Historical pottery videos

As a followup to my previous article on my favourite YouTube potters, I would like to share these fascinating historical pottery videos.

The first is a four part series about Isaac Button, at Soil Hill Pottery near Halifax, England. The video was shot in 1965, and has no sound, but is absolutely fascinating, looking at every aspect of pottery-making, from digging and processing clay to firing a giant coal powered kiln:

• Isaac Button; Country Potter Part 1
• Isaac Button; Country Potter Part 2
• Isaac Button; Country Potter Part 3
• Isaac Button; Country Potter Part 4

Next we have some lovely videos of Shoji Hamada, a japanese potter at the origin of the studio pottery movement in the UK. His videos give you a sense that evenness, “centeredness” and straightness are not absolute requirements in pottery:

• Shoji Hamada 1
• Shoji Hamada 2

Third, a video of Michael Cardew, a potter in the same generation as Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada. According to the documentary below, he was Bernard Leach’s first student.

• Michael Cardew, throwing off the hump
• 1984 CBC documentary

Next, some Bernard Leach videos:

• Bernard Leach
• BBC Documentary, The Rock of St-Ives Bernard Leach part 1
• BBC Documentary, The Rock of St-Ives Bernard Leach part 2
• BBC Documentary, The Rock of St-Ives Bernard Leach part 3

And finally, for a bit of colour, a BBC documentary series with potter Michael Casson:

• BBC The Craft of the Potter, decoration part 1
• BBC The Craft of the Potter, decoration part 2
• BBC The Craft of the Potter, glaze and fire part 1
• BBC The Craft of the Potter, glaze and fire part 2
• BBC The Craft of the Potter, throwing (extract)

Let me know if you know of other such videos, I would love to add them to the list.

How to make sugar from sugarcane

Ever wonder how sugar was made? I was at my local fruit and vegetable store when we spotted some sugarcane, three stalks for 3$. We figured, we must be able to make sugar from that right? After a little research, I did the following:

1. Smash the canes with a rolling pin or a hammer, enough to open them up
2. Take out the bad bits. The interior of the cane should be fairly white and not smell fermented. Any red or brown bits you want to take out.
3. Take the fibrous flesh off of the outside “bark” using a knife.
4. Boil that flesh for a good 30 minutes, using just enough water to barely cover the pulp.
5. Remove the cane leaving only the liquid.
6. Keep boiling until the sugar crystalizes at the bottom of the pot. Near the end, you need to keep a close eye on things and reduce the heat in order not to burn you sugar.

The result is a brown sugar with a taste of molasses. Unfortunately, you need a good amount of sugarcane to make even a single cup of sugar. Now I can see why this is not something that’s feasibly makable at home.

Processing RADARSAT-2 imagery: reading raw data and saving RGB composites

RADARSAT-2 imagery is delivered in GeoTiff files with an additional product.xml file which contains orbit data and ground control points. There are a few Open Source software that you could use to process this data, including RAT Radar Tools, PolSARpro, NEST, Map Ready, etc., and many proprietary software such as Geomatica, ENVI, etc. But, if all you want to do is view a calibrated image and georeference it, there is a much easier and faster way: doing it yourself in Python.

You will need to install Python (I am currently using Python 2.6 with IDLE on Mac OS 10.6), OSGEO’s GDAL, and Numpy. The first step is to import the modules:

Next we need to use GDAL to read the product.xml file with a sigma nought calibration (this will use the sigma lookup table) and set a few variables for later.

The “path” variable is set by the user at the beginning of the script. Next, we need to read those GDAL objects into Numpy arrays in scattering (Sinclair) matrix format. Less memory is required for more complex processing tasks if we keep the matrix elements in separate matrices:

The xoff, yoff, xdim and ydim variables refer to the offsets and dimensions. For example, you could analyze only a subset of the image. Now that we have the information in memory, we can generate an RBG using |HH|, |HV| and |VV| with GDAL:

This creates a 3-band 32-bit float RGB GeoTiff.

If you need some sample imagery to play around with, try the RADARSAT-2 demo dataset.

The long-lost art of butter making

This is the first article of a series on making basic food ingredients that we seem to have collectively forgotten how to make. Only two generations ago, butter making was a common task, and I argue it is something we should try to reclaim from the past.

You will need a 500 mL  (two cups) carton of whipping cream (35%), and either arm power and a whip, a blender, or a hand blender. Pour the cream in a large bowl (or in the blender), and whip it until it turns into butter. Seriously. Using a hand held blender, this takes about five minutes. The cream will first turn into whipped cream, then start looking more chunky and yellow, then, all of a sudden, will expel the buttermilk, leaving behind the butter.

