Spring Kiln Opening 2025

 

Spring kiln opening is April 25th-27th.
Check shops for time and hours.
See you then!
M&M

Still making pots and tiles!

 

Gallery Crawl Seagrove NC- WHYNOT POTTERY November 19-21st

 Come on out, wear your mask and enjoy shopping with the local potters 

Ms. B

 Mark is calling this past load his "pumpkin spice" load.

 There was all kinds of nice, warm spice going on in that load.

But, that lamp came out fabulous.

Stay safe! 

It was time

 It was time to get down to some dusting in the shop. We live on a long dirt road and if you know dirt roads you know they can be dusty. We have had a lot of rain the past week which can bring down the dust making it a good time to spruce things up.
Our sales shop, "gallery", is not really big, but even a small space needs to get a dusting now and again.
I don't even want to tell you about chasing out the spiders.
It looked nice, shiny, and clean enough to share.
I am back on tiles while Mark is throwing pots to help fill out the kiln.
Tomorrow I am back in the classroom my one day a week at the college. I did enjoy the summer off, it gave me more days of focus, time to put in a flower garden, and time to chase some butterflies.
Fall is coming, come out and see us!
Cheers!

Yes, we took the door down

No, it was not the best load.
But, it was not the worse load either.

There are still some bugs to work out in the loading.
We know what we did right and we know what we did wrong.
Continuing on....

Yes, it's wet

 Top to bottom, Front, Middle, Back.
Overall good firing, a little crawling on a few pieces.

Some gems, flattened bottles by Mark.

What Moon?

 And, away we go.
We have been working on the latest load of pots for the big gas kiln. It use to be that we could knock this out in 5 days.
Now that I am gone for a few of those days it takes longer.

We also had to make a trip up to Virginia to remove the last of the items from my mother's house. It has sold and the closing is coming up.
We walked all the rooms on each floor, taking in the memories that were so much a part of any house that has belonged in a family such as ours.
 The weather was nice enough to walk to lunch, something we don't get to do here, unless you count the walk across the yard. We stopped in for cups of coffee on the way back and did what we loved to do the most at my mother's house, we porch sat.
 We just sat on the top step of the porch while we watched the world pass us by.
This trip we were not in a hurry, we had nowhere to be, we could just sit and watch.

  I always find a new story to tell Mark as we sit there. You would think after all these years there would be nothing left to tell.

We moved to this house when I was 12. I built my teenage years there along with my 2 brothers and 2 sisters. If those walls could talk.

After coffee, as the afternoon started to head into late afternoon, I said my good-bye.

I talked to my sister that night and she asked was Mom there. No, she is gone. She loved that house, loved her life there, loved growing old there, but she is not hanging around. That was not her style. My mother always told me that life was for the living. So get out there and do some of that. Oh, and if you have a shot of good bourbon, raise a glass to my mother.

 You know the drill.
Top to bottom:
Back stack.
Middle stack.
Front stack.
Fire tomorrow, cool down on Wednesday and Thursday, unload is Friday.

Oh, yeah, about that moon.
I don't want to talk about it.

See you on Friday.
M

This is how we shop for you

 We get an email or a message off fb with a request for an item. Last one was for a lamp for a new home.
Congratulations! You know who you are!

Then I get to go shopping.
I have my own weakness for Mark's lamps. I know I am married to the guy, and, in business with him, but in my book he makes some fabulous lamps.
I have written here before and sung the praises of what a beautiful lamp can do in your home.
I stand by that.
I love the ones we have and I love getting pictures of the ones Mark has made.
May times we are asked to custom make a lamp to a certain size.
Mark pretty much nails it within fractions of an inch.

I am very fond of this black and wood ash one to the right.

The shape is wonderful and the glazes work well with his handiwork.
Oh, but then there is the iron red as well.
Lush.

I can just see and hear the excitment when someone finds just the one they want.

 I also like the ones in the black and blue ash combination below.
Please ignore my price tags. I just leave them on when shooting for customers.

When all the deciding is over.
We pack, we ship, off they go to a new home.

 I'm still teaching. I dropped down to 2 days a week this semester to try and help more here. I have one more semester after that before I make a decision on staying past the end of spring. I still enjoy it. I still like the drive over and the drive home. I still feel conflicted in how best to use my time here.  Life is always a work in progress.

Cheers for the coming fall.
M

The moon was full,

  the ring that ran full circle around it was red and bright, soon the circle disappeared as a darkness began to take small bites out of the left side of the moon, slowly covering it all as it went from light to darkness, then as the sun rose, it was gone.
Amazing to be there up early, with my coffee; me and nature at her best.
Last night the moon rose bright over the pond. I had to go down for a few minutes to the pond and watch as it reflected off the water, fullness, heavy, bright, amazing.


Mark wired up many of the lamps that came out of the kiln. There is nothing like a handmade lamp to set off a room. We have just finished painting the guest bedroom and I have been tempted to go lamp shopping in the store. I really think the one with the great runs to the right would be nice in the bedroom.

