Let there be light

Florence Nightingale is the girl to go to when you need a little illumination on a subject.

Yes, the potters of Halcyon have turned up again in history. This time during the Crimean War. As you can see, Florence is holding one of Halcyon Pottery’s house lamps as she makes her rounds.

Florence was a pioneer in the field of nursing and what setting could be more challenging than nursing wounded soldiers close to the battlefield. My hat is off those pioneers and the men and women who serve and support our troops who are in troubled areas today.

Deck the Halls?

Well, it looks as if David is ready for the holidays. He is tastefully attired in one of Halcyon Pottery’s Chinese Checker boards.

You remember Chinese Checkers from when you were a kid. Halcyon’s board, however is a fourteen inch wide hexagon, glazed in black and white (very Yin and Yang) and is enhanced with a stamped symbol for longevity.

How special to be held by such a famous figure. I wonder if David is giving his game as a gift….

The hand-made polymer clay marbles come in primary hues marbled with black.

Stamp Out Clay

After the celebration at the Palace and all of the parties have ended, the Potters of Halcyon are back to work.

One of the nicest things about clay is its quality of squishiness. It moves when you push it. You can draw on it, paint on it, make it into snakes, roll it into slabs, carve it with a knife, punch holes in it with whatever.

One technique we are still exploring is stamping. Stamps for clay have to have some special features. They have to have well defined textures and designs because clay particles are larger than ink particles and clay will quickly clog up fine lines and crosshatchings. That makes metal stamps for printing (details and textures are too fine) and rubber stamps (not deep enough definition) mostly unsuitable for clay stamping. Clay stamps should be made of a material that will easily release the clay so it does not get stuck in the stamp. We have found that bisqued clay is ideal – we have a lot of it around, it is easy form and carve, it is porous when fired to bisque temperature making it easily release from moist clay.

stamps - just carved

Some of our stamped pieces remind me of fossils. I used to work for a coal company (I made maps) and some of the souvenirs I have of that experience are lovely pieces of shale with the imprint of ferns in them. They came from the layer of overburden (rock and earth layers lying on top of the layer of coal) just above the coal and retained the imprint of the plant materials that eventually turned into coal.

What is exciting to me when using stamps on clay is that clay’s soft and transformable nature remains evident even when it has been fired to maturity and is hard as a rock.

Halcyon Pottery is again pleased to be part of history.

Halcyon Pottery makes Victoria’s List

We, the potters of Halcyon, were pleased and humbled by the photo below.  It means so much to have your work appreciated and to be invited to the palace is quite an honor indeed.

The platter in the photo is a hand-thrown, white stoneware tray or platter with a pulled handle and an incised decorative medallion.  The piece is thrown and then allowed to become leather hard.  This is a potters term that means the clay is still moist enough to do some shaping, but has dried sufficiently so that it is not as soft as when it was first thrown.

The next step is to turn the piece over and trim the excess clay from the bottom, making a nice beveled shadow line so that it looks as though it lifts slightly from the table it is on.  This is also the time to add the handle – pulled from a tapered ball of clay – by coaxing into a long strap-like handle shape by applied pressure using mainly the thumb and knuckle of the index finger – somewhat like milking a cow, but with less pressure.

When the handle is applied and the dots and swooshes added, one of the potters carefully carves the decorative medallion with fine, very sharp tools.

When the tray is completely dry it is first fired to what is called bisque temperature making the piece easier to handle, but quite brittle.  Glaze is applied by dipping or by brush and a second firing in the kiln yields a vitreous object respendently showing the true colors of the glaze.

Take a look at Halcyon Pottery on Etsy for more information about this piece.