Toff Milway

I've been slacking off on my blogging duties, mostly because I can't find my camera (I think it might have been lifted from my car, but I'd still like to think that I just left it somewhere). I have been busy in my studio, but I'll use today's musings to introduce you to my best friend and the best salt glaze potter I know, Toff Milway. We met at Winchcombe in 1978 and no one has had more influence on me and my work. Toff and Ray Finch had a unique working relationship... I think Ray really admired Toff's technical mind and they would talk for hours, offering questions and possible answers about a variety of technical problems. This was particularly true with the new salt kiln ("Peardrop") that the three of us spent many of our free hours working on. I will tell many more stories about 'Milway' as time goes by. Below is part of the beautiful Cotswold stone cottage and pottery that the Milway family has maintained for many years. The rest is a sampling of work.

Rye Arts Center

This is a group of teapots I'll be packing up today to ship for an upcoming exhibition called "Southern Exposure: Atmospheric Pots and the Penland Connection". This show is part of a county wide celebration of clay arts organized by Westchester Arts Council.
Years ago I was invited to be part of an exhibition of 'southern' potters. It really gave me pause...I was born and raised in Buffalao N.Y., and while it is true that my entire professional career has been spent in the south, I still identify myself as a 'yankee', so it was interesting to be given a new label...one I have since embraced.
Here's The Rye Arts Center link.

Bedrock Pots

This is a body of work that goes back to my earliest introduction to clay. My college experience emphasized sculpture over function (this is TOO common) and I divided my time between both. My functional pots are finely made and maybe a bit too tight, sometimes...these pieces are the opposite in every way. In fact, a lot of the surfaces start with the scraps from the pottery process. I press all kinds of slips and junk into the surface of a wet slab and then stretch and distort it before shaping. later I spray more slips, glaze and ash mixtures. These were all gas fired to cone 10.
I've never made a lot of this work because I've never been quite sure where the market might be. But lately I've been back at it again and I've got some new things in the works.

From Here To There

I'm a little behind in posting this blog. We welcomed a terrific exhibition to our gallery last Friday night. The Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Va. is celebrating their 35th anniversary this year with a traveling exhibition and invited us to host the first show! It is a real honor for us to be included and is a nice acknowledgement of what we've accomplished at LibertyTown in a few short years.
The show arrived last week in two nice crates and we repainted and spiffed up the gallery before hanging the show. Just as we were opening the doors Friday evening 4 fire trucks roared up the street and parked out front while they investigated a curious odor in a house across the way. They spent about an hour blocking the way before they felt that they could leave safely. It worried some of our guests arriving as we've already had one fire in the building a couple of years ago...I just told everyone it was part of a parade to celebrate the opening!

Hatchville Pottery

I'm happy to direct you to my long-time pottery friend Hollis Engley's new blog. Hollis was a good writer long before he made pots...blogging was made for him! We used to wood fire together and he helped me build my kiln. He makes pots on Cape Cod which is too far away but
a nice place to visit.

This Week's Pots

I needed to throw some simple things the other day, so I revisited these crock/spoon pots. I've made thousands of them over the years. The second photo shows some more challenging pots I'm working on and a 'cider jar' that I'm very pleased with. We have a big show opening this Friday at Libertytown, so I'm fighting to get out to the studio this week. It's usually pretty buggy by the time I get out there and close to pitch dark before I head home.

Another Cool Book

This is my other new favorite book...the Chinese version of the previous post. There are 34 plates reprinted from beautiful, rich watercolors depicting the entire process of producing 18th century export ware from mining clay to selling the finished pots. The photos here depict mining by hand, oxen stomping the clay in pits, packaging prepared clay into 'bricks' for transport, making pots, cutting wood for the firing, loading pots into saggers, and an enameling kiln. Just like the Olympics that just passed, the sheer amount of human exertion is impressive.

L'Encyclopedie Art De La Ceramique

I'd forgotten about the richness of bookstores in New England and it was great to know that they still seem to thrive. I love books about the technical aspects of pottery and two I found are particularly delightful. This is the French one...beautiful detailed engravings of clay processing, settling pits, production studios and all kinds of wheel diagrams including templates and details of several different types. The detail is fine, I hope it translates on your computer.
Next, the Chinese version.

Final Travel Photos

I traveled from Boston to Portland, Me. along the water the whole time. Lots of old beach towns in New Hampshire (I forgot that they had oceanfront property!?). I stopped at a particularly shabby town and played some Skee Ball for old time's sake. I've still got the skills that I honed avoiding roller coasters in my youth!
Anyway I spent a great afternoon sailing with Martha Briana, an artist friend of mine, on Casco Bay. This is Martha rowing out to her pink boat in her rubber dinghy. That's John, her maple sugaring friend, standing in the boat. This was all new to me and pretty damn cool. There was a big sailboat race in the Bay with a few really old ones that made me think of pirates. We were heading for the ocean when an amazing fog bank came up and blocked our way.
Portland was a great town...we had the best wood fired pizza...beets, green beans and feta cheese with a balsamic reduction on top.
From there I headed for Deer Isle via another scenic route past more water and a whole lot of book stores! I didn't come across too many pots of interest but I scored a few great books. I'll post some photos later.
Deer Isle is the home of Haystack Mt. School of Crafts...and Farrell Ruppurt, a fine blacksmith and a finer human being. I visited with both and heard a lecture by Chris Gustin and stayed with Paul Cymrot and the entire Simpson family for the night before turning around.

This is Farrell cranking his awesome door knocker ...jointed fingers that drum on the door like we might do on a table! We ate wild blueberries and blackberries and had a beer on the rocky beach.

I returned via the Berkshire Mts. and was hoping to visit with Andrew Coombs, but Port Chester was just too close to NYC and I didn't think I could cope, so I just blasted on home.
I'm generally reluctant to write too much here, so I'm omitting all kinds of things...the Granite Museum, the camp in Conn. where I once worked, Todd Piker and Cornwall Bridge Pottery, Lacoste Gallery in Concord, the new/old gallery in the village of Deere Isle(great pots!) etc.

Test Tiles

I'm still testing a bunch of different slips and glazes and I like to apply them to tiles that can be used later on. These are each about 3" square and 5/8" thick, basically sturdy floor tile. LibertyTown has old tests installed all over the place!
I raw glaze most of my work (except for pots with crackle slip) and I had a problem with a lot of the glaze on glaze pouring that I did...the top glaze seems to pull the bottom glaze right off the rim and they both fall off. I'm not sure if it's a recipe problem or an application problem...or a shino problem, since that's the two base glazes that are troubling me.