7 Weeks in Portugal Recap: Ceramic studio challenges
The first stop after Mariana picked me up from the airport: Graffito, the local ceramic supplier.
I can’t believe I existed in another country for seven weeks, and after all the anticipation, it’s already over and done. As I’m writing this from my cozy home in Portland, Oregon I can’t help thinking… maybe this is just the beginning. So many people have asked me to share photos of my trip and talk more about what I did there. Spending so much time in another country, you’d think I saw all the sites, and traveled around a bunch, but the truth is, this was a work trip. I went to Portugal to do research, collaborate with Mariana, network and test my business model there. As I scroll through all the photos I took, the majority of them are photos from inside the studio, and the surrounding areas in Caldas da Rainha.
No matter how I do it, there’s no way to fit the whole experience into one bite sized blog post, so I’m writing a few and y’all can pick and choose the ones you’re interested in to peruse.
Since I went to Portugal to collaborate, make ceramics, and figure out how to exist as a ceramic artist there, this post will focus wholly on that. If you aren’t familiar with ceramics (or even if you are), here are some fun facts and anecdotes:
Working with clay and glazes is NOT like painting. Clay bodies are often regional, and contain different minerals and characteristics that are good (or bad) for certain kinds of work. Different clays fire to different temperatures, and glazes and clay bodies require a fair amount of testing to ensure they will do what you want them to, once you take them to extreme heat. So traveling to a different continent, with a short timeline, working with unfamiliar clay and glazes… lets just say there were lots of challenges and learnings.
Mariana and her baby kiln- we managed to pack this little guy for maximum firing potential. Mariana is a master of kiln tetris.
Kilns are different too, not to mention I am not a math person, and calculating the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit, or inches to centimeters, or pounds to kilograms… not my strong suit. And Mariana’s kiln was quite a bit smaller than mine, with the bonus of a 100º C temperature difference from the bottom to the top, plus a hot spot, which created a whole other set of … well shit exploded in that spot a few times, so call that what you will. Thankfully the Silos (an old grain factory, converted into creative spaces), where Mariana’s studio is located, has many ceramic artists working there, and a few of them helped us get our work done, through sharing larger kilns and slab rollers, knowledge and other equipment.
At one point we had work firing in three different people’s kilns. Big shout out to Hugo from 105 Ceramic Lab !
Glazes. Oh the glazes! If you’ve been following my work a while, you may see that I use the same glazes in my work regularly. I discovered Midnight Ceramics glazes in 2020 while I was developing a dinnerware set for a decor line I was working on (that never came to be, like so many other things in 2020), and I was hooked. They are a small batch company on the east coast, and 3 years later, I pretty much use their glazes exclusively. I know how to work with them, how they work together, and how to apply them to my pots to get those juicy drips and vibrant colors. I wanted to bring them along! Which brings us to another learning experiences… customs and shipping.
Customs and shipping. Yeah. Basically shipping things from outside of the EU into Portugal is difficult. I made a reel summarizing the experience if you prefer the 20 second visual version of this, but here’s a quick overview:
Ordered 5 glazes to be shipped to me on January 11, they were shipped on January 14 and delivered to customs on January 25.
I arrived on February 9, and since the glazes sat there a while, we started calling and emailing about them. I was charged an import tax, which was basically the cost of the glazes, and then told they were going to “analysis” and to wait.
After a few weeks they said there were 7 things in the box, not the 5 things I ordered. We produced an invoice and waited some more.
About four weeks after my arrival, they said if things were not resolved that day, they were sending the box back to the US! So we made an invoice saying there were 7 things in the box (maybe they sent free samples? They do that sometimes). I paid another $30 for the “free samples” and was basically told to wait.
On Friday March 24, we got an email—- the glazes were being delivered the following week! And I flew home on March 26. They finally arrived on March 30th… with only the five things in the box I had ordered.
So I ultimately spent three times what the glazes cost between shipping and customs. They took about 2.5 months to clear customs and be delivered. Silver lining, they’re already there waiting for me next time.
But glazes in general are sort of limited in Portugal. I’m not totally certain why, but some theories I have heard:
Most ceramic artists use low fire clay, engobes and majolica for decorating. These fire to a lower temperature than the higher fire glazes we frequently use in the US.
Terracotta (low fire) clay body is what exists in the earth naturally in Portugal. The ceramics industry there came up around creating those lovely ceramic roofs, and hand painted tile façades Portugal is known for. There are tons of ceramic factories to create dishware, but none of these items are seen as “fine art”. If you’re into ceramics, you may be aware of this old conversation about claywork- is it art or craft? That’s a whole other post, but the point here is that, glazes are somewhat proprietary to the factories, and there’s not much available to everyone else, who are generally seen as “hobby potters”.
electricity is a whole other issue- like a lot of people don’t fire to high temperatures because the cost for electricity is so high AND it’s often difficult to get the electric wiring to reach the high temperatures needed.
There’s more but, I’ll refrain for now.
Let’s just say I was forced out of my comfort zone, and had to try local Portuguese glazes and German glazes from a company called Botz, plus a few of my favorites I brought in my luggage. And while it was frustrating, I learned a ton and everything worked out just fine.
This bubble gum pink glaze was the result of lots of testing. It’s a combination of Boxed Wine, from Midnight Ceramics, and a glaze from Graffito (it’s not named, just numbered). It was one of my favorite test results!
I said I was there to collaborate and make pots- why? Well, my husband and I are planning a move to Portugal. I’ve dreamed of creating some sort of community space for ceramic artists most of my adult life, a for a bunch of reasons (see previous posts), we landed on Portugal as the place to do it. In 2021 I met Mariana Sampaio on Instagram, and long story short, we became fast friends and realized we shared the same dream—- so we decided to team up and figure out how to work and plan together, while living a world apart.
So this trip was to continue our collaboration and fusion of styles; we’ve named this collab Com-Fusion (With - in Portuguese, fusion), and to explore what it takes to get this Ceramics Community center off the ground in the Caldas da Rainha area. My other personal goal was to test my business model in Europe. That business model being, growing an audience online, making work, posting shop updates, and shipping my pots to their new homes.
How did those things go? That’s a story for the next post. Stay tuned…