Mary Richmond Design

They're done and delivered....

Yesterday I took furniture out of my living room, set up a folding table and spent the day gluing down tiles.....it took all day and I thought I might not stand up straight again after about 6 hours of leaning over but a long walk with the dog seemed to cure that. At one point I had panels drying and in process on the couch, the floor, the table....anywhere I could stash them. The dog was in the kitchen and the cats were in the bedroom....My brain was fried from all that putting together of small shapes and keeping things even along the edges and my eyes may never focus right again but it's done!

It's been two weeks of 12 hour days, lots of moving of heavy and odd objects, dealing with other people's schedules and demands and way more stress than I want to recall and.....the larger tile panels were done and were delivered last night. The smaller pieces needed to be grouted and were delivered early this morning. The ribbon cutting was at noon.....

I should never have agreed to this job. What do they say? Under promise and Over deliver? Well, I don't think I under delivered but I sure did over promise....and I do that a lot. I end up saying yes to jobs other people turn down for several reasons. One may be because I'm too dumb not to. But mostly because they intrigue me, they stretch me, I like the person or group asking me for the nearly impossible and of course, I do this as part of my income stream so that's a consideration, too.

Often when I finish a really stressful job like this I say I'll never do THAT again.....we'll see, is all I can say about this right now. In the end, I really liked the way it all came out and there's a certain good feeling to having accomplished it all.

Anyway, here are the panels as I glued them yesterday. I'll try to get a picture of them hanging on Saturday.

Moving Right Along....

The one thing about a project like this is the time necessary for the firings. There's a huge time element involved in making the tiles, cleaning the tiles, loading the kiln, unloading the kiln, glazing the tiles....you catch my drift. With these there is the added element of making sure all the pieces match up all the way through. I actually trace out the pattern from the cut marks on the panel so the pieces can be put down again pretty easily but it is still very time consuming. Loading and unloading the kilns takes hours and is back breaking work since I'm leaning down and over the whole time. I just keep reminding myself that the end result will be worth it. Here are some tiles all glazed and ready to be fired.

Each panel takes about a kiln and a half to fire and each firing is about 24 hours from start to cooled off finish. I have two more big firings to go....

This is my husband spending his holiday making the backings and hangers for the tile panels out in the back yard. It has been a day long project. We will stain them when they are done and let them dry overnight.

It's an amazing process and one that very few people really understand. We took some time off yesterday while a kiln cooled down but otherwise I've been working non stop to be sure these panels are done on time. This was way too big a project for this organization to have left to the last minute but I can only assume they hadn't a clue about how long it would take and how much work it really was....

Keep on Keeping On...

Once the tiles are dry they need to be sanded with a coarse scrubby to get the rough edges off and then sponged smooth so that they look clean and lovely when they are ready to bisque and eventually glaze. This is a very time consuming process and probably took about 6 hours to do this whole panel. I can't do it all in one sitting but I'm guessing that's about the time spent. I have the last panel to do today.

This photo shows how all thepieces fit together. I take a lot of these photos because once the pieces are in and out of the kiln it is extremely difficult to put them back together, no matter how carefully I've marked them, placed them, etc. I have to be in a very quiet and focused place in my head to do the final work with these.

This close up shows how similar the shapes are even though the shapes here are the fin of a fish, the back of a horseshoe crab and waves.....

These were all bisque fired last night and will be ready for glazing tomorrow....

Easy come, Easy go....

When I work on big orders like this that are rush jobs I often try to dry tiles quicker than is recommended. When it is really damp like it was this weekend clay retains water so drying takes forever. For years I've nudged tiles along by drying them in the kiln...usually I get great results. Last night I tried to dry these tiles in the kiln. There were only 4 of them and they were ahead of schedule. I wasn't home and tried to direct the timing without seeing them myself to judge their dryness before adding more heat....As you can see, this didn't work out very well....

This is what tiles look like when they explode....oops!

