
I promised a brush post a few weeks back, and I have to start it out with some sad news. Keith Lebenzon, brushmaker extraordinaire, passed away unexpectedly about a year ago. I’ve used Keith’s brushes for years and years. His brushes have been instrumental in me discovering what types of surfaces I want to make. We used to see each other at craft shows, then I started just calling him up and asking him to send me brushes about once a year. So I learned of this only recently. Thanks Keith, you were great!!
Here’s a photo of my glaze decorating/painting table with brushes. Keith’s brushes are the ones with the nice bamboo handles. I use(d) his elk hair ones mostly, and love them. Because I glaze so many pots at a time, I keep a few brushes dedicated to each material.
On the banding wheel: red iron, rutile, an amber ash glaze, black underglaze, and a white glaze. Off to the side is a black glaze (the hummus container). Wax resist and a few wax brushes are on the right. We all need a good wax and I love Cer-A from Clay Art in Tacoma, my local fabulous ceramic supplier.
The nicest brushes I use are Keith’s elk ones. Those are what I make all/most of my longer lines with. I frankly am not sure how I’ll approach the absence of his brushes when my current ones wear out. Denial. I also use sponge brushes and cheap 1″ pig hair brushes to cover wide swaths. Inexpensive sumi brushes fill out the mid-zone; I use different sizes from tiny to 2″ long. Finally, I use brushes I’ve made over the years. I learned from the wonderful Kent McLaughlin (link here) at Penland ages ago. The bent-handled one is squirrel tail, and one near the pitcher is samoyed dog hair that is probably older than my assistant.
And that pitcher, I might add, is an old Chris Staley cast off from a workshop at Haystack ages ago. I’ve used it all these years as my water pitcher for glazing. I generally hate having other people’s pots in my studio (I can barely stand my own) because I find it so distracting. But this pitcher is like an old dog that sleeps in the corner. The only other contemporary pot I have in the studio is a Michael Simon teapot. If there was a forest fire I’d grab this teapot (and my baby boy). There are a few old Chinese and Japanese pots around too.
The hard thing about brushes and brushwork is, well, everything. Unearthing what kind of lines you want to make, and then figuring out the combination of glaze material and brush takes years. Each brush has its character – a type of line it makes best with certain materials, adn a way of releasing that material. You can work with or against that, but it’s good to know. The other key thing is to recognize when your brush has lost its tip. You can choose to keep using it, but if you can’t recognize when you’re using a dead brush you will have no control of your mark making. Which is like having dysentery – no fun for anyone.