 These lamps, even with the different blues and the creaminess of the glaze, look really good against the yellows that we used.
I am enjoying the color of the bedroom, it is a cool and quiet color.
Now I am thinking about curtains, bed spread, you know the drill... the other stuff.

Mark is back at the wheel while I am making the ride to school.
This week I put in a request for a wet/dry vacuum, I am so excited to be getting this. Cleaning is an issue when you have that many students and the clay and glazing that happens. I did not know how much I missed ours until I did not have one.
I found myself yesterday trying to clean out a kiln, the vacuum would have made short work of the issue. Not having one leaves me to be inventive and clever. I ended up taking a roll of masking tape, folding over an end and picking up the chunks of broken clay and glaze off the soft brick on the bottom of the kiln. It was slow work, but did the trick.

 It's time for me to move on, things to do.

Tiles to start loading in a kiln.
Cheers!
M

The man behind the lamps

Mark should be known as the reclusive potter.
His reluctance to be in the spot light has always been very clear between us.
Some potters seem to need a big light shinning on them at all times, as if that is more of the focus than the work.
 We would rather have the pottery speak out.
We are now at an age when we just enjoy the process of making and selling but don't need a spotlight to hit us.
I am always impressed by the many potters I meet that just have a need to create.
I married one of those.
So when I had the camera out yesterday I asked that he just work and let me take some pictures.
And, that is what we did.
Mark working on lamps:

 Thanks,
M

You are welcome

We were scheduled to have a new roof put on the house starting yesterday.
It rained.
Today and through most of this week the weather is calling for rain off and on.
If you needed it, you are welcome.
If you didn't need it, my apologies.

From what I can "gauge" from the extended forecast we might get this done next week.

What else do we have to do but wait.
Wait and make pots.
Roofs cost money, so I am told.
They cost sugars jars.

 and creamers,

 and a boat load of these wee cups.

  This afternoon I loaded up a bisque kiln to fire tomorrow and it took forever since we both made production pots last week. I was ready to walk away when I realized that I only needed about 6 pots and I would be finished.
So I hung in for the long haul and the rewarded myself by dragging Mark over for a quick walk at the zoo.
Did you know that people actually go there?
When we are there early in the morning we don't see anybody.
But, apparently real people go there everyday, go figure.

 I am still out leaf peeking to see if there are any of the caterpillars left.
There are still a few in the leaves. I found one inside of this leaf yesterday.
I pulled over a ladder, climbed up to the top and pulled over the leaf to look down inside.
Yep, there was a cute caterpillar down there.
Today, I could not find him/her anywhere.
It seems that I need to sleep outside if I am going to find out where they are going.
They are real tricksters.


 

 Mark is working on lamps, vases and large ginger jars.
Me, I am working on tiles.
I think I could do tiles full time if I could find a good market for them.
Every time I finish a round I think of  another pattern I want to try.

Cheers,
M

August ends and September begins and so does the next firing.

 It is the end of August, the end of summer fun, the end of long days and soon the end of the butterflies.


 I had an email from a customer who wanted to use one of my butterflies on her website. Of course I said yes. I enjoyed being able to share one of mine with her and her audience.
We meet so many folks in our little shop here in Seagrove and many times they know what we do for a living, but we don't get to know what they do.
It is just as interesting to us to know how other folks make their way in this world.

We are at the end of our throwing, turning, making cycle and I have started the planning for a firing.
We plan around the size of the pottery that goes on what we call the crown shelf, the last one in the stack with the tall pots on it. I use the size of these to plan the rest of the kiln around them.
The bottom two shelves, back and middle are always 9 inches.

 Then I plan for 3inch up to 8 inch shelves up to the top.
The idea when we are planning and loading is not to create hot spots and cold spots in the stack.
If it is too open it can make that area too hot.
If it is too tight, we find that that area might not fire the way we want and the reduction can be spotty.




Finding a balance as I plan each shelf is extremely important.

I try to pay attention to the pots that are placed at the edge of the shelves.
These can take quite a bit of flame and that is where I place our filler pots.

 Then, if they do not match their cousins, it is not as much of an issue.

Then again it is pottery, should it match?
No, but that is another post.

The count on planned shelves for the firing so far is 14.
I always plan at least 21 shelves. I know that of the 7 left 2 of those will be tall, crown, pots.
That really leaves me with 5 more for the inner shelves.

Of the 21, 3 always have the same placement and size across the bottom. Of those 3, 2 will always be 9 inches and the front one is always 6 inches.
If those pots are made it is a good place to start.

It does not take me long in planning the load to figure out if we have made all the pots we need to fire.
I can get into the bisque-ware and see pretty soon if we need to step back to the wheels and toss out more pots.

Yesterday we knew that Mark needed to make a few more tall pots. We have one shelf that is 21 inches tall for a lamp order. It is better for the kiln not to have one 21 inch shelf and then 2 at 12 inches.... that makes that 21  inch one a real hot spot.
By making more taller pots we can even out the space at the top of the kiln.

Now, if your head is spinning then take a minute to just look at the butterflies.
That is what I do.

Meredith