Recent Studio Work

My wife gave me the day off from watching Paxton so I could work on pottery! Not happy with some other mugs I had made earlier, I threw some more mugs and added in some bowls for kicks.

Bowls upside down to dry. There are a lot of fun things happening with this batch!

Mugs freshly handled. Want to see how? Watch here.

This bowl has some interesting marks. Can't wait to see it finished!

How to make a Hakeme brush

So I visually mowed the city's lawn looking for the perfect grass to use in these brushes. It takes a lot more grass than I thought it would. And picking off all those grains at the tips was a little annoying. However, it produced a good working brush for hakeme and the effort and sliver were well worth it. If you don't know what Hakeme is, check out this post!

You need to prep the grass by picking off the grains on the ends and cutting the pieces about the same length.

Here it is, step by step:

Gather the grasses and make sure the tips are on the same side. 

I separated mine into three sizes to help with shaping.

Stack the three piles on top of one another and make the bottom even.

I recommend using a rubber band to keep the pieces in place for wrapping a handle.

Wrap the grass tightly with string or small rope. I used leftover hemp I had on hand.

Trim the ends so the brush looks pleasing to you!

I made two! The extra string length enables me to hang them to dry.

There! Now you too can make a hakeme brush for your pots! Huzzah!

Western Wisconsin Pottery Tour

I almost forgot to mention that I will [hopefully] be attending the Western Wisconsin Pottery Tour coming up on October 12-13th! Both my college professor (Kirk Freeman) and my pottery mentor (Steve Rolf) will be featured this year! Needless to say I am very excited. Pax will be joining me for this adventurous outing. Unfortunately Ang will be working. Sad face.

Hakeme Pottery!

Good'ay friends!

I have been busy in the studio making more work for the Christmas sale again. I decided to bring along my video camera to document some of the ways I work. I am both a maker and a teacher at heart, so the teaching part of me naturally wants to be a part of my pottery. I want to share my knowledge with the world--indoctrinating potters and lovers of clay everywhere! I show only my way of doing things because hey, I only do things my way when making, I can't help it.

I did some more Hakeme decoration on a select few pots. If you are not familiar with Hakeme, let me give you a little slice. Hakeme is a technique which coats a dark clay body with a white slip. While the slip is still wet you swipe a stiff, clean brush over the pot in order to make the white clay stick to the dark clay underneath. Many times this results in the dark clay coming through the white clay where there are deeper brush marks. The white clays in the east didn't stick to the dark clays as the white would shrink more and crack off the pot, so they learned that if they scratched the pot with a stiff brush it was kind of like scoring the pot beneath while gluing the white clay to it.

I think the brush was typically made from rice straw, however I made my own hakeme brush from grasses found along a roadside.

Here I am attempting to teach the Hakeme technique:

And here is a shorter video with awesome music and Hakeme application:

All for now! 

Phill