David Hendley on tue 24 jun 03
I spend an amazingly large chunk of time writing my name on the bottom of
pots. When you add in the time to stamp the name of my shop, it can take
half an hour to do a couple of ware boards of mugs.
I think it is time extraordinarily well spent.
It adds value to a piece. No question. Handmade, right down to the
signature.
It results in more sales. No doubt about it.
Any one any where in the world can look on the bottom of one of my pots
and easily read my legible signature, "Old Farmhouse Pottery", and
"Maydelle, Texas, U.S.A.".
Any one of these phrases fed into Google will bring up my web page.
Looking at the web page adds even more value to the piece and also tells how
to buy more.
Just yesterday two ladies who will be attending a state employees conference
bought a bowl for their silent auction. The biggest selling point for
selecting
my bowl to take with them was not its gorgeous blue glaze or its timeless
designs proportions, but that it said "Maydelle, Texas" on it.
They are proud of where they live and want to show people from other
parts of Texas some art from their town.
I find it extremely irritating to find a nice pot in a second hand store
and turn it over to see an illegible iron oxide squiggle on the bottom.
It could be from anywhere, near or far.
Perhaps if it were properly signed and identified in a dignified manner
the original owner wouldn't have sold it at a tag sale along with their
out of fashion clothes and broken lawnmower?
When I first stared in ceramics, I signed things with my first name only,
in all small letters. I guess Dannon would have flunked me.
Sometime around my second year I started signing my full name, still
with no capital letters, and have not changed in 30 years. I sometimes
think the lack of capitals is a little pretentious, but, hey, I thought it
was cool when I was 20, and it's too late to change now.
Also, and this may sound funny, but I really LIKE writing my name
in just-right leather hard clay in a flowing but legible script with no
capitals. It's similar to the pleasure of writing with a pen you really
like.
My tool of choice for signing is the butt end of a needle tool (a dowel),
sharpened in a pencil sharpener. I re-sharpen and sand it smooth once
every few months. Timing is critical for signing an elegant flowing
signature in clay.
I have about 2 dozen metal stamps for stamping my shop name on pots.
I got them about 15 years ago from the last printer in town who refused
to modernize his operation. He still used molten lead to cast the type
for everything he printed. I had him make me a bunch of lead stamps.
I have 3 sizes of type, to suit the size of the pot, and I bent the stamps
various amounts, so they closely follow the curve of the bottom of a
thrown pot.
That printer never did modernize, and he retired and closed the shop soon
after he made me my stamps.
As you can no doubt tell, this is important stuff to me. Maybe, you think,
too important, like, get a life.
The title of my current "Artist's Statement" is "Everything Matters".
I try to have a well-thought-out reason for every single aspect of
every pot I make, right down to dotting the i's and crossing the t's
(there is no dot over the i in my signature).
David Hendley
Maydelle, Texas
david@farmpots.com
http://www.farmpots.com
Craig Martell on wed 25 jun 03
David H sez:
>I find it extremely irritating to find a nice pot in a second hand store
>and turn it over to see an illegible iron oxide squiggle on the bottom.
>It could be from anywhere, near or far.
Buenos Dias:
Good point. I've had the same feeling myself a time or two. Most of us
are buyers of art and clay as well as being makers so we may have a dual
purpose in discussing this.
From a historical perspective it's a good idea to mark pieces in a way
that they can be traced back to the maker and the place they were
made. Art historians of the future would probably find this helpful. I'm
sure most folks on the list know that ancient civilizations were revisited
thru ceramic pieces that survived the millenia.
Having said that, people on the list who have my pots are probably shaking
their heads. I stamp most of my work with a legible CM stamp and that's
about it. Oh well, what can you do?
regards, Craig Martell Hopewell, Oregon aka.......CM
Wes Rolley on wed 25 jun 03
--=======44982351=======
Content-Type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-3211A85; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
At 11:46 PM 6/24/03 -0500, you wrote:
>I sometimes
>think the lack of capitals is a little pretentious
Not on the Mayor's Clayart.
"I find I have a great lot to learn =96 or unlearn. I seem to know far too=
=20
much and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am=20
getting on." -- Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Wesley C. Rolley
17211 Quail Court
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
wrolley@charter.net
(408)778-3024
--=======44982351=======--
Dannon Rhudy on wed 25 jun 03
David said:
>
> I signed things with my first name only,
> in all small letters. I guess Dannon would have flunked me.
> Sometime around my second year I started signing my full name, >>>>>>>
Nah, David, you wouldn't have flunked. Something tells me
that you'd have made an awful lot of those "david" pieces.
In the beginning, quantity is everything. Or almost everything.
And, my qualifier has always been "convince me". I only have
three rules: sign your stuff, don't make anything heart-shaped,
don't make anything Texas-shaped. To my delight, I've had
students break all of those rules, in amazing ways. Rules are
to break. Still, I've had many a cookie-cutter Texas with a
little heart on the back with initials inside that never saw the
inside of a kiln.
Once, the class was working on slip-trailed wares in the English
tradition. One young woman made a plate for her husband, a
Texan to the core. The entire rim was made of beautifully rendered
hearts and Texases (?!) with a message woven all round. Best
thing in the class. Guess if it got fired.
regards
Dannon Rhudy
| |
|
