I’m so excited that this beautiful laundry room designed by Susan Yeley Homes featuring my jade green monkey tiles has been published in Architectural Digest!

It took a couple of months to press, glaze, pack, and ship the 720 tiles for this installation so to see the project so well received is very satisfying. I’m very grateful that Susan Yeley and her associate Keri Jean Miksza trusted me with this project. They were great to work with.

Photos by Susan Shields

Unlike most of my posts, this one is going to be pretty long-winded without a lot of pretty pictures but I hope it’s useful. Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about ways to conserve resources in my studio and I wanted to share some of the methods I’ve been using. Please feel free to leave a comment if you have additional ideas.

1. Three Buckets of Water

I installed a clay trap on my sink awhile back to avoid plumbing problems while working with clay. However, I rarely use the sink. Instead, I use (3) 5 gallon plastic buckets. One for clean water, one for somewhat dirty water, and one for very dirty water. Working with clay is a water intensive activity and this saves a lot of water.

2. Recycle Early in the Process

The best time to cast off a piece is early in the process, specifically during the greenware stage. An undesirable piece can be tossed into the clay recycling bin anytime before the first firing. Once a piece has been fired, it can no longer be recycled. It makes no sense to try and salvage a piece; just remake it.

3. Only Fire Full Kilns

This one seems obvious but I’m guilty of not doing this in the past. I used to fire smaller loads if I had a deadline. These days, the full load takes priority. I’d rather communicate with a customer about a delay than fire a half full kiln. So far, no one has complained about having to wait an extra week for their piece.

4. Refire Glazed Pieces

Some people sell items with glaze imperfections as “seconds” but I’ve never been comfortable with the concept of seconds for a few reasons (that topic should probably be a separate post). Instead, I’ve found that most glaze defects like crawling, pinholes, or debris stuck to the glaze surface can be repaired quite easily with a dremel tool and a dab of glaze. It’s a little tricky with colored glazes but when using clear glaze it’s very straightforward.

5. Grinding Wheel

A grinding wheel can salvage a piece whose only failing is an uneven bottom. They come in a wide range of grades from coarse to super fine. Smoothing the bottom of a piece with a very fine sanding disk gives it a nice professional feel. Always use lots of water when grinding or sanding to avoid breathing in dangerous particles.

6. Kintsugi

Learn and practice the ancient art of kintsugi. This is one I haven’t actually done but it’s a great way to save a piece that’s made it all the way through the lengthy ceramic process only to break during the glaze firing or during use.

Kintsugi is the process of repairing a broken piece of pottery with lacquer and often gold powder. As I understand it, it’s a process that celebrates the events of the piece and is analogous to the changes that take place in our lives.

I have a bin full of broken pieces just waiting for their next chapter.

It’s been a busy few weeks here. The best part of March was seeing my kids while they were on their respective spring breaks. Before, after, and in between, I did some clay work.

I’ve been back in design mode with a few new pieces. The pig face tile was in need of some companion tiles so I added a couple of wings and some legs to make a set. I liked the way the set came out so I used the flying pig as a feature for a new palette design.

The pig palette has presented some construction challenges. First, it’s the largest palette I’ve designed so there are issues like warping and weight to consider. It’s also thick due to the high relief carving of the snout. I’ve tried both pressing and slip casting but neither has been a complete success. I prefer the pressing approach for two reasons. First, porcelain slip is not always available locally. Secondly, the plaster molds are very large and slip casting is rough on plaster (it breaks it down quickly). The biggest problem with pressing palettes is the weight of the piece, especially with the pig’s thickness. The best solution I’ve come up with is hollowing out the back of the pressed palette at the thickest point. It’s relatively labor intensive but I don’t plan to make too many of these. I’m also in the process of experimenting with three new porcelains clay bodies to see if one is less prone to warping.

This past month, I’ve also designed the spring palette of my seasonal palette series. I tried a few designs and the house finch in a rose bush was the one I liked best.

Most recently, I designed a new sea otter brush rest. I’ve been thinking about this design for awhile and finally put it to paper (and subsequently clay). I think these will be especially cute paired with the octopus palette.

The next step will be to make finished pieces from each of these new designs. So far, just the pigs tiles have been glazed but I hope to be listing the palettes and sea otters in my Etsy shop very soon.

I’ve been really busy making palettes this summer. A big thank you to Amber Lane who has kindly included my Honey Bee Palette in many of her photos and videos on Instagram.

I love making the white porcelain palettes but I’ve also missed playing with colorful ceramics. This past weekend’s weather was beautiful so I set aside the time to layout my latest tile table top. The idea for the design came from walking my dogs along the path at Golden Gardens beach.

This patio table is one of the first pieces of furniture James and I bought together. It’s over 20 years old and a little rusted and banged up so it’s more than ready for a makeover. The mesh top is a good substrate for adhering the tiles with thinset. In order to grout the tiles, I’ll tape the underside of the table, apply the grout and remove it when the grout has hardened a bit.

I started making tiled tables as a way to use clay that is too hard to press into molds but is soft enough to roll into slabs and then cut into tiles. They’re also a great way to use up clay bodies and glazes that have been sitting around the studio for a long time.

Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from the more physical routine of tile pressing and work at a slower pace on something. These sgraffito bowls take a fair amount of time to carve but it’s a relaxing, almost meditative, process that yields a very useful item.

This rabbit is the first new tile of the year. Designing tiles is the most fun stage of the the making process; I wish I had more time to do it. I usually try to add three or four new designs every year to my shop but, since there’s not much room in the studio for more molds, it may be time to retire some of the older designs. Even though I feel like my work is evolving in some ways, there’s a lot of sentimental attachment to those tiles. It’s going to be a challenge.

As a tile maker, I make a lot of plaster molds.

This is especially true lately as I’ve been pouring, as opposed to pressing, tiles and palettes. Unlike regular clay, there are chemicals in the casting slip that break down the plaster. This means I need to make new molds fairly often.

This weekend everyone here was either working or doing the Seattle to Portland Bike Ride so I was on my own. I took this quiet time to finally finish my tiled patio table or, as Romy affectionately calls it, “the hippie dippy table project”.

It all started a couple of months ago when James and I were on a Saturday morning drive. I looked out the car window and saw a topless steel patio table on the side of the road. I immediately thought, hmmm, that looks like it’s in pretty good shape; it would make a nice tile project. So I said, “Stop, let’s get it!” He said it wouldn’t fit in the back of the Prius and kept driving.  Later that day I recruited Ollie to come with me in the Volvo wagon to see if it was still there. It was and he helped me lift it into the car.

When I got home, I tipped the table over onto a thick piece of spare plywood that I had in the basement and traced the top. It took a little work to reacquaint myself with my old jigsaw but I figured it out eventually. The rest was pretty easy. I made a lot of tiles from slabs of clay using cookie cutters. I then glazed them with a variety of cone 5 glazes I have in the studio. The last steps were laying them out, setting them with thinset, and grouting. I did apply a sheet of waterproofing barrier on top of the plywood. I’ll probably be leaving the table out in the rain and I’m hoping the barrier will protect the plywood from water damage.

I finally finished this series of panels a couple of weeks ago. Each panel took quite a bit of time as I worked on them slowly, completing various stages while working on other pieces. One of my goals this year is to limit firings by only firing fully loaded kilns. It saves a lot of time and energy (both my physical energy and electricity) but requires a lot of patience. These panels will be part of a series that counts from 1 to 12. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with this series yet but they will be part of a tessellating animal calendar at the very least. More about this in a future post…