Testing 1 2 3

ByJoseph Travis

At the start of every project, there is a lot of testing as I enjoy that part and a new project is often a great excuse to try something new, new glazes, new clay etc. In the last post I already showed the new clays I am starting with, plus add on to those Blackpool School of Arts buff clay and crank clay, as well as my own standard clay plus my standard clay with approx 5% red iron oxide, added and some addition grog. The first job was rolling out small slabs and measuring 10cm lines on each so…

Recent Tiles

ByJoseph Travis

For a while I have been thinking about tiles as an act of experimentation, they are something that can be created in the fraction of time for throwing, there is a lot less focus that goes into creating them, no hunching over the wheel.  In some ways they are quite disposable. I don’t generally use tile for glaze tests as they don’t have gravity and thickness’s similar to pots but I do use them to test ideas, patterns, new  and more recently my saggars to see what effects are possible.  In these sorts of ways the tiles are part of…

What’s in the Saggar?

ByJoseph Travis

For the uninitiated, I should explain what a Saggar is, it is a big piece of pottery that smaller pottery is sealed in.  Traditionally this was done in Stoke on Trent to protect the pottery from the coal fire that they fired their kilns with. Modern Potters use them to get a reduction environment inside an electric kiln, this stops the kiln from getting damaged and brings some different effects to the pots. I threw a a saggar a few years ago and it has been sat on the top shelf on my studio for a few years now, not…

Let’s Play Hungry Hungry Hippos

Let’s Play Hungry Hungry Hippos

ByJoseph Travis

“The waiting game sucks. Let’s play hungry hungry hippos” Homer J Simpson In January I submitted my dissertation for my Master’s research project. I am surprised by how long the process of writing up can take, but a lot of it is editing and re-editing to ensure I said the right things with the right tone. I am glad the writing process is over, but now we are on the worse part of the process, waiting.

Filming and Editing

ByJoseph Travis

At my last supervisory meeting I was encouraged to create something a bit more visually interesting in my video than I had submitted at the meeting.  The videos I submitted for the meeting were the first videos I had ever tried to edit on Lightworks rather than windows movie maker. I was just trying to get to terms with it all and create a functional lesson in a technique. In my mind after finding applications like Meerkat and Periscope, was that I would just live stream a class with an application like Go To Meeting where the participants can meet…