The Ceramic Series: Smoked Fired Tiles

One way of firing decorative tires (after they have been bisque fired, of course) is to wrap them in a combustible material (here, Gazzetta dello Sport) and placing them in an open fire.  The result is a variegated, beautiful finish.   These tiles are to be used for decorative purposes only and will be mounted in frames.  

We took advantage of the beautiful fire and threw a couple of steaks on the grill after the firings were finished.  I will post next about the finished, mounted tiles, including a few glazed ones from the last kiln firing.

Gratitude Friday: Mom and Me

Mom and me, 1958  

Last week, I got the news that my mom is cancer free, great news since she had a mastectomy in 2008.

What better news is there than when you find the people in your life who have been ill are doing really well? 

I am so grateful to my mother for many things.  First of all, she has a very positive attitude, always has.  And she is still a strong lady at the young age of 83.  She smiles easily. She is a source of strength for me.   There are many things I can still learn from her. And, she has great, wrinkle free skin --which I might have inherited (well, my dad had great skin too).

And I am a lucky girl to still have my mother on earth with me.

Absolutely!

If you have something to be grateful for, and we all do, leave a comment here and tell us about it, or post it on your blog and link back to Creative Structures -- and be part of the Gratitude Friday Club.  A little thanks goes a long way.

Bowls and a Cup

A cup with a message:  

Die Dinge kommen ganz anders als du denkst (thing happen differently than you think).  The perfect yogi tea cup, which is what is steeping. 

Turquoise glass glaze with zebra stripes

Turquoise glass glaze, simple raw exterior

Milky light green glaze, simple raw exterior

End of a Dynasty

Deeply flawed. Unabashedly liberal. An expert negotiator.  A criminal to some.  A defender of human rights. A believer in the right to health care.  The type of politician which was at once human and fearless. Complex.  

 The circle is closed now.  Rest in peace, Senator Kennedy.

It's Hip to be Square

Handbuilt rectangular serving plates.

Fruit Crisp

I was emailing back and forth with my mother last week and she wrote that she was making apple crisp for her knitting group.  It brought back memories of her apple crisp, I could almost smell it.  I asked for her recipe, and she sent it.  I realized I had to adjust it because we do not have graham crackers.  Since I was switching around a few things any way,  I decided to use up some summer stone fruits I had, instead of going with apples this time around. 

So I used peaches, plums and apricots, and added a few blackberries as well, sprinkling the chopped fruit with brown sugar in a baking dish.

The topping is simple -- a cup of ground up butter cookies, half a cup of sugar,  half a cup of ground hazelnuts (or almonds), a teaspoon of cinnamon, and a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg.

Mix the ingredients, and spread the mixture over the fruit.  Dot with butter and bake at 350 (or 175 celcius) for 30 to 45 minutes.

For classic apple crisp, you can use 3 Granny Smith apples.  If you use the apples, be sure to test with a toothpick that they are soft.  

Any variety of fruit crisp works with either vanilla ice cream or a dollop of sour cream.

An Evening in the Candle Lit Vineyards

At the castle we ate Agnolotti with Butter

Late Night Jazz in a Small Village in Italy

Polenta with Robiola at Viotti Vini

 

Bruschetta and Barbera at Paolo Marengo

Salami and Grapes

Candles thoughout the town.  The entire village turned out their lights for the event.

Through the Viotti Vineyards by Candlelight

Last night, the hilltop village of Castel Rocchero put on an incredible event.  A walk -- through the vineyards -- by candlelight -- with stops at 6 wineries and culminating at the village castello.  Each of the stops served a different course:

Bagna Cauda / Cortese

Polenta with Goat Cheese / Albarossa

Salami and Grapes / Barbera d'Asti

Farinata / Brachetto Secco Frisante

Bruschetta / Barbera d'Asti Superiore

Agnolotti al Burro / Barbera and Dolcetto d'Asti

The tour ended in the town piazza with a jazz concert.  

