Coneheads

Hang around potters for any amount of time and you’ll start hearing a foreign language. Unfamiliar words like ‘vitrification’ and ‘extrusion’ mixed with ‘Bisque’ and ‘glaze’ can make one wonder exactly what it’s like to stand at the altar of a clay god.  So here are a few definitions to help you out.

Raw clay that has been formed and dried is referred to as greenware. No idea why, but I do know that it’s basically dried mud and just as fragile.  You can see the shape and envision the finished product but just don’t mishandle it at all.

Somewhere along the way from clay to greenware, we pass through the land of ‘leather hard’.  It’s a magical time where the piece can be worked, molded, added to, sculpted and modified without cracking. Leather hard is where we attach handles, create faces, trim bottoms, and make final adjustments.

As we move from Leather Hard to greenware, the forces of clay begin to work against the potter. Bottoms that weren’t compressed yield and crack, handles that weren’t attached correctly or dried at a faster rate pop off the main piece and relegate it to recycling. Plates formed perfectly flat begin to warp and misshape. Anything can happen during this time, and for the potter it’s a waiting game and learning curve all rolled into one.

Greenware perfectly dried is ready for firing in a kiln (baking in a really HOT oven)  Once in the kiln, it’s game over for recycling. Your committed. The first firing is called a ‘bisque’ firing.  Some people call it biscuit, but I’m from the south and you just don’t’ mess around with that word, and before you correct me I know that ‘Bisque’ is another name for a soup that has cream in it. I like them both.

So bisque firing takes the piece to a point where there is no more water in the clay. In fact if the piece enters the kiln with water in it and is heated too fast, it explodes rather spectacularly, taking other pieces with it along the ride to the scrap pile.  This is why we program a ‘hold’ into the kiln firing cycle, hovering around 200 degrees (90c)  where the last remnants are evaporated before the piece is fired.

This is where we have a discussion about cones, which is a measurement of how hot a kiln gets before the firing is terminated. Back in the early days of pottery, it was a complete guess by the potter when his wares were ready in a kiln. Often these kilns were fired by wood and later, coal, gas or electricity. In the late 1800’s, research led to a system where components were mixed and melted at certain temperatures. These were formed in the shape of a cone and potters would put several in the kiln and watch them through peepholes. Each cone bends at a specific temperature and potters would put several lower temperature cones in view along with the final goal cone.  As the lower ones bent, they could start the shutdown process of the kiln as it ‘matures’ at an exact temperature for consistency. Today, we still use ‘witness cones’ to prove a kiln’s settings, but firings are largely controlled by computers with thermocouples (basically thermometers) that are calibrated to monitor the firing process.

Each cone has a number and they start at 022 and run all the way to 12+  Think of something with an ‘0’ in front of it as being a negative number. I don’t know why they did it this way, but it’s what we have and potters all use it.  So when you hear ‘I bisque fired it to 05’, that’s potterspeak for “The first time I fired the piece to a temperature of 1870 degrees F” or “ I glaze fired it to cone 5 with a 30 minute soak” means it was fired to 2117 Deg F and kept at that temperature for 30 minutes. In potters shorthand, you’ll see cones referred to as ^6 or ^05 as well.

Back to firing… After bisque firing, the piece is ready for decorating and glaze firing. Bisqueware is extraordinarily porous and will soak up anything with water in it like a sponge. This is where we can paint on underglazes, which are basically different colored clays  and they will become a part of the final product. We also glaze pottery with combinations of clays, colorants and chemicals that will basically bind to the piece as it becomes vitrified, which means completely melted together and resilient in the final firing process.

For our work, the final step is firing to a solid ^5 with a 30 minute preheat and normal cooling. Hopefully this brings a little more meaning to the jargon a potter uses.

Christmas Sweater

Kiln Openings are like Christmas Presents, Sometimes Like the best gift ever, sometimes like Aunt Edna giving you one of her ‘famous’ sweaters.

I’m like a kid on Christmas eve when I have a kiln to open…

I try to ‘peek’ in before it’s time, I watch the temperature S-L-O-W-L-Y creep down to a manageable level, wonder exactly when I can chance opening the lid; Now exactly where did I put my oven mitts?

