Given the holiday's roots - the name itself is derived from Eostre, a Teutonic goddess of fertility; and its Christian connection to new life and rebirth - that's what the egg symbolism is all about - I thought it made sense to create Easter Eggs that contribute to new life.

These are made of clay, coffee grounds, and wildflower seeds. Toss them into meadows in April, when the showers will dissolve them and release the seeds. The coffee grounds provide some nutrients to get them started. Well-aged compost is probably better, but I didn't have any of that lying around.
As a bonus, the wildflowers will help support bee populations, which need all the help they can get right now.

For fun I painted mine with some food coloring.

Here are the steps:
Can't wait for spring!

A mind is like a glaze recipe: you throw in ideas, give them some time and energy, and they blend to create something new.

I've been cogitating on a handful of stories I encountered around the same time, and in my mind they are fitting together to form thoughts. First was the Roberto Lugo video I shared earlier; it's powerful, and one of the ideas Lugo discusses is the power of ceramics to bring people together. Second is this story out of Nebraska, about a man who hated Muslims until they became his neighbors, and in getting to know them he found his heart changed. And the third, sadly, is about the distressing events this week in which nearly 70 Jewish community centers had to be evacuated because they were the targets of bomb threats.

Yeah. That happened, in our America.

Like so much that has happened lately, I feel powerless to do anything about it, but I don't feel like I can just say, "Oh, yeah, a bunch of Nazis threatened to bomb my friends, neighbors, and compatriots, totally normal, no big, let's talk about my wacky burner situation!"

It's not totally normal, or any other kind of normal, and anyone who has any kind of a platform has an obligation to say so. My Republican friends keep saying "Just because I am conservative doesn't mean I am a bigot" and I believe them - so this is for them, too. All who reject bigotry as an American value should condemn this intimidation campaign. Politics is one thing, but surely all reasonable people can agree on rejecting Nazis. Our grandparents fought and died for this!

(This goes without saying, but if you are a Nazi, or any other kind of bigot, you should boycott this blog! I totally deserve to lose your readership, so buh-bye.)

Which brings me back to my thesis: in clay I see one road to an understanding of our shared humanity.

I taught my first pottery class in 1994. Over the years, I have had thousands of students, of a broad variety of races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and religious persuasions. I currently have many Christian and Jewish students, and a handful of Muslim students, and of course many whose beliefs are unknown to me.

I have never once observed or overheard bigotry in the clay studio.

It may be that clay just attracts a certain good-hearted kind of person, but I think the causality goes both ways. Like the Nebraska man who found he didn't hate Muslims once he actually knew some Muslims, it's hard to hate a person who seems just like you. In clay class, students all struggle with the same challenges: learning to center; oops, collapsed; how do I get this dang handle to stay on; rats, it cracked in the firing; yikes, massive glaze run! And we celebrate successes together: Look, first handle! Biggest thing I've ever thrown! Kiln unloaded today, show everyone your beautiful pots. Clay studios are tight-knit communities, and communities have the power to transcend differences. We make dear friends based on our shared enthusiasm and experiences.

Now I hope we can take the love we've grown in our clay spaces into the wider world. A Jew, a Muslim, a Christian, and an atheist walk into clay class. They talk, they laugh, they commiserate and they encourage one another. They walk out friends. They take that friendship into the world, and become a shining example of what can be when we recognize that we are all just people.

Keb Mo says it better:

Well I feel just like you
and I cry just like you
But I heal
Just like you
and under my skin
I'm just like you....

Remember the 90s? I sure do. We wore old flannel shirts and called it fashion. The bands had the best names: Alice in Chains. Radiohead. Rage Against The Machine. We argued in the public sphere over Keynesian vs Lockean economics (not "what are facts?" LOL) And in business, the buzzword was "value-added." It refers to increasing prices by increasing the usefulness, features, or appeal or the items sold. As a hand-maker of functional items, maximizing the appeal and utility of my ware is a given. That's in my studio work.

I have a whole other hoard of pots taking up shelf space in my basement: the demos I do for my classes at Portland Pottery. I don't fire all my demos, but many I do, either because I need to do a glazing demo, or I just liked the pot; or because I hate to waste them. Many are simple one-serving bowls, because I do that demo alot, but others are odd sizes and shapes whose function does not immediately spring to mind. I often sell demos for very short money from the Pottery Stairs, a little stand in my front yard. Staying afloat in this business has sometimes required me to use a little ingenuity: time to try a little 90s-style upselling!