We were clearly the only non-Italians.  It was another wonderful example of how Italians celebrate the seasons -- grapes full and heavy on the vine, everyone getting ready for the harvest, and the vineyards are at their most beautiful.  

Agua Fresca

I have made a lot of orange juice in the last five years.  Oh, my, an awful lot.

And a week ago, I stopped. 

Why, you may ask?  Well, first of all, oranges are not in season.  You can buy them, imported from somewhere that is not here.  This alone never sat well with me.  Mind you, I am all for oranges when they are in season in Italy -- from late fall to spring.  Beautiful, luscious Sicilian blood oranges, or naval oranges.  This has always "kind of" bothered me, since I profess to eat and prepare seasonal foods that are made from local ingredients.  I am, at the heart of the matter, a slow food girl.  As I was coming slowly to this conclusion, in rides my hero on an orange cantaloupe.  Mark Bittman , who, let's just say I adore in a big way, presented Agua Fresca on his NYT on line segment a couple of weeks ago. He professed to enjoy a blended mixture of seasonal fruit, fresh cold water, a few herbs and maybe a touch of sugar.

He suggested.  I experimented.  

So far, the favorites are:  Watermelon, mint, lime and raspberries.

                                              Cantaloupe, lime and strawberries.

Thank you, Mark.  It's like getting icy, fresh gulps of seasonal fruit.  Soooo good.   So Bittman.

The mixtures foam up, and I see the guests scooping every last bit out of their glasses.  The reactions so far have been:

"Oh! This is fresh!"  "Hmmm, I like this, never had it before."  " Is there any more in the blender?"

I am going to stay with this experiment for awhile.  It makes sense to me, in a slow food way.  

YUM!!

Gratitude Friday: The Material Girl Surfaces

I am going to keep my gratitude short and sweet this week.  I am extremely grateful for one thing in particular.  Without it, the 100+ degree temperatures day after day would have been unbearable for us and for our guests.  Our sweet, lovely swimming pool.  

I know it's a material thing. And I know we could do without it if necessary.  I am so grateful this week that we did not have to.  It has been an oasis for us all!

Please join in, if you like, in telling us what you are grateful for in your life.  It can be small, it can be large, it can be a long list or a short one.  Just be grateful for what you have, for all the wonderful bounty all around you.  Instead of focusing on what is not working well right now, take two minutes and be grateful for all the things that are working well -- your lungs, your hands, your heart, your car, your air conditioning, whatever it may be.  Voice your thanks here.  If you would like to post on your blog about it, let me know, and I will put you on the Gratitude Friday Blogroll.  If you have asked me to do this, and I have not, nudge me, please.  It's my busy season and I get forgetful, especially with the heat.

Life is a gift.  Let's please be grateful for every day!

What Were You Doing at 1 AM Last Night? Huh?

Source:  The Sun

This time of year, we often get visited by the cutest of guests.  They are shy, don't hurt you, and have huge eyes.  And are the biggest pain in the butt you could ever imagine.

Dormice.  Short for Dormant Mice.

They are indigenous here.  They live on the edge of the woods, where bramble and light leaf covering give way to electrical wires and rooftops.  This, by the way, perfectly describes our house.

And they love, love, LOVE chimneys.  It's so much fun to run up and down them in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep.  Unless, of course, the chimney is lined with a steel pipe.  Because then, you can't climb back out. That really sucks for the average dormouse.

See, in our bedroom, which used to be our dining room, we have a hole in the wall which is covered with a metal plate.  On the other side of this metal plate, there is a pipe leading up to the roof, and ends with the chimney.  We used to have a wood burning stove attached to this particular pipe in the wall, and for those of you who know our history, it is the same pipe which led to the wires melting, near room fire and the electrical black out of 2006 while our Australian guests were here.  

But back to our story.  

Every once in a while, one of the hundreds of dormice which run along our electrical wires makes it to our roof.  When that happens, they eventually peer down that dark chimney.  A chimney shaft is heaven for a dormouse.    They slide down the side of the wall and climb up and down happily, waking up everyone who is not already suffering from pre-menopausal insomnia.  

