Tips for Pulling Handles Off Of Mugs

I think that handles are one of the main skills that separate the real potters from the wannabes, especially on mugs. Almost every time you see a great handle it was made by a potter who had what I would call professional training of several years at a university, college etc.  And most of those have been pulled directly off the mug. I know there are many other types, and lots of those handles are great as well but everyone should have a handle that is pulled off the cup in their handle making repertoire.
I am still working on this. It took me many years to "see" what was wrong with my "pulled first and then attached handle". Three years later I am still working to perfect this type of handle. I suspect that it will always be a work in progress.
One thing that I find is that if you do not time the stiffness of the mug correctly you can easily distort the cup when pulling the handle which may distort again in the firing due to clay memory. This would always discourage me trying to make this type of handle.
In order to be able to attach a handle without distorting the cup when I was learning this type of handle I would keep a variety of fast food cups on hand and stick them into the cup until they fit snugly and make a good seal. For the initial attachment I would put my left hand inside to support the wall of the cup. But once I started pulling the handle I placed a correctly sized fast food cup inside the rim until it fitted tightly. That way - no distortion when applying and working on the handle and less chance of clay memory distorting the cup in the firing. I have a variety of different sized cups on hand for this. Also as a final touch I rotated a tightly fitting cup inside the clay cup to "set" the roundness of the rim.

Many tips also mention tapping the end of the handle to compress the butt end. You can do this with your forefinger, or tapping on the table or use a wooden paddle. For a long time I just did not see the reasoning behind this until it finally hit me (duh!!). The more compressed the clay, the smaller the distances between the particles and so the less they will shrink when drying - so this prevents cracks from developing at the joint.

Tapping to compress the end of the handle prior to attachment

Pulled handle pugs prior to compressing on left and after compressing
 on right - note its oval shape and smooth edges of the butt end.

Rather fuzzy pic - but it shows the scoring that leaves an unscored
edge all round the butt end.

Another tip is not scoring the butt end right to the edges. This way you have a solid "rim" around the butt and when you apply it it leaves a slight crack with smooth rounded edges all around. You can accentuate this with a pencil after you have attached the handle and it has set up a bit.This slight crack tends to fill with glaze - and depending on the glaze will nicely emphasize the join.

I never score the bottom join and never compress it either and never seem to have problems on the bottom join. I always cover the cups overnight and after that air dry them. - even speed stuff up after that in the oven or kiln with no cracking.

Three cups with the pulled handle

So after three years I find that I have finally managed to put on handles with this method just as easily and fast as those that are pulled first but they look so much better - they seem to grow more out of the cup. However looking at the above three pics I think that they still need work - they seem to stick out a bit too much. It is hard to make them comfortable for two fingers yet look stylish.

Right now I seem to have gotten into a rut in the shape and style of pulled handle off the mug. My next goal is to work on the blended handle - where the join either top or bottom or both are fully blended into the cup. I really love those, but they are more time consuming to make, though well worth the effort.

The Gift of Really Seeing

As the year ends with Christmas shoppers hopefully buying lots of gifts of pottery I am wishing everyone success in their journey in clay. My aim for 2013 is to make better pots - especially in terms of form. For this I need to keep training my eye - need to really look at pots. Here is a cup that I bought about 8 years ago. I rarely make bright blue pots and so I guess that's why I sometimes buy them. At the time I thought it was not bad - not great but not bad. Years later I can see that it is a very bad handle and not a very stylish cup at that - not a good foot nor an inspiring form - so actually a pretty bad cup.

Cup with fly away handle - lacking a good foot and
uninspiring shape that I bought several years ago..

My mentorship with Steven Hill  really helped me to look critically at pots and actually see what I was looking at. I thought that over the past few years I had become much more adept at this - especially at discerning good form. I was quite disappointed recently when I bought a cup and totally missed the handle part of it. I bought it because of the colour - a rutile blue - which we have been trying to get in our gas kiln at the Guild with mixed success. It would be an example of what we would strive for. It was not until I brought it home and looked at it again that I realized how bad the handle was.

Handle all wonky - it would not have
 taken much for the potter to round out the handle at least.

Yet it was so obvious - I had been seduced by the colour. I was so disappointed in myself.. It just goes to show you really need to work at "seeing" a pot as a whole. So how can we expect the buying public to choose good design and a well made pot if an experienced  potter like myself can't see it sometimes. So here is wishing everyone  in 2013 the gift of really seeing - seeing good form, good function and making great pots.