Ok, so patience is not on my list of virtues when it comes to pottery, and that’s the one thing that pottery demands: time and patience. We often get people who want an order and can’t understand why they can’t get it today. We live in a society where we’ve become accustomed to instant gratification, Amazon the same day, Uber Eats in a few minutes, even the latest movie, Instantly. Yet some things still are no respecter of time, and anything clay falls into this category.  To properly pay homage to the clay, it takes no less than two weeks to complete a piece, and the journey is fraught with hazards.

One misstep during the process and you’ve relegated your piece to the waste pile… and I have a significant one of those. Up until the first firing, a wayward piece of pottery can merely be crushed and recycled, buckets of vaguely distinguishable shards beckon from the back stoop like an antique doll hospital gone wrong. A quick crush, splash of water and vigorous stirring with a mud mixer and we’re off again.  Fire the piece to bisque and it’s all over, somewhere along path through the first firing, you pass the point of no return as internal forces of the clay battle the potter’s skill and one will ultimately win.

Even with a perfect piece, the glaze process is sometimes tricky. You see, potters are never content with the ‘perfect glaze’ of last week. There’s always the striving for a ‘better blue’ or ‘little more green’... problem is that a little more of the component that makes the blue can turn the glaze into the ugliest green you’ve ever seen, and it runs off the piece and onto the kiln shelf like some kind of primordial slime oozing from swamp. Take the chance and put that glaze on a bunch of pieces and they are nothing more than something good for target practice.

So I, the potter wait patiently (not!) as the kiln slowly cools. My grandmother always said that a ‘watched pot never boils’ and I know the corollary to this is a ‘watched kiln never cools’   I hope the wonder and awe of finally opening the kiln after a glaze firing never ceases. It’s something to look forward to, hopefully full of amazing ‘Christmas Gifts’ that I can’t wait to share with everyone, and not too many of Aunt Edna’s sweaters that will become fodder of our next target practice.

To Wedge or Not to Wedge

Cheating BIG Time, but Don’t Tell Anyone!

I have a confession to make, and I’m not really ashamed of it!  I really don’t like wedging clay for our stoneware pottery. I spent years cutting, slamming kneading and massaging clay before I weighed it and formed balls out of it to throw on the potter’s wheel.   Our studio is in the basement of our home and the cutting and slamming would reverberate through the whole home… wake up early and go down to the studio and work?  forget it! 

I was watching the big mill work at the old Axner Pottery factory in Orlando one day and was fascinated by how the clay came out of the pugging machine (A large machine that mixes the clay and pulls the air out of it with strong vacuum pumps) and thought to myself… ‘So why am I wedging this clay to get the air out when they already do it here?”  That was the day my cheating began.  Any potter worth his salt, will extol the virtues of hours of wedging clay to make it smooth and take the air out…it’s a time honored part of the process which the clay gods decree you cannot forego, after all.

And here I find myself, cutting clay off the 25 pound bricks into 22 ounce chunks, balling them up and throwing them on the wheel. I can tell no difference. Surely, the pots will explode spectacularly in the kiln as penance to an angry deity of all things clay.  They didn’t. Surely all the glaze will slide off the pots because the clay wasn’t properly prepared. Didn’t happen, either.

So now I’m a confirmed cheater, and I admit it. There, it feels better. (maybe) I’ve added one step in the years following this revelation that made it even better.  Before I open a bag of clay for the first time, I slam it on the floor on each side of the bag, even top and bottom. For some reason that makes it even easier to work I think it shocks the clay inside, which has more moisture and distributes it to the whole bag. I’m not an expert, but it does kind of take the place of all the banging and slamming from regular wedging.

If you’re learning pottery, give it a try!  Not that it will work for you, but constantly learning and trying new techniques can lead to some pretty cool tricks!

Small Things Make a Big Difference

How 2 Cents Worth of Clay Became the most Commented Part of my Stoneware Pottery.