But there is an option B.  Mr. Dormouse falls right down the shaft.  Which means he is stuck, at the wall plate, on the the other side of it actually, in our bedroom.

Scratching.  Panicking.  For hours.

In the beginning, we used to open the plate, shine a flashlight on the poor thing, and try to force him out with a spoon.  But Mr. Dormouse would get so scared that he would flatten his whole little body against the pipe in a way that he was unreachable.

I have tried everything to coax Mr. Dormouse out.  Prosciutto.  Reggiano Parmagiano.  You name it.  

But we have figured out that only one thing works.  We open the plate, we shut the lights, we open the windows, leave the room and shut the door.  Within five minutes, smart little Mr. Dormouse has found his way out the window and is busy climbing the electrical pole again, ready to start the whole game one more time.

This is what we were doing at 1 in the morning last night.  And you?

I can't say I hate dormice. They are an annoyance. But they are cute, and I just want them to go wake someone else up next time.  

Wild and Crazy

Some weeks are tougher than others.  Sometimes a few days in the B&B business can humble a person, especially when the temperature won't go below 100.  I have had one of those weeks.  In fact it has not even been a week, just a few insane days.  

It all started on Thursday.

Max got something in or near his eye.  We assumed it was a wasp sting, because it swelled up.  It seemed to annoy him more than hurt him.  I iced it down.

I made a large pot of sugo rosso, to use in preparing a pot of chicken cacciatore for a guest dinner for Saturday night. Guests from Texas had invited friends from the area to join them here for dinner, and our other guests from Australia had decided to have dinner at the B&B as well. I went to the polleria and ordered up 20 chicken thighs to pick up on Friday, since Saturday would be a legal holiday, Ferragosto.

On Friday, Max seemed ok, the eye was not really looking too bad.  I made breakfast for four, cleaned the rooms and kitchen together with Micha and Mimi  (our helper), ironed a mountain of sheets (yes, I know, I could not take not-ironed sheets, they really bothered me) and then went and did the shopping for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, including the chicken thighs.  In the late afternoon I made the chicken, using the sauce, and set it on simmer on three of the six burners. 

Micha came out to the kitchen and said that Max's eye looked worse.  I went in to look a it.  It was swollen shut, and he seemed lethargic.  We rushed off to the vet.  He had gotten a long pine type  needle stuck in his cornea.  It had to be surgically removed, and I had to assist in by holding his eye open.  The first half of it snapped off, and then the vet had to dig for the other half.  It was horrendous to watch.  Poor baby was just coming off of having stitches the week before in his hind quarter from being bitten, and now this! We put him on a gurney and brought him home post surgery, still under full anesthesia.   

I had forgotten to turn off the burners under the chicken before heading to the vet, in my emotional state.  Everything was burnt to a nasty black crisp.  By now it was 6.30 pm, the day before a holiday.  Micha tore down the driveway, searching for 20 more chicken thighs.  He hit four butchers and managed to assemble the necessary quantity.  He also brought home a case of tomatoes, donated by the neighbors, and we started, at 9 pm, to make the same sugo that we had made the day before.  I also made the polenta for the appetizer, and we got to bed a little past midnight. 

I got up at 6 on Saturday to start the breakfast, and to prepare for a room changeover.  A room changeover might not sound like that big of a deal, but it is for us.  One changeover means two complete hours of work -- we literally gut the room every single changeover.  Since the rooms are furnished and decorated as they are, every single light fixture, vase, candle and decoration has to be handled and cleaned.  Fresh flowers need to be picked and arranged.  Guests left, and others arrived.  At 1 pm I started with the dinner preparations, being careful not to burn the chicken this time.  Dinner was served at 7 and everyone seemed to enjoy it:   Polenta served with sauteed mushrooms and gorgonzola on a bed of rucola,  chicken in tomatoes, wine and herbs with roasted potatoes, zucchini and string beans, and fresh fruit with Brachetto for dessert.  Everyone was in the pool until 11.30, and I crashed shortly thereafter.