I find that what works best is to get the cream right up to the “almost butter” stage, and then finish by hand. This way, when the buttermilk is expelled, the butter bunches together inside the whip and is easy to separate.

The last step is to rinse and salt the fresh butter. Take the butter and squeeze it into a ball using your clean hands. Then, keep manipulating it under cold tap water until no more buttermilk comes out. If you put a bowl under where the water is falling, you can stop rinsing when that water becomes clear. Then, add a little bit of salt (to your taste) and kneed it into the butter. Store either in a butter crock (known as a “beurrier breton” in french) or in the refrigerator. It also freezes well.

Is it worth the effort? Nothing beats a slice of home-made bread with fresh butter. The added bonus is that along with your 1 cup of butter, you get 1 cup of delicious fresh buttermilk that you can use for pancakes, cookies, cakes, scones… However, in terms of price, it is still more economical to buy a pound of butter, though I can’t figure out why.

Top 10 YouTube potters

Being new to the world of pottery, improving and widening my range of techniques is important. Sometimes, seeing something from a different angle, or just hearing it described in other terms helps. I’ve compiled this list of my favourite YouTube potters (I apologize for the absence of any women potters, please let me know if you know of any good channels):

1. Simon Leach (sleachpots): Simon is a third generation potter (his grandfather, Bernard Leach, worked along side and studied with Shoji Hamada in the 1920’s). His videos are expressly designed to teach, so the camera angle is perfectly adjusted, and each step well commented, usually with some humour. Simon is also great when it comes to answering viewer comments and questions, and occasionally takes requests. With over 500 clips, Simon Leach’s channel is sure to inspire.
2. Dan Unsworth (youdanxxx): From Ingleton pottery, established 1971. There are less videos here than in some of the other channels, but this is high quality work, usually bigger pieces. Unfortunately, they are not commented, but they are still worth a look for inspiration.
3. Guy Wolff (guywolff): Again, not that many videos (unless you also count his bluegrass videos!), but worth a watch for his technique on large pieces. Whereas Simon excels in teaching, Guy has tremendous knowledge of the history and traditions of American pottery.
4. Tim See (timseepots): Despite Tim being a younger potter, his videos are quite educational. Seeing someone destroy a pot accidentally is also a good confidence builder. If you watch only one video in this channel, look for his amazing steam-punk collection. Also, there are some good videos about his home-made wood kiln.
5. Josh Pehrson (jjpp23): There are only a few videos, but they are extremely well made, tall pieces. I particularly like his tall pitcher. You should also check out some finished crystalline pieces on his website.
6. Gabriel Brubacher (gbrubach): Another young student; his videos are definitely on the artistic side, but he creates some beautiful altered wheel-thrown shapes, some quite large.
7. Joshua Shremshock (jshremshock): Many interesting shapes including teapots and double-walled pieces, Joshua also has nice raku pieces.
8. Mike Baker, aka “The off-centered potter” (offcenteredpotter): This person experiments with new techniques, and has many video-slideshows of finished pieces, which can give good inspiration for glazing. He is also experimenting with embedding glass in pottery pieces, an interesting thought.

As you can see, I am missing number 9 and 10. Please help me complete the list! Enjoy.

“Think ingredients…”

There finally seems to be a rise in the “think local” movement in Canada, with corporations realizing that they can turn this to their advantage (as in this ad), and as much as I agree with the idea, I think there is something even more pressing and more basic that we need to change in the way we think about food: ingredients. The “think ingredients” approach can also include local ingredients, but puts the focus not solely on the provenance of food but also on the ingredients that make up the food we consume.

When is the last time that you cooked something at home that had more than 15 ingredients? How about 30? Personally, I don’t think I have ever made something with that many ingredients. And yet we consume large amounts of processed and prepared foods that contain such high numbers of “ingredients”.

Point in case: I found an envelope of onion soup in my cupboard with the following ingredients: dried onions, corn syrup solids, corn starch, salt, monosodium glutamate, beef fat, hydrolized soy/corn/wheat protein, yeast extract, colour, dextrose, sugar, spice, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, hydrogenated soybean/cottonsead oil and sulphites. Wow! When you make it yourself, you take some unsalted butter and caramelize onions slowly until they turn a rich brown. This makes them naturally sweet. Then you add beef broth, maybe a little bit of pepper; and that’s it.

So, the idea is also to make things from basic ingredients as much as possible and feasible. Not only is this fun (if you are a do-it-yourselfer), it is also healthy and fresh, home-made food always tastes fantastic. In my opinion, the path to healthy living is to have a good relationship with food, that food be a pleasure to find, make and eat.

To elaborate on these ideas, I will prepare a series of posts on making things that we have forgotten how to make. Things as basic as butter and mustard and other simple recipes for making things that we consume regularly like granola bars and bread. Stay tuned.