Fusion Mentorship - November Meeting

Well it was another great meeting - well worth the drive in iffy weather on partially snow covered roads. Fortunately at this time of the year and on early Saturday morning there was little traffic on our portion of the Trans Canada highway . At the October meeting I was last to talk about my work - so this time I had to go first. I was not able to glaze any of the pots as our gas firing was not until the following week so I just took bisque ware of my three themes.

One thing that stuck in my mind that Keith said and that echoed Steven Hills philosophy - you have to keep improving. If you make a great pot - next time make an even better one. If you keep on doing the same thing your pots eventually end up stale.

Well I had worked on the singing ladies/go-go-girls. This time I threw and altered them. It was fun to do - especially adding details - sort of like playing dress-up with dolls - though you would think I would be way too old for that. They ended up a lot fatter, with less movement that I had hoped - so I now have the Three Sopranos. They actually are functional with the hands being stoppers on spouts on the left and right ones and the heads are lids. Next time I will try for thinner and taller and a more youthful looking trio. I would also like the push outs to fit together better so when they are side by side they fit tightly.

The Three Sopranos - thrown and altered. (Photo by Judith Ingwersen)

The Bottom Billion again I had trouble with - I had a sketch which I liked better as the top had much more emphasis that what I actually ended up with. We've all seen aid trucks handing out food in Africa and all the hands reaching up to grab the food - that was what I was looking for. The fish dangling from the top represents the food - and only one fish - so little of it for all those people. The pot sits on an oil slick - representing the natural resources and pollution that is left behind when companies come in to mine the natural resources. The reason that all those countries are in the bottom billion is that they have corrupt governments and are rich in natural resources. That way it is easy for companies to bribe the government officials, so the companies get the resources at a bargain price, leaving the pollution behind while the general population does not benefit at all. I highly recommend the book "The Bottom Billion" which deals with why a billion people are living in 12th century conditions and what can be done about it.

The Bottom Billion - hands reaching up. A fish is supposed to
hang down from the round knob under the  top. (photo by Judith Ingwersen)

The hands need work and the shape of the pot needs to correlate better with the hands and the oil slick needs to be a much more integral part of the pot.

We all agreed that the top needed more work, with suggestions that the fish had biblical connotations and so maybe added gold luster to it would really add emphasis to it. Someone else thought the top was a book - but  it was just a top. Now that I think of it - an open book would be a good idea - more connection to the book A Bottom Billion.

The nuclear theme had me stumped for a while and I finally managed to come up with some ideas as a first go. The cooling towers for nuclear plants have a shape that is ideal for a cup - and I made a spoon that has a handle like a steam cloud that added a whimsical touch to a serious subject. Canadian nuclear reactors are very different from those used in the rest of the world - they do not use cooling towers. However due to the Three Mile Island accident in the U.S. in the 1980's, cooling towers have become synonymous with nuclear power plants,. Candu reactors have fuel in bundles that is quite attractive design wise. So I made a trivet out of the end design of a fuel bundle. So that is my source of heat. (After all - all that a nuclear plant is - the most complicated method we have a boiling water.) I was going to use this as trivets for each cup, but it is way too time consuming to make them, unless I develop a casting approach to them. So instead to using them under the cups I decided to make a coffee pot and put it on the trivet.

Candu fuel bundle

The term Rad on the coffee pot - has a double meaning - rad being a unit of radiation and also meaning fantastic, unique, great -. I called it The Coffee Set for the 45%. (45% is the % of the world population that supports nuclear power according to a Sept 2012 global survey.).) The cups I decorated with slogans like 100% carbon free and I made plain trivets for the cups with other slogans - like "Nuclear power or climate change?" and "Power to save the world!' - sort of hokey - but it's a start.
The cups do not match the coffee pot in design, so next time I will try a cooling tower coffee pot.

