Compost!

Compost? Is this the handbuilt stoneware blog? Yes and yes. Compost!

Santa (in her infinite wisdom) brought my husband Bill a tee shirt that says “Compost—can you dig it?” And indeed he does. How is this pertinent to Kahoka pottery? Those pumpkin pots, that’s how. Slabs of clay are smoothed down over pumpkins to share their wonderful organic shape. To a handbuilder, those ridges and curves are more interesting than the perfect round accomplished on a wheel. Than anything can be added (upside down as previously described) to that pumpkin pot—leaves, figures, letters, or nothing at all.

Once a year I carefully select a pumpkin at the farmers’ market to use as my new model. I seek out an unprecedented size or shape and favor the pumpkins with deep ridges that remind me of Cinderella’s coach. At some point in the season, I use my clay to make a mold of that pumpkin since I know my organic globe is

time limited. After valiant service (often of nearly a year), the pumpkin succumbs to old age and lands in the compost. Our compost is in a square made of railroad ties, one on each side and a couple ties high; that’s plenty of space for digging in the new offerings (which are all veggie in nature) so they don’t attract critters.

Spring comes and the compost erupts into a motley patch of fledgling avocado trees, lots of squash of all kinds, some tomato plants, and more of those glorious pumpkins. Bill fusses that vines are crawling out of the compost square and he can’t mow out there. I tell him not to bother them and to gently curl them back in closer to the bin if they are encroaching on his turf. Those vines are on a mission, and it’s all good!

Inside, outside, upside down

Having grown up working with textiles, I still mix my metaphors and borrow techniques. People often ask about the “appliques” I put on many of my pots. They are great fun and can thematize or personalize any stoneware. I make molds out of clay and simply fire them unglazed. For the shapes, I use seashells, small toy plastic animals, real seed pods or corn cobs---just about anything that strikes me as a potentially interesting and transferable shape when reversed. I use a few commercially produced molds as well.

I particularly like the contrast of creating figures from my buff clay and applying them to pumpkin pots (that is, made over pumpkins) that are made of darker clay. The contrast works well with my usual glazing and firing process: bisque firing and then brushing on a black glaze, wiping most of that off, and applying a clear glaze and my signature rim of “Saturation Gold” (which is simply dark with metallic highlights unless applied heavily). The clays are all non-toxic and the glazes all food safe when properly fired.

The appliques can go on anywhere inside or outside a pot. I enjoy watching students learn to handbuild so that the surface they want to use is the one exposed. It becomes automatic over time, but challenges some---and is perhaps most difficult for potters accustomed to throwing on a wheel and having both sides available for embellishment. In my studio, since pots are frequently upside down when they are made (typically by draping and pressing clay down over a pumpkin or other round object) and any inscriptions or additions are applied, I can always tell which students did well in geometry. As much as I love spacial challenges, I have carefully put in place (after scoring and adding slip) more than one figure that would have been permanently up-side down when the pot was flipped right side up!

Compost Heaven

There is a lot of action in the compost pile these days! Ours is a generous size—a railroad tie in length on each side and a couple of ties high. All year, I make pots over pumpkins. I love their irregular curvy ridges and overall great forms. Eventually those pumpkins give way, however, so I make clay molds of the ones with the shapes and sizes I like best. Then I can still make pumpkin pots when pumpkins are not available. The succumbing real pumpkin disappears into the compost until late spring when its seeds germinate to remind me of its heroic past in my studio. By July I have the biggest tangle of vines you’ve ever seen, with magnificent leaves of myriad shapes and sizes not only from pumpkins but other seedy sources too. Then we dig all the new compost into one side of the pile and let the verdant vines cascade over the other sides of the compost square and into the yard. I cut the largest leaves off to use to shape platters and plates. Their veining is wonderful, their shape pure summer-- talk about organic! Who says pumpkins are only about autumn?