We mix the clay that we use from a variety of different clays and sources including clays from Southern Ohio/Mayfield, Kentucky/Eastern Missouri/Kona, North Carolina/King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, et al. Our clay has been dug, milled, and bagged before we remix it with water, and then age it (mixed with old, home brewed beer!) in five hundred pound batches.
Most of our pottery is made one at a time utilizing an electric potters’ wheel, but we also create off wheel, hand-built clay pieces.
The sizes of our pots range from 3” teapots and tinier tea bowls, to vases over 48” tall.
We mix our own lead-free glazes containing silica (glass), fluxing agents (melters), aluminum (stiffeners), and oxides (colorants). The goal is to make glazes that will adhere to the pots, penetrate the surface of the pots, melt at a particular temperature, producing a particular finish, but will not completely melt and run off of the pots while fluid.
Oxides can create dramatically different colors depending on how they are fired- on the amount of reduction or oxidation of the firings.
The unfired, mixed glazes, suspended in water, somewhat resemble common house paint and are stored in large buckets.
Our glazes are applied by dunking, brushing, spraying, pouring, and just about any other conceivable way to bring a liquid to a solid!
We fire our pots in a 100 cubic foot, reducing, down draft, natural gas fueled, cart kiln to Cone 10 (about 2,300 Degrees Fahrenheit). It takes about 12-16 hours to build up to that temperature and 48 hours to cool.
Occasionally, we participate in traditional wood firings and enjoy the surface created by ash deposits and heavy reduction.
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Steve Campbell
Three Dot Pots
5123 Patrick Henry Street
Bellaire, TX 77401
713-253-8979
www.threeDOTpots.com
hairypotter@threeDOTpots.com