This morning I made new tiles and because it is a delightfully dry sunny day I am drying them outdoors. They'll be dry enough to fire tonight. Don't worry, I'll be watching them very closely!

Tomorrow I'll begin firing the big panels....

A New Tile Project

It's been awhile since I posted about a tile project because it's been awhile since I've had one! This project is for a local non-profit and the panels will have wording honoring special donors. Right now the tiles are drying and waiting to be cleaned and readied for their first firing, the bisque firing. Some will get fired tonight but most will be fired tomorrow.

This project has a very tight deadline but I think it will all work out just fine. I've even added a day for padding in case there are problems with a kiln, etc.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the panels in rough cut, wet clay.

Updated My Website

I have been working on my website all day. Funny thing about the internet. Years ago I started my own website. Then I sort of forgot about the website when I started the blog. Then I got active over on Etsy. Now I'm back to working on the website.

I suddenly realized my website was about everything and nothing. I have taken everything off it except my tile work. I get a lot of hits every day looking for tiles but very little follow through. It's not hard to know why when I looked at the website. I was showing about 2 tiles....

So here's what I'd like you to do. Please look at my website and comment and make suggestions, email me, whatever. I'm using a template so the overall design can be tinkered with but not too much. For a while I had it in black but it was too hard to read. I will be updating my photos over the next few weeks, too, but any suggestions are welcome.

You can find the website here.

Ceramic Tile Update

Lately I have been receiving phone calls and emails from folks who would like me to make and paint some tiles for them. One woman has my tiles in her bedroom fireplace and is adding on and would I.....another woman did her kitchen with my tiles in 1994 and has had a water disaster in her home and must redo her kitchen and could I possibly....and yet another woman is a designer I have worked with for years who needs some help pulling together a Delft theme in a kitchen and could I just this once....

And what did I say???? Of course I will!

I am no longer selling tile through wholesalers who don't get what I do....I am no longer doing tile for people who are, shall we say, so entitled they forget to be nice....I cannot do tile for people who cannot be patient for I have a full time job.....

But I can and will do tile for special folks in times of special needs......

When Tiles Are Fun

It's been a while since I posted a picture of my tiles but today I went to deliver a few tiles to this home and had a chance to photograph the kitchen and fireplace I did there this summer. Tile commissions always seem to take a long time. There's the meeting with the client, the first stage of the design, the next meeting with the client, the approval of the design and then the tiles must be made, dried, cleaned and bisque fired before being painted and glazed and refired. Then they get delivered and approved, the tile installer must come to install them and then come back to grout them and well, you're starting to get the picture.

I'm always amazed at the two day projects accomplished on HGTV because my projects sure take longer than that!

These tiles are what I call my Cape Cod Fossil Tiles and have sea horses, shells and sea stars impressed in the wet clay. After the bisque firing I wash them with several colors of underglaze to give them a watercolor effect. After they are dry they get several coats of clear glaze and are fired again.

This kitchen is in a summer home and is almost completely white so the owner wanted something colorful and beachy and yes, a little Cape Coddy, so voila!

The reason I was at this home was to deliver 2 tiles to be fitted into the top row of the fireplace. You can see where they are missing in this photo. After several somewhat panicky calls from the homeowner I was able to work things out with the tile installer and all is well. I brought along a nice handpainted tile with a cork back she can use as a trivet as a little gift to help ease her unhappiness and I have to say all worked out quite nicely. She loves the tiles in both the kitchen and the living room and I will go back to photograph the finished piece in the next few weeks. These tiles are from my Cape Cod Delft series and have a somewhat floral corner design in cobalt blue.

Thanks to all who wrote comments and sent me emails about my decision (or lack thereof) about my tile business.

