A message from Josh and Erin

Hello to our lovely friends and family and thanks for checking out our wedding pottery.

We cannot tell you how excited we are to have Carter making our dishes for us. We are both great fans of his work- and fans of Carter in general- so it means so very much to us that the dishes we will use every day will be the handiwork of this kind, creative, community-minded, bicycle-ridin', soccer-lovin' friend of ours. We thank you for helping to fill our cupboard with these unique works of art and we promise to clean our plates- and bowls- in gratitude!

Love,

         Josh & Erin

Instructions for buying pottery for Josh and Erin

Hello friends and family of Josh and Erin!

I am so pleased to be making this pottery for their new life together! It is always a dream for any potter to find people that love what you do, and knowing how much these guys appreciate my work makes it a dream come true. So lets see if we can all get together and put some of these fine functional art objects into their hands and into their home!

The instructions for you purchasing an item are that the first person to stake their claim in the comments section for each item has dibs on that item. As I receive your expressed interest I will mark items as either "sale pending" or "sold". So it should be fairly straight forward to see whether an item is still up for grabs.

How you actually purchase an item can be done in several ways. For folks from out of town You can send a check or money order to my address at:

Carter Gillies
572 Nantahala Ave
Athens Ga, 30601

If this won't work for some of you who have paypal accounts I can list the item or items on my etsy shop as "reserved for (you)" and you can make the transaction that way.

If you are an Athens area local who wants to get something for these guys you can arrange to stop on over the studio and pay in person. You may call me at (706) 546-7235 or email me at cartergillies@bellsouth.net

 Josh has suggested that since so many of you folks are from out of town all the pots be left at my studio "unless someone is really desperate to come pick them up". This way they can just pick them all up at once after the event. If you would like to make different arrangements I will try to work with you, but you are always welcome to stop by the studio and check on the progress. Hope that works for folks!

If there are any questions feel free to contact me.

Thanks!


         Carter Gillies

The Pottery for Josh and Erin

I am busy working on making the pots you will be gifting Josh and Erin, but I have been asked to give you a preview of the type of pots that will offered. Once I have the pots made and fired in my kiln I will list individual pieces on each entry.

This is the glaze scheme they have decided on:

And these are the types of pots that will be in their place setting: An 11 inch Dinner Plate ($30), an 8 inch Salad Plate ($18), and a nice sized Bowl (also $18). There will be 12 place settings in all, so that makes 36 individual items. This is what the shapes will be like:

I hope you agree that these will be a lovely gift for those crazy kids!


The progress so far:

The first run of bowls is underway. In order to end up with the required 12 of each item I will most likely need to make at least double that number. There is plenty that can go wrong, so compensating for losses always becomes part of the process. It isn't as easy as buying something off the shelf, after all. Getting the shapes right often takes a bit of practice, and then making them consistent is its own challenge. Each of these pots are then carefully dried to a state where they will have a foot trimmed into the bottom. Plenty can go wrong in both the drying and the trimming stages. Then making sure things continue to dry slowly is its own process. If things go too quickly the pots can warp or get cracks. This is especially an issue for wide flat things like plates, which you will remember I am making 24 of. And sometimes the pots can seem fine going into the first firing, but come out with cracks. But probably the most difficult part of bringing a new pot into the world is making sure the glazing is done right. Too thick or too thin can totally alter the outcome of each glaze. And then if the glaze is fired too hot or not hot enough the glaze can get ruined. Typically I lose from between 10 - 25% of my pots at this point. Kind of breaks my heart, but these days I have just become used to it. So please keep your fingers crossed!

The first firing is complete!