It’s sometimes awkward to say that I have a job, since during the days and many nights, I’m in full-time ministry. I don’t consider it a job, but a calling.  I LOVE what I do, and it takes me some interesting places. I happened to be at one of our church’s campuses in Downtown Orlando one day when the campus pastor came out of his office with one of our mugs. The conversation as one that I often hear repeated:

“I really love the mug you made me but the best thing (Here it comes, I think to myself) The best thing is the little clay thumb rest you put on the handles.” I hear it time and time again… it’s the thumb rest... if they only knew the real story. It’s literally a little ball of clay that I smash with my thumb and put where the mug body meets the handle, and it happened quite by accident. 

Early in my potting adventure, I fell into a routine that I still follow. I spend the evening in the studio throwing mugs or batter bowls or casserole dishes and the last thing I do is make a batch of handles in my extruder (like a giant play dough press) for the next morning. It’s sometimes challenging because you have to gauge the feel of the clay, the temperature outside and most importantly the humidity so the clay handles will be workable in the morning, not so wet they flop everywhere, not so dry they crack. It’s a balancing game and most times I win, but this morning, I lost. It was cool and wet. Not a great combination for the handle material I made the previous evening. The clay was almost workable, but the handles started to flop when I attached them and I didn’t have time to wait for the clay to dry some more, and by the time I got home that evening, they’d be too dry to work. Bummer.

So, I tried some good old-fashioned improvisation.   I decided that if I could hold up the top of the handle while it dried with a piece of clay, then I’d just pop it off that evening and save the day. So that’s where the thumb rest began.  I made all the mugs and took a small piece of clay and flattened it with my thumb and attached it like a bridge between the top of the handle and mug.   Repeat about 20 times and get on the road to work. I had every intention of popping them off that evening and smoothing the clay out.

I forgot. It didn’t happen and by the time I returned down to the studio, the mugs were way too dry to attempt pulling the clay off. In the middle of being annoyed with myself, I thought I’d at least see how the handles felt (I’m really picky about how my handles ‘feel’ and how they look). I picked one up and my thumb just naturally went to the small ball of clay, and it felt GOOD!  I don’t think I’ve intentionally made a mug in the last 15 years since that didn’t have a thumb rest. I made one slight modification when I started making coffee pour-overs, moving the thumb rest to slightly below the rim rather that above it so the pour over will sit squarely on the rim.

So, two cents of clay, put on a stoneware mug became one of the things people like about our Crazy Jugs mugs. Go figure.

Introducing Crazy Jugs!

Crazy Jugs
Sandi & Tim McCormack
Sandi@crazyjugs.com
June 15, 2020

McCormack Pottery is Officially Crazy Jugs!

Sandi and Tim McCormack have been in the pottery industry for 25 years. Their love for creating unique household pottery manifested while on their honeymoon. Ever since then, crafting pottery has been a part of their lives.

Creating coffee mugs, bowls, and jugs as birthday presents or Christmas gifts, soon turned into local businesses requesting large wholesale orders with their logo sculpted into the pottery. The new website and social media presence is part of a re-branding campaign to officially change the name of McCormack Pottery to Crazy Jugs. 

Lead sculptor, Sandi McCormack can sculpt just about anything on a piece of pottery. Visit www.crazyjugs.com to preview the completed custom gallery. You’ll find completed pottery projects such as trophies, ugly face pottery, pet face pottery, and so much more. 

Welcome to Crazy Jugs!

We’re so excited to announce that we officially have a website for our custom made pottery business, Crazy Jugs.

Tim and I (Sandi) have been pottery hobbyists since just after we got married, nearly 25 years ago. Throughout the years, we’ve learned many pottery related skills and sharpened our talents. This website serves as our home base for all of our pottery and we’re so excited to share it with you.

We LOVE crazy ideas and welcome a pottery challenge. Just browse our custom piece gallery to take a look at past completed work.

As Lake County, Florida, residents we are thrilled to showcase our pottery at many local businesses throughout the county. We can craft custom pottery to meet the demands of wholesale orders, promotional pieces featuring your logo on pottery such as trophies or mugs, and even custom made wedding sets.

Thank you for taking the time to browse our website and we look forward to crafting your custom made pottery!

Cheers,
Sandi & Tim