. This now. This this. Pretty dang cool.
