One more new clay from STARworks Ceramics

This week Jeff and I are giving STARworks new Catawba clay a try. It's hard to tell from the photos, but it's sort of a greenish in color. I haven't thrown with it yet, but Jeff has. He created this 15" platter for me to carve. 

While carving large plates and platters, I like to brush the carving "crumbs" to one side as I work. On smaller pieces that I hold in my hands, I dump them into my slop bucket as I go. I try to not handle the larger pieces as much, preferring to keep them on a foam bat while I work. The goal is to keep them as flat as possible and without cracks.

The Catawba clay carves nicely. It's smooth without any groggy chunks to catch my trim tool as I carve away. 

the giant fun factory machine

While the bisque kiln was firing and before we started to glaze, I felt it would be a good time to pug many months of two potter's clay scraps. When I turned the pugmill on it made a horrible sound... I quickly turned it off. Jeff heard the noise and said he hoped it just needed grease.

Seagrove Hardware had lithium grease and in no time I was back to work. Luckily, grease was all it needed. She's an old Bluebird pugmill and I was a little worried!

when all was said and done i pugged about 200 pounds of clay... thankfully my arm didn't fall off.
... I love seeing all this freshly plugged clay, makes me want to get back to throwing pots!

a trip to STARworks = new clay

yesterday we decided to close the gallery for a couple of hours and head to STARworks, in Star, to get a few hundred pounds of clay... aside from mixing their own claybodies with local clay, they are also a distributor for Highwater Clays.  i really wanted a few boxes of orangestone but the were out... they are expecting a delivery next week, so another trip is in our near future.
  since we were at STARworks in march they have developed a few more of their own clays so we decided to give them a try.  i have been experimenting with a darker clay and applying slips... so we came home with a few bags of this...

you gotta love the name... Grogwemee! i threw some platters and a couple of bowls with it... still have not settled on wether i like it or not.  i may not decide until after the work is fired.
we also purchased a few boxes of Aurora and Phoenix by Highwater.  i made a few pots with the Aurora today and really liked the way it threw.  tomorrow i will give the Phoenix a try.

it is 9pm and jeff is still out in the studio finishing pots...

hopefully he will come in soon and cook me some dinner :-)