MudStuffing Sketchbook

So I did a little marketing research last night on Etsy…  to see what sculptures are selling, and where they are listed and what price point things seem to be on the black market. Anyways, as I was doing this I added a slew of stuff to my favorites. You may or may not have notcied this, but my favorites show up on the right side of this blog - about 1/2 way down called “other Etsy Artists”. Everytime I find something I like, that little list is updated.

But here’s a better snapshot of that list.

sneakpeaks2, originally uploaded by mudstuffing.

Sneak peaks of sculptures that survived decorating… at least so far, we still have 3 firings to go through…

If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you probably already saw this, however CeramicArtsDaily.com just posted this video I did. It’s a sort of companion piece to the article I wrote for PotteryMakingIllustrated in the November/December 2009 issue.

Classic American Butterdish Video.
The above dish is glazed with Malcomb’s Shino over a shino slip, and then sprayed with other glazes, fired in a wood/soda downdraft kiln.

Here’s some of the choice pots from the last firing. I had my first orders for place settings in there and was relieved to see they all came out. The were two - five piece settings for one customer. I also have a great customer who ordered six - five piece settings that I will be sending 1 setting a month for the next six months. The bonus? She wants them all different! They don’t call me inconsistent keith for nothing, so this was music to my ears. I actually threw them all and bisqued them, so that they would all stack nicely in her cupboards, but only 3 settings were fired in this last load. The others will be done later. Pictured below is the first setting she’ll be getting.More pics on my flickr photostream.

Ah… yes, the skull came out wicked cool, and I was able to decal it over the weekend with a bunch of left over decals and poison labels.

This bowl was done using stencils cut by the craftrobo. I glazed the whole pot with malcomb’s shino, then applied the stencils and sprayed other glazes over top and them removed the stencils. Luckily this was in an area of the kiln that got great reduction.

Speaking of reduction, it was inconsistent at best (are we surprised?). I guess not really, I had my suspicions this was going to be under reduced. My son helped stoke one of the fire boxes for the last three hours. I was happy for the help, and… not that I am complaining or anything… but whereas I was more concerned with making sure I had a good flame coming out of the top peep, his primary concern was using the red hot angle iron to make steam and melt ice and snow. Of course what kid wouldn’t want to plat with red hot metal? Cool…. fire… right?  Unfortunately I am paying the price for being an easy going dad, letting him experiment, and ending up with half a load of pots that were not as toasty as the other half.

I set up the webcam for this firing and unloading with the intent on multiplying the speed and shortening the video to a nice 5-8 minute video for you. Maybe we’ll even be able to see how often that flame was coming out, and how much of the time is was sucked back in