Pottery-related Mystery Novel
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Pottery-related Mystery Novel Bob Masta 06-23-2008
Posted by Bob Masta on June 23, 2008, 8:26 am
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Semi-OT:

Potters who are also mystery lovers may enjoy "Uncommon Clay" by
Margaret Maron, a mystery involving Judge Deborah Knott and a family
of North Carolina potters that seems to be marked for death.

The pottery aspects are presented fairly well, and the plot is pretty
good. However, the author spends a *lot* of time on character
development, so this may not be for those who like cut-to-the-chase
action. My wife and I listened to it as a recorded book (from the
local library) on a trip this past weekend, and it seemed slow getting
started to me, whereas she had no problems with it. (She selects the
recordings, because she is a weaver and has already listened to most
of the library collection while working at her loom... if I picked,
she would be sure to have heard it already!) But it was fine to while
away the miles, and might be equally fine in a pottery studio.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v4.00
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
FREE Signal Generator
Science with your sound card!

Posted by DKat on June 23, 2008, 11:25 am
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what could be better! two of my favorite things wrapped as one. donna
> Semi-OT:
>
> Potters who are also mystery lovers may enjoy "Uncommon Clay" by
> Margaret Maron, a mystery involving Judge Deborah Knott and a family
> of North Carolina potters that seems to be marked for death.
>
> The pottery aspects are presented fairly well, and the plot is pretty
> good. However, the author spends a *lot* of time on character
> development, so this may not be for those who like cut-to-the-chase
> action. My wife and I listened to it as a recorded book (from the
> local library) on a trip this past weekend, and it seemed slow getting
> started to me, whereas she had no problems with it. (She selects the
> recordings, because she is a weaver and has already listened to most
> of the library collection while working at her loom... if I picked,
> she would be sure to have heard it already!) But it was fine to while
> away the miles, and might be equally fine in a pottery studio.
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Bob Masta
>
> DAQARTA v4.00
> Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
> www.daqarta.com
> Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
> FREE Signal Generator
> Science with your sound card!



Posted by Susie Thompson on June 23, 2008, 4:32 pm
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A favourite book here is "The Snow Firing" by Joyce Gard, printed
1967/8. The following are a couple of summaries I found -

"When a friendly potter comes to work at the long-abandoned pottery that
used to belong to Philip's grandfather, the twelve-year-old boy's
energy, interest, and evident talent, which appear as he helps his new
neighbour, bring unhappiness to his mother."

""This story is about a boy who stems from a family of country potters
of the old kind, with its good and its bad inextricable tangled, and who
helps in the rebirth of the old pottery into our modern world. Naturally
this is a painful as well as an exciting process"

I had a look and there's one copy on ebay at the moment, if anybody out
there's interested. No, it's not my copy - there's no way I'd part with
mine!

Susie

--
Susie Thompson
If you can't stand the heat, don't tickle the dragon
to email me replace "deadspam" with my name

Posted by Bob Masta on June 25, 2008, 9:21 am
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On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:32:22 +0100, Susie Thompson

>A favourite book here is "The Snow Firing" by Joyce Gard, printed
>1967/8. The following are a couple of summaries I found -
>
>"When a friendly potter comes to work at the long-abandoned pottery that
>used to belong to Philip's grandfather, the twelve-year-old boy's
>energy, interest, and evident talent, which appear as he helps his new
>neighbour, bring unhappiness to his mother."
>
>""This story is about a boy who stems from a family of country potters
>of the old kind, with its good and its bad inextricable tangled, and who
>helps in the rebirth of the old pottery into our modern world. Naturally
>this is a painful as well as an exciting process"
>
>I had a look and there's one copy on ebay at the moment, if anybody out
>there's interested. No, it's not my copy - there's no way I'd part with
>mine!
>
>Susie
>

Just checked AbeBooks (www.abebooks.com) and they have lots of copies,
priced around US$8 or $9 including shipping in the USA.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v4.00
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
FREE Signal Generator
Science with your sound card!

Posted by D Kat on July 15, 2008, 2:53 pm
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Just finished reading "Uncommon Clay" (easily found at the library). Good
read, though the bit about a professional potter not knowing about or
understanding glazes nags at me. Toxicity of heavy metals in glazes was
made more real and personal. In the U.S. only lead and cadmium are made a
clear issue of and potters in general really don't have clear guidelines on
the materials we use. Silica is actually one of the more dangerous
materials and it is in almost everything you would find in a studio. Few
people know that. Making our pots 'safe' for once they leave the studio is
an entirely different issue and one which seems to be the most confused.
Pinnel's Weathered bronzed green has been taken off our shelf - either
because

1 - it has Lithium in it and that could be dangerous especially to someone
taking Lithium
2 - it could possibly leach copper - it is fine to whip you eggs in a copper
bowl but you don't know that some end user is not going to put orange juice
in what you made and end up with more copper than they should have and yucky
tasting orange juice...
3 - it settles like a rock unless some one is on top of it all the time

or all 3.

Most of the more beautiful and interesting glazes (for me and many others -
for example I love the alkali and barium blues) do not stand up to the rules
set by MC6 (Ron Roy and John Hesselberth's book) or they do not work in a
studio situation (runny glazes can be yummy but not worth the $$$ for
shelves).

People in our studio keep coming to me with glazes they want made that are
very high in metal oxides (6% Cu for example) with the minimum amount of
silica. I can almost guarantee them that the glaze will leach metal and not
be stable but that is meaningless to them because there really is no
standard I can point to. There is no "Food Save" criterion. I do wish we
would come to some conclusions on this issue rather than say all insides of
pots should not have any metal oxide in the glaze.

Donna


> Semi-OT:
>
> Potters who are also mystery lovers may enjoy "Uncommon Clay" by
> Margaret Maron, a mystery involving Judge Deborah Knott and a family
> of North Carolina potters that seems to be marked for death.
>
> The pottery aspects are presented fairly well, and the plot is pretty
> good. However, the author spends a *lot* of time on character
> development, so this may not be for those who like cut-to-the-chase
> action. My wife and I listened to it as a recorded book (from the
> local library) on a trip this past weekend, and it seemed slow getting
> started to me, whereas she had no problems with it. (She selects the
> recordings, because she is a weaver and has already listened to most
> of the library collection while working at her loom... if I picked,
> she would be sure to have heard it already!) But it was fine to while
> away the miles, and might be equally fine in a pottery studio.
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Bob Masta
>
> DAQARTA v4.00
> Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
> www.daqarta.com
> Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
> FREE Signal Generator
> Science with your sound card!



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