Invisible Work

"I oversee production, throw, handle, glaze and fire. It’s to the point that everyone’s so productive, my oversight role looks idle. That’s fine with me. I call it the "invisible work". I keep everything in sync with the clay and kiln clocks."--Walt Zotter

When Walt wrote the previous paragraph, I wasn't quite sure what he meant. Most people associate  potters' work with the actual act of throwing pottery. Here's our rock star Keith doing what he does so well.

However, there's a world of "invisible" work between throwing, stamping, the bisque fire and the glaze fire. Now that Walt's gone, we are learning that the clay phases do dictate our clock. Once the pot is thrown, we have to wait for it to stiffen up enough to stamp our personalizations without distorting it's shape, but not so hard that we can't stamp into it's surface. Once the pot is stamped, we have to encourage even drying of the pot so the act of drying does not distort the shape. The top of the pot, for example, dries faster that the bottom. To encourage even drying, we have to turn the pots upside down slightly precariously over the edge of the shelf so that the air can be "sucked" inside to help dry the pot. The pots are under plastic to help keep them soft enough to stamp. The stampers hate when the pots fight their fingers when pressing into the clay.

You can't flip the pots too soon. You have to wait for the top of the pot, which dries faster, to become hard enough to support the weight of the pot upside down. You can tell when it's ready to flip when the top is a lighter color than the bottom.

And then, you have to pray a strong breeze, or an inadvertent move doesn't knock any of the pieces perched precariously on the shelves onto the hard concrete floor. 

Here are the shop dogs engaged in some invisible work too. I just haven't figured out what.