Moss Beach Ceramics - Matt Brown (Moss) - Ceramics pics

[Herb_Master]

It is always nice if and when one has a guest to let them share the same experience, I usually buy in 2s or 3s!

[Moss]

Don't know if this is of any interest, but I have a few pics up of the demo that Marc Lancet and Masakaza Kusakabe gave at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco earlier this month. I was able to get on stage and trim one of their pieces in an audience interaction sort of thing.

Got to keep the bowl too. :-)

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?u ... feat=email

[Herb_Master]

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?u ... feat=email

Interesting pics!

I don't know what you call it, but that cut away (crimped?) effect on the top of front bowl in pic 2 is nice if done well. It reminds me of the seperation between petals.

I have it on one of my small borneol teacups and it is delightful to view and drink from.

[Moss]

According to Kusakabe-sensei that is a traditional method and is, as you state, to evoke an open flower. He just did that quick to show the technique.

[Aphroditea]

You all interested more in sets or individual pieces. I always wanted to know. I do them both ways, but recently have been doing individuals.

If I do sets, 4 is a bad number I am told. 3 or 5 good?

It rather depends on the cup for me. I have a couple sets and a couple single cups. I do like to drink socially, but I tend to go out to the two nearby tearooms as not many of my friends are serious tea drinkers - so I use my single cups more, but love it when I can bring out a set, too - and a really pretty set would defiantely be nice.

You still do any peices with that green glaze on your website?

[Moss]

No. I don't. It is copper based and if it goes into reduction, which my soda kiln is, it is unreliable, sometimes turning red. The colors on the pieces on the site are from a kiln at the local CC where they don't reduce well and so the green comes out green. I don't have access to that kiln any longer.

I will try a test and leave a few pieces near the flue and see if there is enough air there to not get a good reduction. If it works I will post the results here.

[Aphroditea]

Well, so long as my question has inspired, muse-like, the desire for experimentation

what I know of glazing is only what I have picked up at those glaze-it-yourself pottery places But, my momma always told me it never hurt to ask!

[Moss]

Of course it is good to ask and I love that glaze. I was sort of bummed that our CC's whole color palette was based on not having someone that really could fire the kiln on staff for two days in a row so they simply didn't reduce the kiln.

Once they got someone that could do it, all the glazes started doing what they were "supposed to" and the palette was out the window.

I have seen it in soda and when it is good, it is phenomenal, but it is like a wild horse, you just hold on and never know where it is going to go. I will experiment as I said. If I could get it reliable, it would be a real coup. That color always sells.

Cool that you have been to a glaze it yourself place. That is a lot of fun really. No stress there. I love the chemistry, but you know it is a little consuming.

[bonjiri]

mr moss

thanks for your kind words

i too am a humble student. learning all the time !

this is a cool forum here ! looking forward to learning and sharing !

how long have you been doing ceramics ?

for me i`ve got a lot more to learn ! especially humbling after seeing a watanabe show week at kuroda toen. watanabe specialty is celadon (seiji / sei hakuji)

looking forward to seeing more of your pieces.

amazing !

love to learn about your soda firing.

for me, i have been trying to do a mcNeely process called `cooling reduction`. using water. have been getting okay results. trying to get repeatable results.

cheers

cory

[Dresden]

Being fairly new to tea in general, you guys are quickly giving me the "go out and buy some hand-made pottery" bug!

My wife is gonna kill me...

[Moss]

Get her a nice hanaire?

[Moss]

I have been working in ceramics for 5 years 10 months and 3 weeks or there abouts... My wife and I started together as newly weds to have some art in common as we were both of the artistic sort. She moved toward decoration and surface treatment and I toward forms and the kiln. We still collaborate as children allow.

Humility in ceramics piles in drifts like falling snow on a winter morning. Each piece you see a snowflake, unique and clean only to accumulate so that you look and see drifts of work in every direction that you will never replicate or match. You can only hope to one day make a snowflake of your own to join the others.

I will read more about cooling reduction. I have used water to introduce soda which creates a water reduction, but I do not like the results as much as the dry soda method which creates more yohen and less porridge. I have not introduced water after the soda has been introduced but that would be something I could try.

Cheers.

[chicagopotter]

Chicago - Thanks on the teadust. It is a Laguna I think. Not my own sadly. Also has a nice effect if you re-fire in ^6 oxidation after soda, it turns almost solid olive green with micro-crystals. The woman at Teance asked for me to do that with the bowls they bought. Personally, I prefer the teadust. My clay supplier has his own teadust that I have been begging him to mix again, but he won't and he won't give me the recipe and won't sell me his remainder and he won't use it himself.... ARRRrrrrrghhhhh.

^10 Soda then ^6 oxidation is a lot of firing for one piece!

If you are firing ^10, there are a few tea dust recipes in John Britt's book: http://www.johnbrittpottery.com/pub.htm

I also use a variation of a tea dust based on an amber celadon recipe. Although the results are much better when used in a non-soda ^10 over a high iron body.

Regarding soda introduction -- I use a Nichols based method: wood shavings, soda ash, soda bicarb, whiting, mixed with water to a tuna salad consistency dumped via angle iron over fireboxes. Works pretty well...

[coloradopu]

looking good moss i wish i could fire some of my stuff in soda i got a few i bet would look good all dressed up in bi-carb. but alas i do not know a thing abut it. i am still learning cone 6 chemistry and application. each mound of stuff teaches as mentioned and boy do i got allot to learn. my last experiment to tie it all together: hell one of the eyeballs fell out. go figure.

any who i like your stuff and if you would like a trade i would very much like to do so. for you see i have no soda stuff that is utilitarian. which by the way is what i strive for. if you can't use it and it doesn’t add to the pleasure of making tea then i usually let it fall to the way side.

do you do other types of stuff for use at the table? i would like to see some pics here of that too. i bet in the informal preparation of tea we all have some other mundane wears on the table that serve to aid too some other purpose.

i even have some bowls good for nothing else but the plant they help keep alive.

keep up the good work and keep adding to the shelf.

[woozl]

How 'bout chopstick rests.
Ive seen some cool hagi, but not for sale
Sets of five. I think is the way.
Perhaps make out of scraps, fit 'em small spaces for fire ??

a thought....