Spooze

A little bit of detecting and i found the bisque glue formula that can be used to attach broken pieces or mend cracks,  It seems to me that we also used calcined powdered clay when wanting to use it on bisque,
from the ceramic arts question list :
"Another concoction for repairing bisque is "spooze" (originally attributed to Peggy Heer by Vince Pitalka):

Mix equal parts by volume vinegar, corn syrup, and powdered claybody. Add more powdered claybody to adjust the thickness of the spooze to your need. Both surfaces should be dampened to assist adhering. Some add toilet paper pulp to the mix."

Glazed Mugs,

These are the way some of the mugs finished out from the last glaze firing,

 

 On the whole, the clear gloss covered the underglaze parts a lot better without getting rough.

 On the inside of them, I used a commercial glaze from Coyote, in a few different colors,

 These two below, I omitted putting on the wash of dark grey, and the blue is a lot paler than before,

 In the photo below are two mugs that show similar decoration, but show how the clear glaze has become a lot better, and also shows how the wash affects the final outcome.  On the earlier mug on the left, the glay lines on either side of the turquoise are incised and filled in with the wash, and on the later mug, they are trailed on with a brown underglaze,

 I like the inside of the mugs being a different color,

On this one, the white flower parts were masked with newspaper when I painted on the blue underglaze.  The black lines were added with an underglaze pencil on bisque, and the dots added with underglaze.  The commercial colored glazes have a tendancy to run where they meet with the clear glaze. 

Potter from Corning, New York

Another potter who I met on our trip to Ithaca, New York, is Stacey Esslinger.
She, like Colleen McCall, who lives in Elmira not far from Ithaca, attended Alfred University for Ceramics.  She works in cone ten porcelain, which she rolls out into very thin slabs and textures with cloth patters pressed into the clay. 

Then she hand-builds these really lovely shapes using techniques you might associate with sewing garments: making darts, adding little "button" accents,

 The color palette here is in various shades of turquoise blues and lavender, but she also had pieces that were white with pink and lime green decorations,

 I like the texture of the high fired pure porcelain quite a lot.
On this cream and sugar set, the bottoms of the pieces are gently curved up on four sides,

 This is a little business card holder -- very practical!

 I was so lucky to meet her at the booth at the Ithaca festival! 

Blue Rose Pottery from Poland

We drove up to New York last week from Savannah, and en route we stumbled over the warehouse outlet for a company called Blue Rose Pottery, in Fort Mill, South Carolina, just south of Charlotte,
It was quite an interesting place, full of lovely dishes.
This is their website, here
and these are the pieces that came home with me...
who doesn't need more pottery mugs?

 The painted decoration on these items is very clear and vivid

 they have a really wide variety of items, and several different lines of decoration

 This little tray reminded me of an old piece of English stoneware,

They really are a nice weight of stoneware, unlikely to chip.  They are definitely not the kind of "ceramic slip cast" stuff that is that white, porous stuff. 
The more I handle it, the more I like it.  These are definitely dishes that will last for years and years.
These images are from their website:

dessert bowl

cheese dish with mouse

egg cup set

Philadelphia? Why not

After the conference up in Ithaca we decided to take a little detour on our way back south. Having never been to Philadelphia, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable place t o visit. So therefore we find ourselves ensconced in a downtown highrise hotel!
We walked around a bit before finding a place for dinner and stumbled over Anthropologie's flagship store.
Again sorry that the photos are all mixed up, the blogger app for iPad is not very evolved.
Tomorrow we hope to go to the large Museum of Fine Art, which should be exciting

Ithaca area potter

I went into a shop in Ithaca,new York called Handwork, and was impressed by the work of Colleen McCall who lives in Elmira. I was able to drive up there to see more of her stuff at a store called Cappy's, and even to visit her studio! what a treat!
She has a blog, just google and you'll find it, I'm using the iPad and can't do links on it,