Booth Neighbors

When you do a nine day show you get to know your booth neighbors quite well...

 Next door to us was Lee Spiller. We already had a couple of his vases at home and this year we added two more to the collection.

 We think hauling pottery to shows is heavy, can you imagine lugging all these stones? On the plus side, they aren't breakable!

Our across the aisle neighbor for the 2nd year in a row was Sarah Heimann...

 The details on her carved pots is amazing. If you click on the photo above you may be able to see that the knob on the right is a vacuum cleaner and on the left is dresser!

A bonus for the week was having the opportunity to see a sink that Jeff made for a good friend that lives in the Sunapee area. He hadn't seen it installed...

Do you see where Jeff set his beer down to take the photo? I guess we won't be using this photo for advertising!
Ha, ha, ha, I just enlarged the photo and it wasn't his beer... it was a bottle of hand lotion that must have been on the countertop!

and now the fun begins!

The hardest work is over, the booth is built, the pots are on shelves, and we were ready for customers when two craftsmen blew the traditional horns at 10:00 this morning.

Wouldn't you know it was a hot day on the Mountain (still not as humid as NC) and the crowds were thinner than usual.

We still had a good day. A visit from extended family that I hadn't seen in years made it extra special. AND... I met blogger buddy Gary Rith's good friend, and newly juried League of NH Craftsmen, member... Michael Gibbons!

This is Michael's first year doing the Craftsmen's Fair and his booth looks great. We are in the same tent and our booths back up to each other.

Day one is done. Eight more to go. Looking forward to a visit from Smartcat!

just a few more

i think this is the end of pictures from the fair at Mt. Sunapee...

Lulu Ficther working in her demo booth

Mark Ragonese creating his outdoor sculptures. He is the craftsmen that taught Jeff how to make the stick arbors that he created in front of our gallery and around our tomato plants. Mark spends the week at  the fair building sculptures of rocks and sticks, talking about his process with fairgoers as he works.

We ended the week at the fair with the annual NH Potters Guild dinner meeting. This picture was taken by Dick Kaufmann at the site of the guild's community wood kiln in June of 2010. Sitting in the center (holding the cane) is Gerry Williams, long time member and past editor & founder of Studio Potter. It is always fun to get together with the guild and it usually involves great food & wine.

We are almost unpacked from the trip... at least the mountains of laundry are done. I will be happy to be back to making pots this week.

pumpkin season comes early in NH...

The League of NH Craftsmen's fair has lots of demo booths. A new one this year was Philip Jacobs of Earth & Fire Glass Studio. He has a great set up on a stage. He and his assistant were creating glass pumpkins... they put on quite a show set to reggae music. I wish I had been able to capture it on video, the pictures don't quite do it justice...

When the demo was done people flocked to the hay bales to purchase pumpkins!

Booth set up

a few people have asked about our booth set up at Sunapee so i figured i would post some pictures. 

the League of NH Craftsmen sends a jury out to score your booth. my understanding is that your booth score dictates how high up on the list you are for choosing your preferred space for the following year. there are also awards given out for the best booths.

sometimes Jeff has done a carpet, some craftsmen have wood floors that they build on site. we wanted to keep it easy this year so we went with the grass.

the booth is set up so that we can walk behind and have storage space, out of view, between us and the booth behind us... it got messier as the days passed so it's a good thing it was out of view!

Jeff has typically left the booth open in the evening. the fair has very good security. many craftsmen cover the front with a tarp at the end of the day but a few people were using this deer netting that you see above. our booth neighbor Jennifer Mitchell gave us a length of it. it really is only meant to stop people from wandering in after hours and knocking things over. we didn't use it every day because we thought it was a pain. every time we got it strung up we realized we forgot something inside!
more pictures of demo booths in upcoming posts. today we are off to run errands and visit a new smokeless wood kiln that was recently built here in NH... happy saturday y'all!

Hello from NH...

remember me? it's seems like forever since i have blogged! we are done with the Sunapee Craftsmen's Fair and back on Bow Lake where we have both cell phone service and internet access once again. the show was good, we sold lots of pots and most of what is left is going to galleries here in NH. the trailer will be much lighter on the return trip. the next few days we will spend visiting with family and friends and  hopefully getting some time to relax.
i have more fair pics to post over the next few days... the best part of the fair was spending Sunday with my daughter Danielle and her guy Jay...

we will get more girl time in on Sunday before we had back to North Carolina. i will also have to admit i have enjoyed a break from the heat. we had some warm days (80 degrees and some humidity) but the last two days have been in the 70's and down to 60 at night.
that's all for now, i think i will put on a hoodie and relax with a glass of wine :-)

another kiln load

jeff napped on the sofa last night while the bisque kiln was going. he set the alarm on the stove to go off every so often so he could check it. i don't think he got to bed until around 7 am. i was glad to see he had started to un-brick the door of the gas kiln before going to bed, it made it much easier to finish the job this morning.

he is concentrating on the turquoise and shino glaze combo to take to the fair in Sunapee. we are planning to set the booth up with the turquoise together on one side and the wood and salt glazed work on the other.
this week we made the decision to get the largest booth for the Celebration of Seagrove Potter's show in November. it is a double booth and the plan is to divide it in half as well. i guess the NH show will be the test! jeff and i are both all over the place, always trying new things and we know we won't ever stop doing that... but we think that for shows we need to have a more unified look. i think the double booth will let us show the two different types of work that we make but keep the everyday more affordable wares separate from the crunchy, brown, wood and salt glazed forms that we LOVE so much.

we have been having some fun with collaborations while getting ready for this show. jeff threw a bunch of  mug bodies and i pulled the handles, slip trailed & glazed them. my blue slip comes out black under the shino and the white gets lost... i will probably stick to the temple white glaze which is pretty much clear.

this baby kiln likes to go to cone 11. jeff thinks the back stack on the bottom was cone 9 this time... i am heading out to unload so i will find out soon enough. we will load this baby up again today and fire it one last time tomorrow.