Coffee set for the 45%. (Photo by Judith Ingwersen)

I need a better method to transfer the writing to the pots. I used the gum arabic and linseed oil with stains and xerox copies as shown on Ceramics Art Daily.
http://ceramicartsdaily.org/ceramic-supplies/ceramic-colorants-ceramic-supplies-2/photo-lithography-on-clay-a-surprisingly-simple-way-to-print-images-on-clay/

The pots really need to be a soft leather hard to transfer the printing well - so I need to practice more or else come up with another method using silk screening or decals. It was suggested that I glaze them bright yellow with black lettering - that would really stand out but those are the colours used on nuclear hazard signs. So not an image that I want to project. I want to project an everyday, safe, industrial process.

I did not do any work on the rock wall forest vase for this meeting.
So I have my four themes - rockwall forest vase, the signing ladies/go-go girls, the Bottom Billion and the nuclear theme. Maybe too many themes, but I am sure that I will narrow things down as time goes on. Our next meeting isn't until the middle of January so hopefully should have lots of time to work on things.

Fusion Mentorship - October Meeting

Well I had 5 weeks to ponder, to make and to fire my pieces for the October meeting. The whole meeting was sort of like Christmas morning with the opening of presents - each participant took their turn unwrapping and presenting their pots - it was so exciting as I couldn't wait to see what they had come up with! My fellow journey women all came up with brilliant ideas! I was totally blown away by some of the creativity - wish I had thought of some of those things!

There are several  themes that I decided to pursue. First I decided to continue with the stone fence theme from our farm. The huge fences remain as evidence of an earlier age when hard work was the norm. The fences are made from glacial granite boulders and as there were few flat stones building these fences was not easy. I often look at those carefully placed stones and imagine how the calloused hands of the farmer were the last ones to touch those stones over 100 years ago.

I thought I might start the stone fence and then turn it into a pot and then  turned it back into the fence again. However that prototype turned out rather ungainly and so I abandoned it, though I will think about it some more. I decided to do what I had done previously, the fence coming from just one side - so not very original but I think right now it is to get as many things out there and see where they will lead. I find the forest on our farm very magical - mysterious at times and full of spirits of the past as many areas of what once were fields have now returned back to the forest, with only overgrown stone fences cutting straight lines through the trees. It is certainly easy to breathe the air there - it is pure and cleansing. So I keep coming back to stone fences and trees. Some suggestions from the meeting were to extend the vase - add wings to make it bigger. That reminded me that I had really gotten into a rut with these slab vases - all basically the same shape. So will have to work on that.

Forest vase with stone fence at end

It was suggested that pot shape had
 possibilities without the stones - will try to
make bottoms more interesting,

So the second theme was to be based on a book that I had read - The Bottom Billion - about how a billion people today live in conditions that existed during the 12th century. I have been thinking of doing something with that idea for quite some time. I made a sketch but what developed was very different again from what I had sketched - it ended up sort of like forest spirits. Keith's comment was that it had lots of movement - with which I agree - however the overall idea that it projects is not very clear - certainly not people in need nor forest spirits.

Sketch - lots of faces with hands reaching out for a dangling fish. -
kind of representing the bottom billion.

What I ended up with - not sure what it represents.

The third theme that I decided to follow came from Keith's comment on some of my applique work - that I could carry it further and the pot would actually become the figure. Again I had made sketches of people pots but surprise, surprise - again diverged greatly from the sketch. It ended up a bottle that became a woman singing - it was done with slabs and when joined it was pushed out to round it out and to create the fullness of the body.

On left - the slab template was to be another stone fence theme.
On right  a singing lady from thrown pot

Trio of pots - trying to show lots of movement -
sort of go-go girls from the 1960's.

Slab pot from stone fence template - ended
rounding up the areas to fill them out. It ended up
rather stilted as the top stick up too stiffly-
I think thrown will give it more movement.

The last theme that I thought I would try to work on was some sort of connection to the nuclear industry. Deep River is the company town for Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Labs - sort of the Los Alamos of Canada. Our town welcome sign says - Home to Canada's Atomic Pioneers.  Nuclear energy is something that I am familiar with as I worked for over twenty years in Public Affairs at Chalk River giving tours of the reactors. This theme will be hard one - as there is a lot of negative connotation to the nuclear theme - but of course that is not what I want to convey. This will require some serious thinking on my part - will need lots of alpha waves for this as I am totally in the dark on how I should start. As a result I did not do any pots for this one, but put in lots of thinking and research on ideas and  images on the web.

Nuclear? Be happy!

So next meeting on Nov 24 - so will really have to think, sketch, plan and work to pull something further from those themes.