On Sunday after breakfast service I got myself organized for the week.  There would be a check out on Monday, and a check out on Tuesday.  On Tuesday, four would be arriving from Germany.  Dear clients who were returning with friends.  This was a good plan, because Monday we could change over one room, get it ready, and then do the other on Tuesday morning, when our adorable Australian guests would be leaving.  Having convinced myself that I was ahead of plan, I took a long nap, over two hours, the kind where you don't know where you are when you wake up.  It felt great.

So today, on Monday, we said goodbye to the three Texans for whom we had made the dinner, cleaned the room, and took a deep breath....only to hear the roar of two big German cars coming up the driveway.  I had misbooked the Germans.  I had them coming in on Tuesday, but they had booked for Monday.  Only one room is free, the other is still booked until tomorrow. My mistake.  Absolutely my mistake -- my first booking error in four years.  I went tearing down the hill, got a room for two of the Germans at Relais dell'Osso, did a massive shopping spree for dinner tonight (dinner for eight:  the Australians, the four Germans, and us) and am now trying to catch my breath.  Our German guests are being wonderful about it, but I feel awful.  They are all out by the pool now, relaxing in the 120 degree heat. In about an hour I will be making the dinner which I had planned for the Germans' arrival tomorrow.   Tomorrow the two that are staying in town will come up for breakfast, and hang out by the pool while we get their room ready, and then their vacation can start-- for real. 

Max's eye is much better (moral of that story:  I am going to become a dog hypochondriac an bring him to the vet for every little thing now). I am exhausted but I have done everything I can to make up for the booking mistake, including double check every reservation I have for the rest of the season.  Micha is doing a wine tour with the Australian ladies and.... tomorrow is another day.  

The Gratitude Friday Club: The Guests

I have a pretty good day job.  I work hard, make things nice for other people.  In return they thank me, they laugh, they relax, they enjoy themselves.  The more they laugh and relax, the harder I try to make it nice.  They come from all over the world:  America, Germany, England, Australia, New Zealand, China, Switzerland, South Africa... and they bring me news of their corner of the world.  I am richer for their being here, and I don't mean in my piggy bank.  

They forgive when things don't go according to plan; they wait, taking in the view if breakfast is a little late.   They don't realize how much they make my day by writing a few simple lines in my guest book.

How many people have a job where they get to be their own boss and have so much positive feedback?  Not that many, I think!  

Like I have always said, the guests make the magic here.

Still Life in Late Summer

How is it we know that summer is rolling by a little too quickly?  The fruit changes -- and we start to eat dark plums and figs.  Susine, purple-black plums which are olive-green-gold on the inside, are a late ripening fruit with tons of natural sugar.  They have a firm texture which makes them ideal for baking German Pflaumkuchen.   I like to slice them paper thin and adorn my fresh fruit salads with them, sprinkled with brown sugar.  The green figs, which start to soften and ripen this time every year, will appear every day on the breakfast table from now until the last one has been picked from our two trees.

I am trying to savor these days, these warm, beautiful days.  I want to hold them tight and not let them go.  

Baur B&B on Apartment Therapy

Today, August 12 at 2 p.m. EST,  Baur B&B will be presented on Apartment Therapy in a post by my friend Sparrow King about our wall staining techniques. 

Thanks, Sparrow!

How We Eat What We Eat

Ceramics has constituted a large part of my life for the last ten years.  I have tried to understand my own fascination with ceramics, and what it comes down to is this:  When I see food, the first thing I see is what type of plate it should be presented upon.  It does not have to be pottery, and it clearly does not have to be mine.  It can be fine china, porcelain, metal, glass.  Wood.  I just see the surface the food should be on.  Das Auge isst mit.   Your eye eats just as much as your mouth does, and visuals are important.

