Hi potters, I'm taking down the hanging swedish ivy plants in our large hanging planters at the studio. They probably weren't the right plant to choose originally because they shed a lot of leaves which the flies have loved eating and living in. As much as I've loved having real hanging plants, they've proven too challenging to care for given that we need a ladder to water and tend to them. So, I'm replacing them with some artificial plants. BUT, having real plants in the studio is essential, so we'll be adding some more living plants throughout the studio...just where we can access them! In the meantime, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 gallons of potting soil and no plan for it right now! The mixture is roughly: 35% perlite 45% soil 10% compost 10% peat moss A bit of plant food and whatever other studio friends/creatures are growing in there(probably a bit of fungus, but it looks clean) It's stored in garbage bins outside behind the studio near our dock door. So if anyone needs potting soil - have at it! Happy Thursday, Ned

Hello, we changed up the arrangement of the handbuilding tables today and topped them with cement board. The cement board is meant to be a handbuilding surface that you can work directly on. Students are welcome to use that table space for glazing too. It's bound to happen at some point, but we're hoping to avoid wax on the cement board so please try to wax your pots on the two glaze tables or get a piece of newspaper. On a different topic, we're asking that students don't park behind the building next to the dumpsters. We put some signs out there today. There are two parking spots that abut our building in the back, but cars shouldn't be parked anywhere else in the back. We know that it gets busy at night and this means some students may have to find a parking spot on the road, but it's what we have to work with! Our landlord is generous enough to let us use the whole lot at night which we're appreciative of. thank you thank you pot on, Ned

Hi potter people, quick note here to say that we're changing our future clay plans and will continue to stock 551 porcelain in addition to the Bmix5. We're happy with how the Bmix5 is performing and believe it's a good substitute for the white stoneware. From a color perspective though, it's just not delivering that super bright, translucent white that the porcelain does. That bright white, and the colors that go along with it are just too precious to give up. The future is bright, Ned & co

Hello potters, it's fall and right on queue we had our first pumpkin explosion in the kiln :) There's a lot of mystery surrounding the question of why pots explode in the kiln and I have an opinion on the matter. By and large, air bubbles play very little role in pot explosions. The vast majority of the time, it's due to water still trapped in a pot upon firing (usually because of thick walls). However, sealed air pockets can create a pot explosion if the bubble is large enough and walls are thin enough. This only comes into play when we're intentionally creating closed forms like pumpkins, ornaments, etc. In terms of scale, I think a golf ball sized, sealed clay object with .5" walls is unlikely to explode from the trapped air. An orange sized, sealed clay object with .25" walls probably would explode. Regardless, there's no sense in risking anything, so when you're making pumpkins this season, be mindful of extra thick bottoms or walls, and make sure to poke a hole somewhere so the air can escape during firing. The hole can be very small, but if you're putting it on the bottom of the pot, make sure it won't get resealed via clay smudge when the pot gets moved. Pot on, Ned

Hi potters, Square recently bundled their QR code functionality into an unaffordable monthly plan. Womp womp. This means our cool, pay-by-phone system for extra studio fees doesn't work anymore. I'm talking to Square about a workaround for us, but it doesn't look promising. In the meantime, if you need to pay for a refire or oversize pot, you'll have to find a studio staff member and run it through the Square machine. Same thing goes for settling up extra clay at the end of the semester here. Good luck glazing to everyone finishing up their pots from the summer semester! Ned

Hi potters, we're saying goodbye to our long running, Standard 563 white stoneware. If you haven't used it recently and aren't aware, the company changed the recipe this past year. The clay has major texture, structure and plasticity problems compared to the old recipe. We're thinking about our clay options and would love some feedback from you all. Thank you! -Ned & Co

Happy Monday potters. Hope everyone had a nice weekend in the steaming jungle that is Boston right now. I'm putting out a friendly reminder to be curteous about cell phone use in the studio. Turning your phone on silent or vibrate is a nice gesture, and most of all, avoiding non-urgent personal calls that might disrupt those around you is expected. Our staff, myself included, are not excluded from this. We of course have to take studio calls throughout the day, but personal calls are in the mix too. Being mindful of your volume and those around you is the critical point. Feel free to remind your neighbors in the studio of this if they're being loud. Tell them Ned said you should :) Just be nice about it. And while you're at it, try forgetting about that pesky phone while you're potting. You might find you make better pots. Ned

Hi potters, we made a slight adjustment to our guest policy today. We rolled out the guest day pass this year, which has been fairly popular. This day pass is largely staying as is. Up until now however, we've had a clause in our policy that allowed every student one free guest a month to help decorate a pot. This was a holdover from before we rolled out the $25 day passes. We've decided to remove it because it outlined three tiers of guests (day pass guests, one time decorating guests, and just visiting guests) which is too confusing. It's also ambiguous what constitutes decorating a pot which creates further confusion, especially in connection with guests who used a day pass early in the month. It's now clear in the guest policy that guests who use a day pass aren't given additional access to trim and glaze their thrown pots after their day pass ends. We recognize that we're scaling back guest priveledges a tad, but hope you'll respect that we're looking out for the future of each studio. It's a delicate balance keeping the studios in a healthy homeostasis where we aren't over capacity. Thanks and as always....pot on! Ned

Hi everyone. I want to update you all on our tests and takeaways from experimenting with adjustments to our glaze firing cycle in the hopes of reducing bloating in the charcoal clay. We've settled on a new firing schedule that is slightly cooler than our traditional cone 6 glaze schedule, but with a 15 minute hold. We're using a cone offset to reduce peak temperature 15 degrees. We found that a true cone 5 firing, even with a very long hold, left the glazes looking a tad underfired, and the color of the clay bodies looking a shade off. With this new schedule, we're seeing really nice glaze melting, and importantly no bloating so far. This change is minor enough though that I suspect we'll still see in frequent examples of the bloating. If you get a piece out of the kiln that has bloating - let us know! We'd like to keep track of it. Thanks! Ned

I can't remember doing this little in preparation for our holiday sale and that's because Ariane coordinated nearly everything! From sale graphics, to social media posts, to newsletters, to parking, to table setup plans, to participant email communications, to conducting everything in person. Props to Ariane. She pulled everything together and it was a hit! Woot woot. Thank you thank you as well to all the participants who were so easy to work with, flexible when we made mistakes, and put together an amazing collection of pottery. The quality of pottery this year was really excellent. Congratulations to you all. Ned

Hi everyone! Happy Tuesday. For those students who haven't experienced a community pottery studio in November, it's a little crazy. The next four weeks will be our peak traffic and production flow for the whole year. Here are a couple things for students to keep in mind: - The studio is just messier than normal from the heavy use. It means a lot to us when students do a nice job cleaning up and maybe even help our staff by picking up after a fellow student who might have forgotten about some tools or a dirty work space. - Expect longer firing wait times for bisque and glaze wares. We promise the kilns are going every night. - Try not to leave pottery hibernating for too long on class shelves to make space for your classmates. - Stop and smell the roses :) Everyone is producing as much quality pottery as they can right now in preparation for sales and holiday gifts. Take notice of the shapes and glaze combos that inspire you. - Don't get caught off guard by our end of year break. Both studios close for two weeks at the end of the year. If your pots don't come out of the glaze kiln before December 18th, you'll have to wait until the new year to retrieve them.

We figured out how connect our community app with the website, so I'm just happy to be here. Are people finding this useful? Let us know if you have ideas about additional helpful information that we could post to this community board. - Ned