Anyway... it is winter here in Kansas City. Definitely not my favorite time of year to be in the city, but then if I was going to be perfectly honest about it the only time I really enjoy being in the city is when I am leaving it. But it is what it is, and in this day and age it is difficult to find someone in the countryside who is willing to give you a small piece of property to build a small house and pottery on. So here I am a country potter stuck (temporarily) in the big city.
I am in a new place as far as my pottery goes, well a new old place really. I have always been interested in country slipware pottery, from both sides of the Atlantic. Here in the US we call it red-ware and it was(is?) fairly popular in the eastern part of the states. In the UK they call it slipware and it never really fell out of fashion. On either side of the pond it is basically defined as sturdy earthenware pottery, with a comfortable feel since it is designed to be used, decorated in a simple(?) manner using colored slips and either clear or honey(amber) glazes. Often these pieces are fired in a wood/coal/charcoal kiln to earthenware temps, what these days we call lowfire. I should point out that historically the glaze contained lead in it as at the time this was the only method known that would create a proper and durable glaze in the 900-1100c temperature range. Yes lead is bad for you, but they didn't know that at the time. These days we have other methods for reproducing the effects of the old glazes using new materials that won't make you crazy(fun) and then kill you.
Anyway... I have always been interested in the old/traditional forms and styles that this type of pottery took, and when I decided that I was going to become a full-time potter my plan was that I was going to make slipware pottery. However I have kept getting side tracked away from that, mostly because I keep running into people who tell me, "you should make this", " you should use these colors", "that's not flashy enough", "no one wants NEW old stuff", and on and on and on. Consequently I have found myself fighting with forms and techniques that I truthfully don't enjoy making. And as a result I feel like for a while, no matter how much practice I put into making new pottery I was simply not growing as a potter. And I still wasn't getting good at the forms. Somewhere in the past 2 months I made the decision within myself that I was going to make the pottery that I liked. I mean seriously, I wasn't born liking this particular style so I had to see it somewhere. I didn't grow up in a house full of antique pottery, so obviously I have seen it fairly often as I was older so someone must still be making it. So I set out on a quest as it were to find out 1. if it was still being made, 2. where it was being made, 3. and if it was still in demand. Well I found out quite a lot really, the first thing is that if they had had the internet in King Arthur's time we would know where the Holy Grail was, it makes questing so much easier. Other than that I found that yes indeed potters were still making slipware, not just in the UK, but in the US, and Australia, and Europe and, well you get the point. It was still being made and it was getting made because people are interested in traditional pottery, and the skills that make it. Also because Like me there are potters out there who have made it their mission to ensure that the traditional skills remain intact in our culture.
So having said all that, and cheers to you if you are still with me after that, I finally made the decision that I too was going to help insure that the traditional skills survived, and at the same time I was going to make pottery that I enjoyed making. And I can honestly say that in the last month since I made that decision, that my skills have grown, and because of it I am a much happier person.
So to start off this journey I will leave you with these. This is where the journey of my pottery starts. This is the riverbank that I get my clay from. Missouri is blessed (farmers would say cursed) with having more heavy clay in the ground than they know what to do with.
Here is a link to the full length video on You Tube
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