Imagine - How Creativity Works - Part 2: Unconcealing the Working Memory

In his book Johan Lehrer explains about the second essential tool of the creative process - the working memory. The prefrontal cortex of the brain is where the working memory is located - this is where it connects all the ideas, experiences that we have had. It allows us to unconceal their connections and allow us to reject or choose the ones we want to express. The more things and experiences you are exposed to, the more unconcealing there is to do and the more you will have to choose from.

Once you have an insight, you need lots of work to refine it. You need persistence to fine tune that flash of insight. This is where the unconcealing of the working memory comes in. You need to be focused and you need to persevere in examining the problem - trying this and that to get the best possible outcome. This is where caffeine or amphetamines can be of use - they allow you to stay alert and to concentrate on unconcealing all those connections in the working memory. Also if you are unhappy, though you are less likely to have an insight, unhappiness can act like a small dose of amphetamines and you become more observant and persistent - so it helps in refining an idea. Severe sadness if often associated with creativity.

There is a third aspect to the creative process that Lehrer talks about - letting go. It means that we need to be able to make mistakes, we do not need to be perfect. The area of the brain called DLPFC  is associated with impulse control. It is the last area of the brain to fully develop in children and it stops us doing things like stealing, grabbing at food, etc. It acts like mental handcuffs. When we worry about making mistakes, about what people will think when we make art - those are the DLPFC handcuffs. Jazz musicians - once they start improv, their DLPFC becomes deactivated. Improve comedians at Second City are taught to do the same. Once you are free - so to speak - you now need to have something to say - art, song, jokes etc. - you need to start creating.

When do you know what kind of creativity you need - insight or unconcealing?

If you feel you are getting closer to the solution, then unconcealing is needed - so go get a coffee and mope over your bad luck as you work on the problem. If you feel you have hit a brick wall, then you need an insight so go do something different like take a stroll on the beach, listening to you favorite relaxing music.

So analyze your problem - insight or unconcealing and let go!  And do not worry about what people will think!

Imagine - How Creativity Works. Part I: Insights

The Fusion mentorship program has made me think about creativity and so when I came across this book in our library - 'Imagine - How Creativity Works', by Johan Lehrer,  I just had to take it out. What an amazing book! He writes that our most important talent is our ability to imagine what has never existed! 

It explains various types of creativity (that it is a catchall phrase for several distinct types of thought processes.), their the biological connections in the brain, how to increase your chances of having creative thoughts, etc, etc. and he gives lots of examples.

The first part deals with insight creativity - those moments of insight when out of the blue a totally new solution comes to us. He explains how those will never happen until you are totally stumped in trying to solve a problem and have given up and then - and only then, will you perhaps end up with an insight that will lead to the solution. Feeling frustrated is essential to the creative process.

Brain studies have shown that scientists can predict up to 8 seconds before a creative insight occurs - there is a huge firing of steady alpha waves in the right hemisphere and then, as well, just before the insight occurs the visual cortex often is silenced. (We've often seen people cover their eyes when thinking hard.). If there are no alpha waves in the right hemisphere then the problem will never be solved, even if people are given obvious clues to the problem.

How to increase your chances of insight? Be happy, (watch funny movies, shows), relax,  no caffeine, no alcohol or drugs, (which all dampen activity in the right hemisphere), day dream (but it must the right kind of day dreaming where you are still somewhat aware so you can capture the daydream,) lay in bed when first waking up (that is when your right hemisphere is most active) and let your mind wander (set your alarm a bit early so you do not have to rush out of bed in the morning). I wrote about this in an earlier post - the creative writing course students at MISSA were instructed to take a nap in the afternoon to increase their creativity. Also by adding constraints to how a problem can be solved you are more likely to get stumped and so need to become more inventive - have to look beyond the obvious - like in Haiku vs "usual" poetry. Inability to focus - where you are open to all sorts of ideas and possibilities also results in more creative ideas. Being surrounded by a blue background rather than a red one also helps - just thinking of far horizons (blue sky) or beaches (blue water) increases the alpha waves in the right hemisphere.

Trying to force an insight - relentlessly focusing on it - has the opposite effect. It never gets you to the creative insight. You need to go away and do something different, forget about the problem. Do something to get you to relax and into a happy positive mood.
So do whatever it takes and let those alpha waves roll in!