We didn’t realize how keyed up we were for the Breakfast session until it was over. Today we feel as if we had been run over by a truck. Hard to find energy to get into what we wanted to do today. We went into the studio. Big kiln had fired as it was supposed to. Since the ten has the really big platters in it we gave them a soak at 180 degrees for 12 hours while the big guy was firing, then it kicked in. Was not finished until late this afternoon.
Cindy trimmed the bowls the VIPs threw yesterday. Some of them required a bit of creativity and special handling for her to be able to do a proper job of trimming but they came out looking good. Here are the bowls before trimming:
One in particular before:
and after:
All in all the bowls turned out really nice after their session on the wheel for trimming.We realized we didn’t explain shrinkage to anyone. The green pots will lose about 12% as they dry and are bisqued. Hopefully no one will think they are too small.
The hand built bowls look really good too:
We should have people starting to show up tomorrow to sign their thrown bowls and over the next week or so hope to collect all the signatures. Then it is just a matter of babying them through drying, bisquing and glazing. We decided we will leave the outsides mostly unglazed to show the texture, throw lines, etc, and just glaze the insides of the bowls. They should look really good.
After we finished with the Empty Bowls bowls (is that redundant?) we worked on the final beanpot handle design. Cindy pulled some handles for our big beanpots, the fourth attempt, and we worked at getting the angles and negative space just right. Here is what we wound up with:
We think it will be about a 4 liter pot. We also think it is fairly faithful to the old 150 year old Quebec Beanpot we used as our inspiration. We’ll see once we get it all the way through the process. We have three built for the show. The best way to test a new product is to take it to the buyers. If we sell a bunch then we know we did it right.
Well tomorrow we’ll head into the studio to do all the things we didn’t get done today and all the things we were supposed to do tomorrow as well so it should be a late Friday night. We’ll see. Hot weather so at least everything is drying as it should. Of course with kilns firing it makes it hot in the studio. Now I sound as if I should be farming. Never happy with the weather!
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nite
Wow! What a morning! Cindy John and I arrived at the studio a few minutes after 5 Wednesday morning. The City TV van arrived about 5:25 and he started setting up. We made some last minute arrangements to chairs etc and the Heather Rondeau from WinHouse arrrived. We talked briefly, started making tea and coffee, then Randall from Fife and Dekel came in with trays of muffins, cinnamon buns, biscuits, scones and the fixings.
From 6 oclock on people started coming through the door. We did the first cut in from the studio a few minutes after 7.
City Host Bridget Ryan and Fire Chief Randy Wolsey did their best impersonations from the movie "Ghost" shortly after this photo was taken.
Cindy had her hands full as every 20 minutes there were two more inexperienced potters ready to try their hands at throwing a pot. The real challenge was it had to result in a usable bowl when the 20 minutes were up as the bowls are to be auctioned off at the fund raiser September 26th.
Darrell Coley of Edmonton Police Services tried to concentrate on his throwing while being interviewed by Bridget. Cindy was ready to lend helping hands when required, and they were required!
The Dinner and Auction will be held at the Sutton Place Hotel. Manager Ike Janacek was one of the participants in the Breakfast Throwathon.
While Cindy was working at the wheel Jim had several hand builders making bowls at one of the tables. There are several ways to build pots without a wheel. We decided that in the interest of time and of winding up with a finished bowl that was going to be fairly functional we would use some bisque bowl shapes and build the bowls inside, using them as molds. One of the big advantages of this is that the wet clay bowl is easy to dump out onto a board and can even be signed when finished. Three representatives of the Edmonton Eskimos Football Team,(wives not players!) were the first three to try the process. Joan, Allyson, and three time Olympic speed skating medalist Isabelle Charest are working here.
Noted Senator the Honourable Dr. Thelma Chalifoux breezed through making her bowl. I asked her if she had done this before and she said, Not with clay but with dough, many times!
One of the stars of the morning was Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel. It was an honour to have him in the studio and he made two bowls for the event.
Of course he was interviewed by Bridget while throwing. The mayor is a very strong proponent for the Edmonton Women’s Shelter , WinHouse, and all the good they are attempting to do.
MLA for CastleDowns, Thomas Lukaszuk, represented the Provincial Government and threw two very nice bowls. Unfortunately one of them was accidentally knocked to the floor. When we recovered it he converted it to an ashtray! He and Mayor Mandel have a friendly wager on now on who will receive the biggest bid at the auction for their respective works!
Thomas also tried his hand at handbuilding!
With final words of encouragement from the mayor we wound up the morning. 
Our job now is to take the bowls created by all the participants, trim them a bit, get signatures from those who have not signed them yet, bisque, glaze and achieve 100% success out of the kiln. No pressure!
Here it is appropriate to put a big thank you to our son John who took all these pictures. He did a great job and was the only photographer there!
Also, it would not have been breakfast without the contribution from Randall Liske of Fife and Dekel. He also threw and handbuilt pots for the event.
Once everyone had left and the TV crew had packed up we took a brief break then headed back into the studio. Put the wheels back in their normal locations, returned the shelves between them, then loaded pots to be bisque fired into both the 10 and 16 cu ft kilns as we continue the race to have some pots ready for the Wholesale show which begins next weekend, August 14.
Today Cindy has to finish the BeanPots , tea pots, and throw mugs, and other small items. I’ve got a bunch of platters, and sushi plates to make as well. Hopefully the weather will not turn any wetter and we can get everything dry.
I’ll also wax all the bisque ware sitting around the studio now in preparation for glazing tomorrow.
The kids leave late Sunday for a visit with all their old friends and family in Dawson Creek and Cindy and I go into Show Mode…flat out for a week and a half. If it wasn’t fun we wouldn’t do it….right?
jim