handmade hobbyist: clay: field trip to a ceramics factory

I got to accompany the Advanced Ceramics and IB art classes to Heath Ceramics in Sausalito. The weather was glorious in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we got to cross one of my favorite tourist destinations, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Love this bridge.

First stop was the community meeting room. I was delighted by all the fun little sculptures. If I take Zan's clay class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at CSM in the spring semester, then I'll definitely sculpt some penguins. I do like ocean-themed animals on those kinds of clay assignments.

I adore clay still lifes.

I later learned from Joe Farnham, our tour guide and the dinnerware production engineer that Heath employees recently had a pumpkin-making contest, hence the orange Mickey Mouse head. And what looks like Halloween-themed clay makings below.

While one group of students walked through the factory, we sat down our turn and took notes and listened to Natalya Orczykowska, the studio chemist who specialized in ceramics and refractory materials in her university studies in Poland. She explained and talked about the acid tests, both from food and cleaning materials, on Heath glazes. Heath releases seasonal glazes twice a year for both dinnerware and tile.

And then the factory tour for my group of students. Already I was fascinated by the noise and hubs of activity.

Joe started at the beginning: the blunger room, where IMCO dry clay is mixed with water to form a slurry or a slip in the clay making drum. As in the small studio, the clay is stored in plastic, all 600 pounds of it.

At Heath, they've gone to zero waste and recycle even clay scraps to be added to the drum and then the pug mill before forming. Even excess water is cycled back into the clay drum for another use.

Joe explained that the clay is a proprietary mix, and there's only one clay. Here's the clay from the pug mill, ready for forming.

Next I took numerous pictures of the plaster molds, probably because I'd spent the summer casting vases and dishes, and a bit of the jiggering or jollying--where the plug or block of clay that had been extruded from the pug mill was then placed into a spinning mold.

I spied all the bags of plaster for the molds. Of course, I noticed because of all the plaster casting and the making of a plaster mold this past summer.

Below is a picture of all the plaster molds, some of which are from the 1960s.

I watched a worker trim pottery...

and spied on another worker using a jolly. I could see he was making mugs. Our tour guide said that a pot is touched by at least 17 different hands in the making. And I wondered about the numbers in their recordkeeping notes. Much smaller production numbers than you would see at other dishware and tile factories in other parts of the globe like China or England.

I was fascinated by this craftsperson attaching handles to mugs with no scratching or scoring, just slip and a firm push.

And here you can see all the shrinkage from green ware to finished pot.

I do love the low slung handle shape on the mug below.

Machinery. Glazing.

And the ginormous gas kiln. Like any other kiln, it's got its hot and cool spots. And even though Heath is a factory, production is small compared to dinnerware manufactured on other parts of the globe like China and England. However, my plate production is SLOWER and much TINIER in output than commercial pottery plants and even some professional potters. And that's how I'm going to justify charging $50 for one of my thoughtfully made, one-of-a-kind, no two-alike dinner plates.

Onward. We headed toward the quality control space, where all the pottery was sorted and inspected for glaze defects.

The restroom was adjacent to the glaze chemicals.

One of the students gave me one of the the chunk of clays Joe passed out to us. What’s interesting about this clay formula is that it vitrifies in combination with its glaze at Cone 03 in ONE firing. Whaaat!?! That’s huge savings or cost in energy. In the classroom and community studios where I clay, we do the usual firing process of firing bone dry raw clay to Cone 04, then glaze the bisque after it’s glazed to Cone 5/6 if in an electric kiln or Cone 10 in a gas kiln. Joe said if we put this clay into our electric kilns, it would be a melted mass.

We had just 15 minutes to browse the shop, where I made a beeline to the seconds shelves and found a "happy" green vase in which to put an orange flower and give to Michaela for Christmas.

Back to the community room, where the rest of the students were drawing still lifes.

And I needed to use the restroom before leaving Heath and took pictures of these frames of wall test tiles.

I love the earthier and calmer color palette of the tiles below.

No time to eat lunch at Heath or walk down to the pier to sketch nature. Time to climb on to the bus and head over to the vista point and sketch a bridge. High tide happened, and so we had to walk around the parking lot to get to the bus across the street. Joe said there's a flood wall to prevent ocean from entering Heath, but I imagine before the flood wall, its concrete floors had to be mopped of salt water.

Farewell Heath! Some day I may buy its dinnerware if my plates don't survive our own household's daily use.

The vista point where we wanted to be was on the Marin and not the San Francisco side, and so we were bussed from Sausalito to San Francisco and back to Sausalito, where we parked and ate lunch. I sketched a perspective of the bridge like the one on the right.