- I think our eyes (soft music)
often sweep over uniformity.
And so if you intentionally create something
that's ever so slightly, obviously handmade
it provides a really good opportunity
for the diner to sort of slow down,
and we notice the differences.
And I like to try to find that in
between feel between function and art.
I'm a ceramicist that loves working with clay.
(symphonic music)
All right, so this is where I keep my clay
and I work with a few different clays.
And so today I'm gonna throw with the brown clay.
(paper crinkling)
And this clay is made
by a local producer.
I'm going to do what I call a drop rim
pillow plate for Nightbird.
(symphonic music)
So I do pedestal goals, faces, tableware,
even cocktail glasses
for the restaurant, Nightbird, in San Francisco.
And that needs to be two pounds, 12 ounces-ish.
One of the reasons that I adore clay and have been doing it
for over two decades is because of its unpredictability.
Ceramicists always calculate their clay shrinkage rate.
I'll lose a whole inch on the width of the plate.
But starting out with the same weight provides enough
of a framework for it to be a collection.
So we're about to wedge the clay and wedging clay sort
of thinking about getting something
that's really inert into motion.
I don't know,
I've I've heard chefs talk a little bit
about how it's like kneading bread,
but the idea also is
to get air bubbles out of the clay.
Each time I come upon an air bubble,
when I'm throwing I have to take a needle tool
and pin prick it out
because if any huge air bubbles are left in the clay
they will explode in the kiln.
So after you're done wedging, (hand smacking clay)
you make sure that you create a nice round ball
so that when it's slammed down
on a flat surface, all the air is pushed out
from the ball, and I don't create any air pockets.
I try to always look in the center
of the wheel and slam down,
turn my wheel on and sort of check
is the ball fairly in the center?
The clay is completely wet when I start and over time
you'll see that it's going to slowly dry
and therefore retract.
The crystals of the clay, the particles
of the clay will sort of come in on themselves.
And you're trying to get the clay
to move as if it was one with the wheel.
All potters are going to cone up and cone down
where I get my fingers way underneath this bottom part
and squeeze in.
And hopefully you can already see
that the clay is starting to be uniform.
And the idea is to get all
of the clay particles moving in congress, moving together.
And one way that you're taught
when you're first starting to learn how
to throw is you take your finger
and you check is everything sort
of hitting your finger at the same time.
Next is always opening up a hole.
The whole process is trying to control particles
of clay to be moving together.
I am doing an inside out rim.
That's why we call it a drop rim.
So I'm compressing the clay on the bottom.
I'm going to be pulling the clay up
and then I'm gonna be expanding it
to the brink of collapse and then quickly folding it over.
And I'm hooking my fingers underneath
to try to keep the structure
and all the clay particles supporting each other.
I really modeled my business
on like a high touch collaborative kind of model.
I'm inspiring the chef to create their art
and they're inspiring me.
It's truly collaborative.
And that's what's exciting about it.
Those little touches are everything.
It's not just making art.
It's thinking about how the art is going
to help the experience in the end.
I'm even gonna try to use this sponge to finish the rim.
And here I'm finishing it upside down.
Think about the ease of lifting that rather
than a completely round donut form
that's closed and has slopes.
There's an edge to catch your finger on
and gracefully lift it from the table.
I put my fingers down and I pull forward
and we have a drop rim plate.
Nine and one-eighths inches.
To me, that's nine inches, I'm happy!
I wanna have that standard deviation.
I want it to look ever so slightly different.
So after they have firmed up enough to remove off the bat
I transfer them (soft upbeat music)
to a wood board because this is a dry wood board
and it's gonna suck the moisture out from the bottom.
And then once they dry a little bit more
then I will finish the bottom with trimming tools.
A lot of the water has been dried out of it,
but the leather hard state can hold its own.
I love it when it catches in the middle like that
and it sort of spirals nicely and neatly (chuckles).
Clay sounds different when you tap it when it's thin,
higher pitched and thick, it's like a thunk.
It's a lower pitch.
(stand whirring)
So even though I can't manipulate the clay, it's too hard.
I sort of have an idea on how thick everything is.
I hope someone who is dining
at a restaurant that chooses to work
with me and they're done eating
and they flip it over and they can see
both my maker's mark, my stamp, but also this swirl.
It's like telling a little story to the diner.
All right!
And then when I'm done trimming, the last thing
to do at the leather hard stage is
to make my maker's mark.
That is the stamp that I make.
(upbeat music)
These pieces have been trimmed
and I'm going to slow dry them.
Even drying, lessens the chance of cracking.
Because the weather can change,
it could be hot during the day and cold at night,
I essentially tuck them in.
Goodnight little plates (laughs)!
And I'm gonna start loading them.
So after they've dried fully, I load them up
and they're ready for their bisque firing.
(symphonic music)
At this stage these plates are bisqued,
meaning they are just come out
of the kiln on a lower temperature fire.
And the clay is definitely
like more sturdy and solid. (hand knocking plate)
Check this out.
I've chosen after doing this
for many years to wet sand.
Nothing is dry,
and you're always trying to put your health first
because dry, super fine sanded dry particles,
you really shouldn't be inhaling any parts of it.
To wet sand it, I wet,
and then I get this in really deep into the bucket
(sandpaper scratching)
and I rub, and now I take away that dry sanded away area.
And now it's completely smooth.
So underneath the glaze, there are hundreds and hundreds
of fingerprints because it's handmade
and it's art (chuckles).
