Remembering

Some of you may recall that sometime last month, a woman named EC posted on my blog that she bought a pitcher at a second hand shop in Rhode Island, with a JZ stamp on it. Upon researching the JZ , she found my blog and realized that the pitcher was made by John Zentner. I asked her to send me photos and she was very kind to do so.

This pitcher is definitely John's, because there is his chop below the handle. I am thinking it is very early work. I don't have anything that looks like this and I have some pieces going back to the 80's that he and Bill Van Gilder made when they were working together. I am thinking this is perhaps from the 70's.

Here are some pitchers that he made in last few years before he died. This salt glazed one sits on my counter and we use it everyday. It fills the steamer on the wood stove, carries hot water to the studio to fill our throwing pails, and has watered many plants. It's a beauty and feels so good in your hands.

I just love this little one. It's on a shelf in the living room and I most often use it for sangria or cheap jug wine. It makes the cheap stuff taste so much better.

I thought this was a good day to share these pitchers with the world. John died six years ago today. Each year is a little easier, but the holiday season has never been the same since 2008.
If you are a new blog reader you can read about our story here or here.

Thank you EC for sharing photos of JZ's work from the past. I am glad that his pitcher found you. I think it is in good hands.

cheesy inspiration

 A couple of weeks ago I saw a simple tutorial on Pinterest about how to make a wedding ring dish. I thought it was clever so I pinned it to my "crafty ideas" board. I don't feel it meets the criteria to be on my ceramics board because I don't think it takes much talent to make these.

I tweaked it some and cut the dishes into heart shapes. I have lots of doilies made by my mother and grandmother and they add a nice lacy texture.

The holes are used for ribbons to be tied on. Some couples use these little dishes for the ring bearer at their wedding ceremony. Jeff teased me about these, asking if I was going to start imprinting cheesy inspirational words on porcelain dishes... you know that whole "live, laugh, love" fad that's been hanging around for a few years... you can even buy inspirational paper towels these days. His teasing led me to think about making some in the vein of Valentine's Day conversation hearts and imprinting them with sarcastic words... boy could I have fun with that!

I used some bowls as a slump mold to get the curve I was looking for. Should I decide to continue with these I will throw some bowls and bisque them for this purpose. I lined these with plastic wrap so that I could get them out of the bowl once they set up. With a bisqued bowl they would set up a little more quickly as well. Today I will slip trail a few with a colorless porcelain slip. I used porcelain for these and my plan is to experiment with some Amoco underglaze on the texture and words and then glaze them in my Temple white. Lori Buff had some nice results with the underglaze and texture, you can check out her results here.

Aside from a little playing this weekend, I did complete a bunch of small pitchers. We will have another load of pots to bisque fire very shortly. Jeff fired the gas kiln yesterday, while I worked at the Co-op gallery in town. I glazed a few pigs in some new colors this time, I'll post some pics as soon as we are cooled down.

A Hot and Spicy V-Day

We are not big celebrators of Valentine's Day but it did seem like a good excuse to make a dinner that was fun and new. I found a couple of recipes on Pinterest that combined all the flavors we love so I decided to go for it. Lime Chipotle Chicken stuffed with jalapeno pepper and wrapped in BACON! The jalapenos are roasted and stuffed with a little cream cheese and cilantro. The rice is very simple, I cooked jasmine rice and as soon as it is done, mix in cilantro pesto. It wasn't the lowest calorie recipe but I liked that it was all made with fresh ingredients... only the chipotle peppers in adobo sauce came from a can. It was flavorful and VERY spicy... to the point that it gave me the occasional hiccups! There were a couple of extra stuffed jalapenos so I broiled them and we had them on the side, along  with a cool broccoli and cabbage salad.

 On the pottery front, I have been making garlic jars and hope to get them finished today. I had never made garlic jars before, I don't know why. John used to make them and they sold pretty quickly. There are also some small pitchers that will be needing handles at some point, hopefully by the end of today. Tomorrow we have a full day of mini pottery lessons scheduled, so there may not be much time for making new work.

There are a couple more spots open in the next "Practice Makes Perfect" Workshop on February 23rd... for more info click HERE.

back to work

Next week is the Celebration of Seagrove Potters, which means there was no time to decompress from the trip north. Jeff and I had work made before we left town, so it was more a matter of finishing things up. Along with firing our gas kiln this week we also have the opportunity to put some pots in Fred Johnston's wood kiln.

The sunny dry weather helped us get things dried out for the bisque kiln.

These are Jeff's pitchers for the wood kiln

Another round of piggy banks, along with vases and bottles... YAY for my gingko vases, I got my wood firing wish!!!!

We are not stressing too much about the Celebration show. It's not our biggest event of the year, and we have plenty of inventory to bring. This year Jeff will be at the show on Saturday and I will keep our shop open at home. This is year three for us at this show and thought it was time to try something new, we like to keep life interesting...

gotta run, it's time to open the shop!