Hi Andy, I want to express my gratitude towards you and your channel. I have been fighting depression for many years and never could really find a hobby I liked until I came across one of your videos a couple years ago. It was love at first sight! Your content is amazing, the way you explain things in your videos is just perfect. I remember extracting dirt from my backyard and processing it into pure clay and doing my first ever pottery work, which was a mug. I'm now fully invested in this and love that I can do beautiful art and crafts with clay. Thank you again and please never stop. We need people exactly like you on this platform. Me and my wife watch all of your videos ! Merry Xmas and happy new year, Brazil is with you!!!
Thank you so much for telling your story. I am glad my videos can help you with depression, I feel like primitive pottery helps me stay commented with nature which helps my mental state.
This is more like the style that the Choctaw do out in the homelands! Great work, Sir! That looks like you are starting to have even more fun than ever!!! I know I am! I have seen those smudges so shiny that iridescent colors relflect off of it!
it may be more of a modern thing, but most of the Choctaw potters that I know practice smudging but they don't use paints...The old Choctaw pots have paint and no smudge on some of them... they just scratch the design into the surface of the finished clay on the newer ones... I have to watch it again! love the video! @@AncientPottery
Started the video and I immediately was questioning, "Dude, are you wearing squeaky shoes?!" 😂 Really enjoying your videos! I'm very glad I found them, thank you for putting in all your effort and sharing your passion and knowledge with everyone else 🥰
@AncientPottery I'm very fond of those birds so thank you for not getting rid of them in the edit it's a reminder of how natural pottery making truly is
The photos of the "all-over" smudged pots were breath-takingly beautiful. Would you consider doing a demo for an "all-over" smudge firing where the pots end up smudged inside and out? Great video! Thanks Andy!
One of the best parts of my week is seeing a new upload from you! Always learn something new and get inspired to get back at it. Thank you for sharing your passion with us. Question: because the smudging is entirely very fine carbon, does it to some extent help the vessel hold water better?
Thanks! That's a good questions, but I don't know the answer. I have seen people speculate that it had something to do with sealing but I have never seen any experiments done on this. This might be a good idea for a future video 🤔
Awesome! So inspiring! It’s so important to see bot success and how things don’t always go to plan in ceramics. I’m a MS ceramics teacher in Marana, and it so great to show your videos to my classes so they can see what is being done right here in our own back yard!
I enjoy watching your firings and learning as you show your actual results. You’re not afraid to show how your work came out. Whether it’s was not expected or came out perfect. I liked how you showed the interior of the bigger bowl with the fine cracking. This is exactly how to learn! By trying new things and seeing what works. You’re a great teacher!
That was a fun watch, Andy! As always, I loved your music choices, and I suspect you brought the bird with you for the ambiance! I haven't tried organic paint yet, but I'm working my way towards it.
I love that you share youre failures, we can learn just as much from what we shouldn't do as hiw to do it the right way! Id be interested in learning more about the techniques behind the black on black but i understand if thats not your wheelhouse
There are lost of good videos and books showing the black on black technique. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SkUGm87DE0k.htmlsi=QhKh-0VANC7WEX62
Very cool! I'm here in Finland and you've got me wondering if I could fire some small earthenware in my stone fireplace! Guess I'll just have to try it and see! Worst case, I turn some wet clay into some dry clay.
Thanks to you I went out and brought back three pails of clay over the last couple of days. What else can you use for smudging than yucca? Don’t have that in Canada. Plan on taking some of your online classes.
Hey Andy, super weird question but would you ever consider coming to a small town in Pennsylvania and doing some education stuff? I recently moved to a town that used to ahve the largest brick/terracotta factory in the world. That went out of business due to changes in materials for construction (PVC/Plastic sewer pipe etc, wood frame houses with vinyl siding etc) and of course, the steel and coal industries have died as well. The town has shrunk by more than half in 50 years. There's so much to offer here, including a clay rich soil, and I think the place could really benefit from some influx of knowledge and purpose. I'm not asking you to move here but you have such great knowledge, experience and talent that I think possibly doing some courses here would be amazing. Obviously it wouldn't be for free etc.