Enter a 10-lb bag of soy wax. I already have several scents, which I use for soap making. In fact this whole project started when I decided to make myself a chocolate scented candle. I love the smell of chocolate even more than I love the taste, so in keeping with my New Year's Resolutions of self-care, I set out to make myself a present.


This pot started its life as a square rolled slab, with four squares cut out of the corners. It has a wonky charm, but it's small and oddly proportioned; no obvious use comes immediately to mind. I like it (small and oddly proportioned are part of its appeal, for me.) Now it is a chocolate scented candle.

It's burning right now, breathing out its sweet soothing scent. Seemed like a good day to practice some self-love. I didn't use a colorant, because for brown that's powdered cocoa, and I was afraid it might make the candle smoky.

I had some (well: approximately a shit-ton) of wax left over, and lots of little bowls and oddball pots, so hey, while I already had the mess out, decided to make a bunch more candles. I went with chocolate and coconut, the scents I have the most of.
These four are coconut:
 I position the wick first. Usually it stays upright, but if it gives me any lip, I melt a bit of beeswax in the bottom using the microwave, and stick the metal plate on the wick to that. Once the wick is in place, the microwave is no longer an option! The wick has a little metal disc at the bottom of it.

With the wick standing upright, I scoop the wax flakes into the pot, and then pour about a tablespoon of fragrance over the wax. Then I put it in a baking pan or cookies sheet, and heat it in the oven, to about 275. Soy wax melts at a pretty low temp. When it's melted, it will fill in the air spaces (like silica fusing in a clay body during a firing) so the level of wax will drop. I top it off and then put it back in the oven.

These have a tiny sprinkle of gold mica, just to distinguish them from the chocolate candles, But then - duh - I should be able to tell by the smell! Soy wax melts at a low temperature, so when the wick has burned down, it's easy to pour out the remaining wax. Run the pot through the dishwasher, and you've got a fresh clean bowl, to use for anything you want.

My hope is to sell these value-added pots, which previously went for $3 - $5, for $10 - $16, depending on size. I'll post a few online, if we ever get a day sunny enough for me to take decent photos.

So, I got this idea: why do serving bowls have to have two handles? Unless they are enormous, I guess, and then you need them for helping to keep a grip on the full bowl. Bur outside of that, the handles are pretty much decorative, right?

As that thought percolated, another joined it: hanging bowls. Bowls that you can hang on the wall, when you aren't using them. We make platters with holes or hooks or outward-curved feet, to accommodate a hanging wire. That doesn't work as well for a bowl, because of the weight distribution, but what about hanging the bowl from handle? The single handle, there for the purpose of hanging? The bowl would have to hang bottom out, which is fine because the foot of soda-fired ware often has a subtle beauty; and then I wouldn't feel like the decorating I do on the outside of bowls is a waste of time: the outside would be on display whenever the bowl was not in use.

These bowls are five pounds, and a little bit thick; I've been trying to throw thicker lately. For something like this, a batter or serving bowl, I think it's more functional.


I made sure that the rim stayed pretty flat, after I bent it inward to accommodate the handle. I think this will ensure that it hangs well, and not at a weird sticking-out angle, and it also allowed for simple trimming - no need to throw a wet chuck or a donut to work around an undulating rim. (Which is nothing against undulation! I love me an undulating rim, I'm just saying they do require some accommodation.)

Here's the trimmed, drying bowl. Now I am thinking I may brush or glaze-trail a small image or pattern into the circle within the foot; something that gives the user a reason to hang it.

In my infinite quest to replace expensive grog in my wadding, this firing I am following the suggestion of a fellow blogger and potter going by the name Newfoundout Potter. I am using coffee grounds. This suggestion appeals to both the frugalista and the tree-hugger in me: reuse! recycle! Coffee grounds are essentially garbage. We were using them in the compost pile but believe me there are plenty from this house to go around. Our compost is more acid than ideal, due to the preponderance of coffee grounds. Ooo, bad thought: our compost also sometimes smells like vomit, due to its great acidity. Let's hope my wadding does not also come to smell like vomit! That might be a deal breaker. For now, though, the wadding smells nice.

I did find that I had to use more grounds than grog to get the consistency that I want; whereas the original wadding recipe called for 2:2:1 Kaolin:Alumina:Grog, the coffee grounds version is closer to 1:1:1.

It's a weirdly warm day in Central Maine; the thermometer hanging on the deck says it's 50 F. A nice kiln-loading day.

OT: Check out my new profile photo! Turns out the same lighting set up to avoid shadows while photographing pots does a good jobs of filling in crow's-feet.