Don Goodrich Pottery

Sparkly Things

Dogs and other critters

   My name is Don Goodrich, and I make things out of clay. There are a lot of things I like best about it as a medium. It connects us with a 30,000 year tradition of folks who were doing pretty much the same things with the stuff. It's one of the few art forms that allows one person to do the whole process singlehanded (if one wants to), from digging it out of the ground, through forming, decorating and firing, to using or marketing. The same can be said for pizza, of course, but that takes longer. And clay allows us to make things that just might last 30,000 more years. Let's hope some of the things we make are worthy of that.

I live in Zion, Illinois (here's an aerial view), a town halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, in a house surrounded by trees. The trees help hide the surrounding suburban sprawl, and help fuel the fireplaces. The fireplaces years ago provided my introduction to firing clay, dug from under the garden topsoil. Although most of my claywork now is in electric-fired commercial stoneware and porcelain, it's still very satisfying to occasionally use locally-dug, hand-processed clay.

      For several years I worked in glass manufacturing, and now take delight in pulverizing glass bottles and melting them onto pottery. The resulting depth and sparkling internal facets lend themselves well to candle-holders.
 

I've been collecting recipes for cone 6 glazes ( mostly oxidation glaze recipes , but a few other odds & ends ) that have been posted on the CLAYART List since 1996. There are currently over 250 of them, including some lowfire earthenware and special-effect glazes. I have NOT tested many of them, and your materials may vary, so PLEASE TEST in small, inexpensive batches before committing your wares to any of these.

To download the recipes, click HERE (65Kb txt file) or HERE (80Kb doc file).
 
 

You may enjoy these pictures from the Appalachian Center for Crafts July 1997 workshop Ancient Clay taught by Vince Pitelka.