So what I wanna do right now is sort
of define the boundaries of what I want
to have glazed
and what I don't want to have glazed.
And I do that with a wax resist.
If any glaze gets on the bottom of my piece
and it goes on the kiln shelf and I fire it,
the piece is stuck on the kiln shelf.
I paint it on the bottom
because that's where I don't want any glaze.
So these are caviar reveal dishes.
So even though I've thrown them this way and they look
like a bowl, they're actually presented upside down.
I'll actually waxed the rim of the bowl.
The wax resist that I painted on is dry.
It's not coming off
and it will repel the glaze sort of like oil and water.
Kim Alter of Nightbird definitely plates sort
of off-centered, similar to how I glaze.
And so I love the dialogue that, that creates.
(soft music)
So over the years I have amassed maybe eight
or nine different colors.
And then the way I play with it is I really love texture.
A lot of my art and practice is off-centered texture.
This is the black ink texture that Kim has
in her ink texture plates.
So I hand paint all of my glazes
because I want ever so slight inconsistencies.
I do not want to spray paint my glazes.
My goal is not to have an even surface.
The little dots of the texture will be different sizes
next to each other,
when they pull away from the clay in the firing.
The glaze isn't adhering to the clay in a correct way.
And it's technically a mistake,
but that's what makes it so interesting.
I think the texture mimics what the chef plates,
smooth sauces next to really bubbly non=uniform glaze.
So after the ink texture is applied,
I just wanna make sure that the glaze is dried up enough,
so that I can apply the wax resist.
And the reason I do that is because the next dip is black
and I don't want the black to overlap with the wax resist.
It will mute the texture effect.
So we plan it all out and I sketched it all out with her.
This is my signature black glaze that I've created.
(soft bright music)
Any glaze is comprised of four main categories.
So one is silica, which obviously
is gonna create the glass-like consistency.
One is flux, which reduces the melting point of the glass.
Another is a stabilizer,
like aluminum that would make sure
that the glaze adheres to the ceramics.
And then the fourth one is the oxides and the colorants.
Those are what gives the glaze its color,
and their reaction at certain temperatures
is what creates the color.
And so that through chemistry, once fired,
turns into this luscious glossy azure.
You have to use your imagination,
not only in what might be plated
on my plates, but I also use my imagination
in what the color is actually gonna look like In the end.
It takes a certain kind of faith and imagination
and just experience with the process.
I'm picturing not only what the chefs are going to plate
on my pieces, but I'm picturing how this color is
gonna look different in 48 hours after it's fired
for 12 hours and cooled for 12 hours
and everything in between.
This plate has been glazed and dried
and it is ready for the glaze firing.
One of the things I'm proud of
with my business is that, that hasn't lost its luster.
And that means that I'm doing something right.
I'm pushing, I'm challenging,
I'm trying to think of new things.
All of that culminates in that final moment
when I peek into the kiln.
(dramatic music)
And this is the best part (laughs).
It really is, it never gets old.
Oh, these turned out wonderful!
It's so exciting!
And this is what I love about this texture.
I mean, look at this, the variation in each one.
Each one looks different, 'cause it's hand painted.
It's thrilling!
Oh, yay!
This is amazing!
Look at these gorgeous reveal dishes for Kim!
Oh, they turned out wonderful!
This is before and after the firing shrinks
and the texture comes through
and then gray turns to black.
Making it fresh restaurants hire me to create some kind
of plate for their special signature dishes
that they really want to elevate and have them pop!
- Hi! - Hi!
- And here we are!
I'm pretty excited (paper crinkling)
about how these are gonna look in motion.
- Yeah!
(symphonic music)
- I think that when we are doing this,
I'll plate it in the back
and then we'll have the caviar tart underneath
or on top and the beignet.
And when we drop it for guests
they have like the interaction with the plate too,
you know, and they can like feel the texture
and then it's like something special underneath.
That's like my thought, like when I go out to eat,
the first thing I always do is go
like this, and like-- - Yes, flip the plate!
- See like who makes it.
And like I love when I see guests doing that in here
because they've never seen anything like it.
It's special. - Yeah.
- I think that the textures, like the plates
to me look like you could be going
off a cliff or lava or the blackness.
And it just kind of really tied in
to the idea of this menu.
We're definitely gonna start off with,
you know, using these.
I'm going to start off with a little beignet
that we cook in a siphon,
caviar with a smoked egg yolk and crème fraîche.
That'll be the surprise.
And then it's ready for the guest!
We're gonna do our white asparagus with escargo.
(speaking faintly off mic)
Snail caviar.
We're gonna do the goth chicken.
So we debone the silkie
and make it into a little bit of a roulade.
That's just the natural skin tone of the bird.
And then we just slow kind of like roast the silkie.
So we get like a nice crispy skin.
So we have it kind of emulates the texture
on all of the other plates.
I can't wait 'til she makes me more of these.
Great! (racing symphonic music)
I am really excited about this plate, yeah!
It's like lava.
You start collaborating with like farmers.
And I think that I look at ceramicists in the same way.
For me, it's very important, what the plate looks like,
what it feels like for textures on it.
There's just so many components that go
into the actual plate.
It's the first thing that a guest sees.
- And when I make something by hand
I feel the intentionality, I feel the inspiration
and I'm expressing myself in its utmost way.
I feel so fortunate (laughs)
that I work with really great chefs.
This is my art and it meets their passion and their art.
(soft bright music)
I don't consider my artwork done when it leaves my studio.
It all comes together in this cohesive dance
and the chef has made it their own.
(soft bright music)