Open Door Days This Week! (and updated stake pick-up time) – Wednesday, May 15, 1:00–5:00 pm & Sunday, May 19, 3:30–5:30 pm

Hello Friends of the Staunton Clayground!

We hope to see you for one of our “Open Door” days this week! If you missed our Open House, now is a great time to come visit us, tour our studio, ask questions and see what we’ve been up to. Did you come and paint your own garden stake on April 20? Then this is a great time to come and pick it up! Do you have a friend or two who couldn’t make itto the Open House in April? Bring them along!

Our door will be open on Wednesday, May 15 (that’s tomorrow!), from 1:00 to 5:00 pm and on Sunday, May 19, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm*.

Curious about the process of making a garden stake (before and after you do your amazing paint job)?

They were all so great! It was hard to pick just a few to feature here. I’m not worried though, because soon all of your garden stakes will be spread across Staunton, making our town smile

Clockwise from the top left in the above photo:

First, we take stakes that we have cut from rolled slabs of clay and bisque fire them to a temperature of about 1950 degrees F. This makes them harder and less fragile, so you can work with them without worrying too much about breaking them.

Second, you come along and unleash your creativity using paints called “underglazes.”

Third, once those are dry, we apply “wax resist” to the bottoms and edges to keep those parts dry and clean, and then we brush the top with two layers of a clear glaze (notice how it looks white before it’s fired, but don’t worry, your beautiful designs are still underneath!) and load them into the kiln.

Then we fire them again, but this time to a temperature of about 2160 degrees F (this is a “Cone 5” firing), which causes the top coat of clear glaze to transform, turn glossy and reveal all of your art underneath! It also makes your stake weatherproof, so you can put it out in your garden and enjoy it all year long 😀

If you have a problem making either of these two days, don’t worry! Get in touch and we’ll work something out.

If you haven’t been down to visit us yet, the entrance to the Staunton Clayground is located at the back of the post office building at 123 W. Frederick St. The door is marked “The Cellar” and will have a sign on it reading “Staunton Clayground.” Come on in and down the stairs and you’ll find us!

There are 10 parking spaces reserved for “The Cellar” in the lot across the street from our entrance, at 116 N. Lewis Street, in which you are free to park. There is also plenty of nearby street parking if you prefer.

Looking forward to seeing you!

*The second time has been updated from the previously published time for Sunday.

More New Wheels, Glaze Making, Our First Kiln Firing and... Just One Week To Go Until Our Open House!

It has been a very busy week here at the Staunton Clayground! We have been working like mad trying to get everything ready for our Open House next weekend and first classes after that, which we are so excited about! (Don’t forget, our very first “Intro to Clay” class starts on Monday, April 22, and there are still spots available! More on that below.)

Let’s clay!

First off, we unboxed and set up our new member wheels, a Shimpo Whisper and a Speedball Clay Boss. They have larger wheel heads (14”) and can handle more weight, and having them means that members will always have a guaranteed space to come and work in, separate from any ongoing class (if you recall, we have a bank of 9 wheels for classes already set up and ready to go)! Aren’t they enticing? I can’t wait to take them each out for a spin, pun fully intended ;-)

Studio Manager at work!

Then we started in on preparing our line-up of glazes! Jennifer got suited up and, over two days, got all eight of our colored glazes mixed (she actually used a drill with a mixer attachment, but the whisk was more photogenic).

Meanwhile, Cary has been hard at work finishing making kiln cookies, a task we’ve both been hard at work at for weeks, sometimes with the help of friends and family! For those of you who don’t know much about pottery firing, kiln cookies are not nummy treats, although we certainly could have used some of those more than once over the last couple of weeks!

They work kind of like coasters with a mug of tea: you put your glazed pieces on them while they’re in the kiln, because if the glaze runs down and drips, this way you end up with molten glass-like gloop on the disposable cookie instead of on the big, much-harder-to-replace kiln shelf.

Then we got to unload the kiln!

Cary got to lift the lid. It was an exciting moment, since this was the first firing we’d ever gotten a chance to do in our new studio!

Can’t wait to start dipping these in our brand new glazes!

Needless to say, we were as close to jumping up and down as we could be in a confined space filled with fragile equipment :-) In the end, all but one tile made it and now we are ready for glazing!

It’s going to be a very fun and busy weekend! With lots more to do before the Open House, just one week away!! We can’t wait to see you there! Not sure how to get there?

Just drop us a line if you still have any questions about how to find us!

And remember, our very first class, an “Intro to Clay,” starts on April 22, the Monday after our Open House. It will cover the basics of wheel throwing and handbuilding, and will be co-taught by Cary and Jennifer. There are still some spots left if you’re interested, and don’t forget to check out the rest of our class line-up for spring and summer. There are quite a few already, but we’re still adding to it! New and exciting workshops are still coming!

So keep watching this space!

Firing Up The Kiln For The First Time!

Well, last week we finally got the finishing touches on our kiln room’s ventilation system, which means that today we could load up and fire for the first time!!

The first things on the agenda were, of course, our test tiles, which had to undergo their initial bisque firing––a lower temperature firing (a mere 1945 degrees F)––in order to become hard and sturdy enough to stand up to glazing.

“Why 300?” you might ask. Well, it isn’t madness, and it isn’t Sparta ;-) We have our reasons! Read on for more details…

You can’t see all 300 in the photo above, but trust me, by the time we were done, they were all in there and we’d filled the kiln!

So, why?