I've decided to not give it up but to not actively market and pursue it either. I'm just going to let it do its organic ongoing thing. Right now I have three tile orders on my order board and another on the way. None are big but all will make a nice contribution to my travel fund/ IRA. That's what I've decided to do with the money I make from my tiles so it's still a business but not what I expect to support me. This way it is fun and I can take the jobs I want. I have contracts in place to use for every order and I think this past year of errors has taught me alot about myself and my work habits. I've been overbooked and overwrought and it's been showing.

Most importantly, I've learned to not overpromise and underdeliver. By the way, the paper that gave up all its freelancers has just taken my column back so that's pretty cool too.

Raku today!

What's one of my favorite things to do on a beautiful day? Raku with my friend and potter extraordinaire, Diane Heart.

Two other potters joined us today and we had a splendid time loading and unloading kilns, getting smoke in our eyes and noses and scrubbing down our finished pots and tiles.

Tiles are interesting to Raku because they want to bend and crack. Of course this isn't anything I want them to do so right away there's a nice little conflict going on. I have to sort of go to the Zen place with this and since this is Raku, that's a pretty good place to be.

These are some of my tiles drying after they've been glazed. I use a white low fire clay and the Raku glazes I used today are copper sand and copper penny with a touch of Higby blue here and there for accent.

I was hoping for black to happen and it did to some degree but on others barely at all. I also had quite a bit of cracking today, more than usual, which was sort of not fun, if you know what I mean.

These 4" tiles will be used in wall pieces put together sort of like tile collages.

Here's the kiln firing its first load and the barrels all stocked with sawdust and newspaper ready for their first load.

Here's me with a face full of smoke as I prepare to put a tile into a barrel full of paper that will light as soon as it touches.

There it goes!!! A cover was put on very quickly after this shot.

After cooling awhile the pots and tiles get put in cool water which shocks them, causes the glazes to really stand up and take notice and then they get scrubbed up a bit to polish them off.

Part of all our potter meetings is a nice pot luck spread and today's was no different. We all had brought garden goodies and Diane's lovely pottery made it all look wonderful.

 

By the end of the day we all had lots of cool pots and tiles. Even the broken ones were pretty cool in their own ways.

A great way to spend a day, especially if you're a potter!

You can see more Raku shots here on my Flickr site.

Catching Up on Overdue Work

One thing that happened this summer was that my move got put on a big, big hold due to my working full time, writing 5 or 6 articles a week and doing a few tile jobs on top of all the usual family and friend commitments. I am still unpacking boxes and as I am finally getting around to setting up a studio once again I am finding all sorts of unfinished projects that need attending to.

In the plastic bag are tiles that were ripped out of a kitchen I worked on years ago. The house was destroyed by interior flooding and the owner would like the tiles redone. They dropped off the tiles but we have not communicated in months. I think there are blank tiles, too, but I don't have the tiles to paint on so we are at a standstill (these are on customer supplied tiles, not my hand made tiles).

In the tote are some unfinished little sculptures that should have been delivered to a shop back in May. The yellow bowls are color samples for wall tiles I was to do for someone's kitchen and the wooden sign was supposed to be finished back in May as well.

There are other unfinished projects as well. At the moment they are all lined up on my desk. I've been making calls and surprisingly everyone's pretty cool. I'm very lucky they are so patient. They all say they, too, have had a busy summer but if I could finish the work now, that would be great.

This is a great example of what NOT to do in business. Of course I lost some sales by not having my sculptures in a shop this summer and I will lose sales this fall since I can't take on more work until I've finished the work I'm already committed to.

Several weeks ago Alyson Stanfield suggested all artists should underpromise and overdeliver. She said many of us do exactly the opposite and I know I for one am one of those. I overpromise and underdeliver.

From now on everything goes on a calendar in the studio and gets done on the day assigned to it. As I mentioned yesterday, I have a tendency to over commit myself. I think it's time to get real, both with my time and my energy as well as my commitments.

Showing this picture of forgotten and unfinished work is embarrassing but maybe it will help someone else take a good long look at their own work habits and then it will at least have been useful as well.