I'm learning about the organic and inorganic carbon content of wild clay, and temperatures needed to burn that carbon out of the clay. Pottery, the never ending tale, cheers
Andy, you may remember I have had problems with staining at the bottom of pots in the kiln. Well it turns out that the inorganic carbon burns out at about 900 C and it needs plenty of oxygen. If there is insufficient oxygen then it will take it from the red iron oxide, changing it to black iron oxide (less oxygen in the molecules). This can cause black heart and pitting. So I need the temperature rise to be slower above 600C hold the kiln at 900C for longer. Making the pot bottoms thinner certainly helped but this bit of info certainly has cretaed a path for further experiment, cheers@@AncientPottery
Wow, great video. Thanks, I feel I learned an awful lot of history and some small understanding of the areas involved. Also loads about the firing process. You say the personal foid bowls were all smudged, did food stick less to the smudged bowls? It looks sort of glazed. Thanks again for a really interesting video. 👍
As always, good stuff. Im amazed at the smudging effect. The glossy finish is beautiful. How much of that is hand polishing and how much is from smudging?
Always draw black color right to the rim. And instead of getting cloudly black spots after firing you'll get nice black color everywhere. And people will think this is just part of the pattern which is planned be black 😎
I’ve had good luck smudging the inside only using a flagstone base. If the pot has a very even rim and the flagstone has a flat surface they can make a fair enough seal. I lay the flagstone on top of the hot coals and stick 1 or 2 dried corncobs inside the bowl laying that upside down on the stone.
Hello Andy, I love your videos, you are a great Potter and teacher, very thorough and easy to understand, I'm wanting to learn how to do black on black pottery,, can you do a video on this sometime ?
I agree black on black is fascinating pottery. But I only make pottery like the ancients, that stuff was invented in the mid-twentieth century and is still being made by Native potters in New Mexico so I won't be making a video about it unless one of the Native potters volunteers to let me follow them around with a camera. Here are a couple old, good videos about Maria Martinez and her process for making it ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nyAZYXrlL3w.htmlsi=Glcs2glP_ncxMPcu ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SkUGm87DE0k.htmlsi=M2nw0LHy-QBvtLH0
Maybe. You want to keep the ramp up in temperature and the ramp down as slow and even as possible. Things like the wind I experienced in this video are like a bellows that causes the fire to heat up very quickly and unevenly. I'm not saying it couldn't work, but you would need to be careful.
As far as I know it is just the color, but maybe some experimentation is needed to see if it helps to seal the surface or some other practical benefit.
Great video! So I've seen both recent and historic examples of smudging AFTER primary firing, moving the pots while they are still hot, on top of organic matter. Is that still called smudging? Are there ancient examples of it in the SW?
Yes, I have done both in the past and the results are the same. I think this method is easier and more idiot proof. There is no way to say for sure how the ancient pots were smudged, you can't tell the difference by looking at the pot.
No I don't although I have some ideas. You just need to smother the hot pot with small organic matter, leaf litter, pine needles or some other such thing.
What does smudging do to pottery? I am looking into how to make my own pottery and never head of smudging it and am curious as to why you do it and what does to the pottery?
Can temper particles be too fine? I’ve grinded up some fired pottery but it is super super fine and seems like it won’t do anything. Your temper is quite big and see it in the clay clearly
I don't think temper can be too fine. The difference between clay and other material isn't just the particle size but also the particle shape as clay is flat plates and others and little chunks. That is why volcanic ash and diatomaceous earth work as temper even though they have very small particle sizes.
Andy: the latest RU-vid video on the Trek Planner, entitled, "What I found on top of this boulder was amazing" shows some interesting pot sheds. One in particular is the rim of a pot with black in its center and a heavy slip on both sides. I'd really like your comment on this piece if you watch it.
It is not slip. This is all the same clay all the way through, but in the firing only a rind oxidized and the inside became black from the carbon that was naturally in the clay. This is actually very common.
This makes me think about their culture, and if they might have had aphorisms such as "Don't dig your pots before they're cool"... which would mean be patient or else you'll screw everything up and destroy your hard work.
Wow, great video. Thanks, I feel I learned an awful lot of history and some small understanding of the areas involved. Also loads about the firing process. You say the personal foid bowls were all smudged, did food stick less to the smudged bowls? It looks sort of glazed. Thanks again for a really interesting video. 👍
It is possible that there was some practical benefit to smudging such as the food will stick less or the pot is less porous. But as far as I know nobody has ever tested this.
