Howdy, fellow fine-art folks! April showers bring May flowers, and this winter’s certainly gone on long enough. We know you’re as ready for sunshine as we are. The grass is greener, gardens are coming back to life and backyard barbecues come highly anticipated. If springtime’s just hitting you, worry not—Stone Leaf’s here to supply all of your springful pottery needs as we dawn on a new chapter of creating!

Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day and Memorial Day are quickly approaching this month, and markets are abuzz with new possibilities!

One such event is the Spring 2023 Pottery Sale, presented by the Colorado Potters Guild! Approximately 36 potters who average more than 15 years experience will present more than 2,000 items including pottery, sculpture and jewelry for purchase and enjoyment. Swing by Englewood on May 4th, 5th, and 6th for a cool sale to kick off your month.

We love peddling our raw materials but as we all know, some have been going up in price. Just a heads up, Gerstley borate is a recent example. It’s currently $10 for 1#. If you’re looking for a substitute, Frit 3134 is recommended by digitalfire.com.

We have some announcements for our firing services!

From our people to yours: make sure all pieces for firing services have IDs! We are not responsible for pieces going missing if we don't know where they came from. We recommend marking your ID before a piece is leather-hard and while it's still trimmable, so any marking won't damage the surrounding clay. We appreciate your patronage, as long as we can make it an efficient and easy process for both our customers and our staff.

As of May 1st, no firing services orders (except registered K-12 schools with an account at Stone Leaf) may be more than 20 pieces, and customers must wait until the first, current order is fired and picked up before they turn in another order. Every separate piece counts as one piece. Therefore, a lid plus a base = two pieces.

There will be a firing services black-out period from May 10 to May 23 with no appointments available.

Firing services customers, please note, prices will be going up on June 1st. It’s come to our attention that we’ve not been keeping up with the cost of labor that our services require, or other costs such as insurance, equipment maintenance and repair, or rent. Therefore, prices are increasing in the following ways:

• No discounts will be given, even if you’ve been a frequent-fire customer in the past
• If no firing appointment is made ahead of time, there will be a $10 walk in fee
• There will continue to be black-out dates where we cannot accept pieces to fire. Check our sign-up calendar and make an appointment before you drive here with your pieces

Our new firing fees will be as follows

Load fee:

• $0.35 per item to bisque
• $0.55 per item to glaze fire to cone 06 or cone 5

Stilt fee:

• $1.00 per stilt used

Weight fee:

• $0.35 per ounce, cone 04 bisque
• $0.50 per ounce, cone 06 glaze
• $0.75 per ounce, cone 5 glaze

Fearless leader of Stone Leaf, Ingrid, wrote on the matter:
“It had come to my attention that we were losing money on firing services. The cost of everything has risen so much since the onset of Covid, and in consideration of this we had chosen [in the past] to barely raise our prices to be kind to customers. I have always wanted to fire my own work, and wanted to offer the same careful consideration when firing for others. But, with our costs increasing so much, it has come to a point where we had to either cover our costs or quit offering firing services."

We appreciate that you have chosen us to fire for you, and should you decide to fire elsewhere we wish you happy firing results! If you are interested in purchasing your own kiln, we will be happy to quote prices.

Lastly, we have a few upcoming dates for shorter days and store closures to be aware of:

• Memorial Day Weekend: Saturday, May 27 - open from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm 
• Independence Day: Tuesday, July 4 - closed

Onto our specials! Our Stone Leaf staff member this month is Ripley, our super cool warehouse manager and forklift savant!

CLAY OF THE MONTH

Ice Man with Grog by KY Mudworks, $16.75 per bag

Ripley’s selected Ice Man with Grog as the clay of the month and we’re stoked to offer it on sale! If you’ve ever worked with Ice Man, you know it’s a creamy, light clay body with high plasticity and a sublime temperament. Ice Man with Grog is very similar, but with some umph added in for good measure (the umph being, of course, grog). Those who go for KY Mudworks clays tend to for the smooth workability, and Ice Man with Grog is no different! The grog’s very fine texture adds a bit of tooth to the clay, making it structured well for both hand-building and throwing. Incredibly cooperative, she’s a winner for all forming methods. For our B-Mix lovers who want to try something new, I highly recommend Ice Man with Grog! While a little smoother than B-Mix, the durability is closely matched and it’s an excellent clay body for both seasoned potters and newcomers to the artform.

Here are some examples of Iceman with Grog from the AMACO Cone 5-6 Glaze Forum on Facebook!

TOOL OF THE MONTH
All GR Pottery Forms 10% off

Calling all hand-builders! A great addition to go with your brand-new bag of Ice Man with Grog, Ripley’s chosen GR Pottery Forms to be 10% off for the month! GR Forms come in a variety of shapes and sizes for all of your bowl, platter and other vessel-shaping needs. These wood-drape molds are designed to be the inner portion of dinnerware and serving platters. The cut and beveled fiberboard makes them durable and economical, meant to last years while taking up little space. You can even line up and stack these forms, effectively creating another use as a deeper form! Crazy, right? Which means you can buy one or a dozen, and either way you’ll come out on top. Easy to use for ceramicists of all skill levels, if you ever wanted to make a piece where people will ask, “okay, but how did you make such a pretty thing”, give GR Forms a try.

GR Pottery Forms has a list of tutorials on their website, check them out here!

GLAZE OF THE MONTH

Crocodile Lake pint by Laguna, $14.40