Excitement in the studio....

We started up the wood stove in the studio today for the first time since before Christmas! It has been a lovely break, but now i'm ready for some work...real dirty work !!! The main reason we got in there today was due to this lovely, beautiful...grey clay extruder.....we ordered it about a week ago, and today it was delivered! Pretty exciting piece of equipment i have to say!!!

All my handles are created from coils of clay, some potters pull handles from a lump of clay held in their hand, water dripping down their arms and pulling sort of like milking a cow! i've never been a fan of this process, so early on in my career i decided to make my handles from coils! I used to have an extruder, a small extruder....in other studio...but i sold it along with some other stuff before i left there! for the past 2 years i have been making handles in a very laborous manner, rolling out long coils of clay! So now, we have a mega extruder, which will not only make my lovely handles, all different shapes and sizes and effortlessly...but Terry will get to play around with interesting shapes. this extruder can make hollow forms!!! We just tried it out, and i have to say it's going to take some getting used to! but i can see the potential. the cleaning of the inside is a bit of a pain in the ass....but it'll be worth it once we figure out how to do things in an economical way!!