This is a wood ash glaze that has been used historically by Japanese and Korean potters. These artists traditionally used rice hull ashes and fired pottery to temperatures upwards of 2500 degrees F. I have spent years adapting my Nuka glaze recipe to melt at a lower firing temperature, and to utilize local wood ashes. My goal is to achieve a fluid, rustic surface while maintaining whiteness.
This weekend marks the 7th annual Back Roads Pottery Tour. Bring your friends and family for a drive around the St. Joseph and Avon, MN area to check out the fall colors of the leaves and the pots. The tour includes 4 venues hosting 11 potters, and it takes place 10am-6pm Saturday and 10am-4pm Sunday. I’ll be hanging out at Collegeville Orchards showing pottery alongside Bill Gossman and Japser Bond.
Here are the poster and map for the tour, and some photos of last year’s tour:
This Friday from 4-8pm I’m also bringing the first batch of stoneware beer mugs to Br. Willie’s Pub on the St. John’s University campus. Each year, the pub sells commemorative mugs for students, faculty and well, anyone to purchase for drinking beer at BWP. This is the first year that Br. Willie’s and I have collaborated to get hundreds of handmade mugs into the pub! Below are a few process shots of the new mugs, but stop by Friday to see them in person. I hear that your first beer is free with the purchase of a mug!
Stop by Up Cafe in NE Minneapolis on Friday, September 20th from 10am – 4pm and you’ll get a chance to watch me perform pottery throwing demonstrations. I’m also planning to bring down a few hundred pieces of my newest pottery. The cafe will be open as usual, serving all kinds of gourmet coffee drinks and bakery items, homemade gelato, and made-to-order panini sandwiches- all served on handmade Stoneware!
Special thanks go out to Ceramics TECHNICAL for publishing my first major magazine article! The Local Blend has supported my career and helped me reach my 3rd year of business as a full time artist! You can read about our relationship in the 4 page article below, or purchase a hard copy of the magazine through their website:
Over the month of December I busted out about 550 new pieces of pottery for use as serving vessels in Up Cafe– a new coffee shop in northeast Minneapolis! This new coffee shop is attached to Upper Midwest Gourmet and Flamenco Organic Coffee Roastry. They’re open for business, so you can stop by anytime and sip an artfully mixed coffee drink from one of my mugs. Check out this spread in Minnesota Monthly about their “soft opening”
Below are a few images of my pottery in their space. Watch for future posts of higher quality images and information about their grand opening. Also, special thanks goes out to my cousin Michael Applen for his Entrepreneurial mindset. He always pushed me to come up with new ways to get my pottery out into the world. He was an important part of getting pottery into Up Cafe, as well as getting this coffee shop open for business. Thanks for your help cous!
Also thanks to Central Minnesota Arts Board for awarding me a $3,000 grant that helped make this possible!
The Nuka glaze originated in Japan centuries ago. Potters traditionally made the glaze by using ashes from burnt rice hulls. These ashes were high in Silica, which is a glass former, so some Nuka glazes could be made with almost entirely ash.
Phil Rogers describes the Nuka glaze in his book “Ash Glazes” along with a huge variety of other glazes. I learned many of my glazing techniques from this book, like creating custom glazes from raw materials which is how I develop all of my glazes.
Check out the awesome Nuka glazed bottle below, made by Japanese folk potter Shoji Hamada. He was renowned for making skillfully crafted pottery inspired by his natural surroundings, and made with natural materials that he harvested locally. This Nuka was made with 50/50 ash and stone, and a black Tenmoku was brushed over.
Press-Moulded Bottle, Shoji Hamada, 1963, from “Ash Glazes” by Phil Rogers, pg. 19
Ash as a Glaze Ingredient
Every other year, I pick up about 200 gallons of wood ash from my friend who heats his family’s home with wood furnace. He harvests most wood from deadfall trees in the St. John’s Arboretum. I like using this ash because it’s a natural material that I can get from a local waste source. It’s also free, but takes a lot processing to get rid of all the charcoal and debris. The image below shows some tools I made to sift the ashes through 12, and then 40 mesh screens.
Developing Glaze Recipes
I’ve spent about three years developing recipes for my Nuka glaze. Technically, it many not be a ‘Nuka’ anymore due to all the materials I’ve added. I still call it a Nuka because I’m inspired by the materials and surfaces used historically, but my glaze has become pretty complex.
Traditionally, Nuka glazes were fired hotter than most glazes. While I was still in school at CSB/SJU, my professor Sam Johnson and I got great results with the Nuka when firing upwards of cone 12, or over 2500 degrees F. Since graduation, I’ve lowered the temperature to cone 10, or just under 2400 degrees F. I did this by using line blend testing. I could write another blog post on line blend glaze testing, so for now I’ll just refer you back to Phil Rogers, “Ash Glazes.”
For all you potter readers, here’s my Glossy Nuka glaze recipe for cone 10. If you dry-sift ashes through a window screen you could probably get similar results. I keep this glaze at about 145 specific gravity to keep it from dripping off the pots:
Glossy Nuka
Parts
Percentage
Wood Ash – dry sifted
33
18.5
Custer Feldspar
50
28.1
Silica (325 mesh Flint)
30
16.9
Frit 3134
15
8.4
Whiting (High Purity)
20
11.2
Bone Ash
10
5.6
Bentonite
10
5.6
Talc
10
5.6
total
178
100.0
Brushing Iron and Cobalt
I accent each pot with iron or cobalt washes on the rim. These naturally drip down each pot during the firing, creating a surface that reminds me of wet paint. I like to think of each pot as a canvas for glaze. The cup on the left was also electric fired at cone 10, while the mug on the right was gas fired. I think that the extreme oxidation of the electric kiln contributes to the crystal growth in the cup, which is highlighted by the iron as yellow specks.
The cups above were gas fired at cone 13, back in 2011. This is one of my favorite versions of the Nuka because of the glossy, milky surface and the color complexity of the iron drips. I’ve spent years adapting my new recipes to reproduce this surface, and I’ve discovered a huge variety of colors and textures within the Nuka color pallet. The lower cone 10 temperature has been a good challenge for this glaze, and I hope to develop a cone 6 Nuka in the near future.
I’m also exploring more ways the Nuka relates to my other 2 glaze choices: Copper Red and Tenmoku:
*Added November, 2016:
To view the most recent evolution of my Nuka Glazed “Standard Ware” pots, including “Nuka Cobalt” and “Nuka Iron” color pallets, view our online store: store.cherricopottery.com/standard-ware