Well, we have two different kinds of clay and are going to have between 8–10 glazes at any given time (we hope!), and we want our students and members to be able to see not only how they each look on their own on each clay, but also how they look in combination with each other! That means a pretty big grid for each clay type, with over 120 tiles in each. We hope it works as well on the wall as it does on paper! We’ll know soon enough.

Tomorrow, after all, we’re mixing up our first batches of glaze!

For now, we’ll leave our kiln to it…

Our Amaco electric kiln is almost ready to fire in this picture, with the last shelves and test tiles ready to get loaded in

Now, some of you may remember us mentioning that we have three kilns in our kiln room. Our Amaco Excel is the first one we’re firing up, as we’re doing some repairs on the others, one of which has a very special legacy. More on that in a future post!

For now, keep watching this space for more glazing updates and Open House news (don’t forget to mark your calendars for Saturday, April 20, from 12–5 pm!). Dates and extra details on our Upcoming Events and Calendar page!

See you soooo soon!

Our Final Glaze Sneak Peek… Cream and Red!

To round out our palette of colored glazes, we knew we definitely needed a white or cream, but we settled on one that is far from boring. “Dappled Light” by Standard is glossy and looks like it is going to offer some interesting and attractive surface variation. That was easy enough, but how to choose a red? There are so many different hues and shades, some with a little more blue in them, verging towards the burgundy or even purple, while others lean more towards crimson or orange. We opted for Standard’s “Iron Red,” an earthier brownish red, as you might guess from the name, though still glossy, with some intriguing breaks in color across the surface of the clay. We can’t wait to see how both of these behave on smooth and textured surfaces!

Mid-fire (Cone 6) glazes 1220 “Iron Red” and 1268 “Dappled Light,” both by the Standard company out of Pennsylvania

We are still deep in test-tile making mode and beginning to get to where we need to be, so we should be able to start testing all of our glazes on our studio clays soon!

Things are moving fast now, so keep watching this space!

The Colors of Giotto and Springtime: Our Third Glaze Sneak Peek

When I was studying art history in Italy, it was clear to see how the colors of the Tuscan landscape were reflected in the art produced by the land’s native artists.

Before the Renaissance had quite begun, there was Giotto, famous for his frescoes that adorn the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi and many others, but also for his architecture. Most know him, if for nothing else, for his graceful bell tower, or Campanile, that stands next to Florence’s famous Cathedral, il Duomo di Firenze (seen here to the right of the cathedral’s façade).

The colored marble used to decorate the outside of the Campanile (and of so many other famous buildings of the time) is a green that reminds me very much of the hues of Tuscan olive groves and cypress trees, along with a warm pink, reminiscent of some seashells’ coloration.

(My little sister used to love combing the beach at Pisa for choice shells. I still have some of the ones that she collected for me).

So often do these particular shades of pink and green appear in this Proto-Renaissance artist’s frescoes and architecture that my first art history teacher used to call them “Giotto colors.”

It is a combination I have had a special fondness for ever since. When I see those two colors together, I can’t help but think of gentle Tuscan springtimes. How, then, could I resist pairing these two glazes for our Studio’s palette, when I saw that they were available?

So, here they are! Bellissimi! The glossy Mottled Green Transparent and matte Mottled Pink glazes, both mid-fire glazes from the Standard company out of Pennsylvania, like all the rest of our palette.

Standard 1225 Mottled Green Transparent and 1234 Mottled Pink mid-fire glazes against a backdrop of Tuscan countryside and the outline of Florence’s Cathedral, or Duomo, with its famous dome by Brunelleschi and its bell tower, or Campanile, by Giotto

Evviva! We can’t wait to try them out and, dare I say, breathe a little of that Renaissance spirit into our Studio.

Stay tuned for more news and for the last installment of our glaze sneak peek series, coming soon!

Glaze test tile making has begun!

With the slab roller assembled and our first of three worktables ready (other two still under construction and awaiting their canvas covers), we are finally ready to start making our glaze test tiles!

For those of you who don’t know your way around a pottery studio just yet, test tiles are an important tool for helping to decide the final look of your finished pieces. You can't do this just by looking at the glazes in their containers, because the color a glaze is before firing is generally completely different from the color it will be after exposure to temperatures over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit in the kiln.

Kiln magic at work!

Well, it’s actually science, not magic, and it’s really cool!

Same mugs!

Notice how what looks like an orangish-brown glaze is actually a cream color after firing, and the one that looked beige when first applied later turned a deep blue.

This is where test tiles come in. Using the same clays we’ll be using with our glazes, we’re creating tiles to test not only each glaze, but how the all of the glazes will look when paired. When all of the tiles are finished, we’ll hang them in grids over our glazing station, so that all of you can see which combinations are just right for your very own creations.

Our first batch of 20

These tiles are freshly cut from a leather-hard slab of clay and imprinted with texture, so that you’ll be able to see how each glaze and glaze combination looks on either a smooth or a textured surface.

If left unglazed, this particular clay will look pure white once fired.

Once we finish with this white clay, we’ll move on to making tiles to test glazes on our speckled brown clay.

To create tests for each glaze and combination of glazes we want to make available for use, we need to make about 125 tiles for each of our two colors of clay.

At this point, we’ve got over 200 left to make, but, as you can see, we are having a grand old time playing at the Clayground with all of our new toys!

Clayground’s owner and founder, Cary, and studio manager, Jennifer, hard at play!

Now that we’re really ramping up to launch, we’ll have more news for you very soon, about first classes, our Open House date and more!

Keep watching this space!