But it goes deeper.  It is not just what we eat, or how it looks.  It is about how we eat.  It is about how we hold our cup of tea in the winter, the steam rolling off as we blow on it.  It is about how the foam from  frothed milk sits in the cup.  It is about feeling warm, and good, and lucky to have such good food.  A plate can deliver a lot of feelings.  

For me, the right plate can give a meal a sense of home.  

So making plates seems to be a natural for me.  I love looking at something beautiful, like a peach, and seeing what kind of plate it should sit on.  I like a little pattern, but the pattern should never compete with the food.   It should be subtle.  

I love hand craft, I love to see the hand in creations.  I love it when people turn my plates over, check the weight of them, wonder when I made them.  My ceramics are an extension of our life here on the hill, and I am fortunate to have the time and the place to work on them.

I will forever, as long as I am healthy, try to improve my craft.  It gives me such a sense of peace.

A Similar Plate...

For those who like the first pattern, here is a somewhat similar (less detailed -- the design is painted on but the negative space is not sculpted out) plate design to that first small dessert plate.  I did this back in 2007 as a special order for clients from 2006.

You can see here how stoneware differs from low fire majolica - the glaze is much harder, and the general effect is more hazed, softer, muted. That is the effect of this particular type of engobe which I make in the studio.

Studio Ceramics: Perspective Photos

pasta plate

dinner plate

dessert plate/ antipasti plate 

tea/rice bowl

coffee cup

Thank you for your comments about the pottery prototypes.  I am now posting photos of the pieces which show them in relation to other things -- my hand, some typical kitchen items -- to give an idea of actual size.

Dana -- I am toying with the idea of making the dinner plate a little larger, but not too much.  Since "secondi" typically are not too huge, I am thinking that this plate should be able to sit comfortably on a glass charger plate.

Francesca -- I am doing some prototype designs and patterns.  Here are three I am trying:

Here the copper (celadon green) engobe is painted in a pattern, and the negative spaced is carefully carved away, leaving a slight relief.  The relief will diminish after the glaze is applied.

Here the engobe (cobalt blue) is applied and the pattern is scratched into the plate (scrafito)

Here the pattern is scratched into a naked plate.  The engobe is applied into the crevices and then the plate is lightly sanded with steel wool to remove any extra engobe.

Note:  You cannot see the actual color these plates will be until after the second, or the glaze, firing.  The color comes from the reaction of the metal oxide (in these cases, cobalt blue and copper green) with the chemicals in the glaze.  So you have to use your imagination a bit. This is the part of ceramics which can yield the most interesting surprises....

I will do a few other design techniques and we will see how they come out.  Now everything has to be bisque fired and then glazed, and then high fired.  Lots to do!

The Gratitude Friday Club: Too Many to Count

Where do I begin?

The roses and the lavender greet me in the morning.

My friends and family call and write.

My dog.

I am healthy.

I live on a hill in Italy.

My guests keep coming.

I have my own art studio.

I can walk, talk, create.

I have a home of my own.

I have a great love who loves me back.

I have a big kitchen and can prepare anything I want.

I have an extended blog world which gives me great pleasure.

I have hope.  I have dreams.

And, today, it's my birthday, my 51st. My gifts?  Read above.

I am the luckiest girl in the world.

Photo: Julia Russell  www.juliarussell.com

Studio Ceramics: Form Follows Function

As I mentioned, I have been working on pottery prototypes for a line of dinnerware.  Here are my pieces which I have settled on as part of this first line of plates:

Muesli Bowl and Rounded Pasta Plate

Tall Latte Cup and Dinner Plate

Tea Bowl and  Dessert Plate

Coffee Cup and Dessert Plate

Four Piece Place Setting:  Muesli (or Soup) Bowl, Dinner Plate, Dessert Plate, Coffee Cup

These prototypes, which are leather hard now, will be painted in a specific pattern and then I can go about loading up for a bisque firing.

There is something about the simplicity of the lines, and the rounded elegance that I like.  Please let me know your (honest, please) opinions.