Eric Smith: The Functional Potter

i fire a large wood kiln it's not perhaps the most sound way there's a lot of risk there's a lot of loss [Music] but what you get out of it if you've put i think your full heart into it and energy and commitment and time and focus you end up with something that's quite unique and extraordinary [Music] working with clay is so basic [Music] depending what kind of clay you're using it can be so responsive and alive [Music] my name is eric smith and i'm a functional potter and i live in covington massachusetts [Music] so jill and i ended up in western massachusetts after my apprenticeship ended in north carolina we were going to set up a pottery and where she was going to continue her gardening and landscaping design business [Music] everybody loves watching a potter make a pot there's something amazing about it i feel the same way when i see a woodworker turning a bowl i i'm blown away i can't believe they can do that the material for me is just so unrestrictive it can really bite you it's easy to lose pot i lose pots all the time but when everything is just right and they start coming off the wheel it's this really beautiful almost exchange between you and the material where you feel like you're really working together on this thing the way i work at least it's a very uh it's it's pretty athletic you know i stand i don't sit [Music] there's movement and i move and the clay moves and and together we create these things that on the best of days will even blow me away i'll come back in the evening i think wow that's it's hard i can't believe i made those what i like about the material is that it does not feel precious and that's why i choose to make functional pots i don't want things necessarily to be looked at my primary focus is that they're used so the materials i use here are fairly straightforward i get a stoneware clay from north carolina that gets shipped up several times a year i get about a ton it's just a clay that i trust and i like to work with so i am willing to go through the effort of getting it up here from there [Music] i also worked in north carolina during an apprenticeship so the clay has some connection to that time for me and it has a familiarity about it there's a language of clay down there this is a craft i feel what i'm doing like a good electrician when you go into a house where the walls are torn out and they've just put the electrical work in and you see a good uh webbing of of of electrical it's like wow that's amazing that's amazing it's it's beautiful to me um and i've always been attracted to that skill uh of of anything um whether it's a good cook or a good work woodworker or somebody that makes marble tops whatever it is i've always been is from a kid from the time i was a kid i've always been fascinated with that so i take a great deal of pride in making a very good well-made skilled pot [Music] my intent is that people will pick these up and take a breath and say wow i need that [Music] i think the response is that they're not challenging i want it to be an a very immediate response to where you see it and you want it and you're not sure why or you see it and you want to pick it up and you're not sure why exactly to be able to walk into someone's space i think puts the pots in context that that is rare to see these days it's very different than going into a gallery i just want these things to end up in people's homes and in their lives and a part of of their daily uh rituals that they go through whether it's scrambling their eggs in a mixing bowl or drinking their coffee or tea [Music] there's nothing that moves me more than a great pot that i hold in my hands and can actually use and touch and feel so you can take a wood-fired pot and turn it and i never tire of it there's always something new the surface quality is so rich and so [Music] deep with wood it's a ferocious type of firing where you're consuming a lot of wood the wood ash is flying through the kiln it's sticking to the pot it's melting because the kiln is large i need to make a lot of pots to fill the kiln and i'm the only one filling it [Music] you have to be fully committed to giving up a great deal as far as predictability oftentimes there are spots in this kiln and in other kilns where you know you might be risking it a little bit [Music] so i spend about five days loading i do that alone and it's a time i actually really enjoy [Laughter] [Music] it's a puzzle i piece it together every time it's always different [Music] and i take a lot of care and pay a lot of attention to making sure things are posts are straight shelves are level pots are in the right spots as best as i can tell and i do i enjoy that time so after i load the kiln you know i break it up and we start a small fire and temperature is maybe about 200 degrees it's like a fireplace and we depending on the pots that are in there it's typically about a 24 hour and preheat is what that is and then from there we start raising the temperature very gradually about 50 degrees an hour and you just incrementally raise the temperature until you finally hit about 23 100 to 23.50 and that's typically on the last morning of the firing the whole firing from start to finish is between 50 and 60 hours [Music] this is a beautiful kiln and it's very responsive you know a lot of people struggle with their kilns to reach temperature and it's like shoving wood in and they're cursing can never get temperature and this is this thing just wants to go up up up up up so it's more a matter of slowing it down and just making sure you take your time which is why i have a kiln log [Music] i have a a good team of people that are friends and neighbors that help out we do um six hour shifts so you come and it's all laid out what temperature you're supposed to be at at what hour and they follow the book and feed the kiln and raise the temperature [Music] accordingly [Music] [Music] i then move to the to the back of the kiln and start firing the sides of the chemicals introducing wood actually into the ranks of pots that are set from the outside while they're maintaining temperature up front it's called side stoking what that's doing is pulling the heat back to raise the temperature throughout the entire kiln a 15 foot stretch [Music] after all the temperature is up to where i want it throughout the kiln high and low front to back i then salt so i use a lot of salt about 100 pounds per firing which we blow in with a modified leaf blower with a funnel in a big them on it and what that does is creates the salt glazing which basically the the salt is sodium and so the sodium reacts to the silica and the clay and creates sodium silicate i think in industry they would casually call that liquid glass [Music] it creates this beautiful shiny very slick surface which can also go kind of what's called orange peel or it's kind of mottled speckly but it's a beautiful surface that i love [Music] we did a lot of salt glazing when i spent my time in north carolina we used a little bit of salt in the kiln i fired in ohio but north carolina is where i really got turned on to the heavy heavy salt glazing and i just i love how it reacts to the clay and the glazes and and what comes out of it it's very powerful and there's a lot of movement because it makes things run and uh it makes things bright and i uh i love that i try not to get too overly attached to anything because that is part of the process and that's really what this place is about is process [Music] [Music] [Music] do you

Channel: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

Views: 1,717

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Id: 213LwSGX34U

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020