The Third Light Pendant When he was only thirty-two he received a special request for his handmade pottery business. A new exclusive restaurant was opening in the Art Museum overlooking the bay, and the interior designer asked if he could make three ceramic light pendants to hang over the bar. There was a desired due date, as the restaurant was suppose to open in July. It was now April. These would be large, dome-shaped ceramic pendants, twenty inches in diameter and nine inches high. They would be hand-carved with vertical, sharp ridges like a sea shell, and with a hole in the top for the electrical wire and hanging hardware. They were to be glazed in white. They would weigh twenty pounds each. He said, I have never made anything that large in that shape before, but I will try. He was gratified that he had become so well known that he would even get such a commission. So he set out on the project. Immediately, he realized it was going to be harder than he had imagined. The ball of clay needed to throw such a piece had to weigh over twenty-five pounds to allow for shrinkage in the kiln. The first piece he tried to throw on the wheel collapsed as he pulled the clay up to create the dome shape. So he tried again, and the second one also collapsed. He eventually got the clay to yield to his hand, and this time the shape held. After days of drying them to leather hardness, he began the meticulous process of hand carving the ridges with a small carving tool. These ridges stretched the length of the piece around its entire circumference, and there were sixty-four such ridges. It was hard on his hands, and he had to take several breaks. In his first carving attempt, the tool broke through the clay at the bottom. He had thrown the clay too thin. He had to start all over. Eventually, he had a fully carved piece ready for the bisque firing. But the designer, looking at a photo he sent her, said she wanted the ridges to be sharper. This would require adjusting the thickness of the walls. So he started over again. Each time he started over it required another twenty-five pounds of clay. He could reconstitute the clay in the failed pieces, because they had not been fired yet, so he wasn’t losing any clay. He was learning, piece by piece, how to make these pendants. Finally, he created a fully thrown carved piece that met approval. Now it had to sit for a week to slowly dry. Then it went into the first kiln firing, the bisque firing at over 2,000 degrees F. Two days later, when he unloaded the piece from the kiln, he was happy. It looked like it had made it. Then he turned it over and saw the circular crack all around the circumference of the bottom. It had cracked in the kiln. He didn’t know why. His persistence led him to research, and he discovered that there was a special clay he should be using for such large pieces that was supposed to be resistant to cracking. It was called Armstone clay. He called his supplier and by luck they had some, but their supply of it had dried rock-hard for whatever reason. They would sell it to him for half price. He knew how to reconstitute such clay, so he drove hundreds of miles to pick it up. Working hard to rehydrate the clay, and from what he had learned in the failed pieces, he eventually created a successful pendant. Fully fired twice, one bisque firing and one glaze firing, perfectly carved with no cracks. He went on to produce a second pendant, and this time he was also successful. Now he just had one to go. It was now late July and the restaurant was opening in mid-August. He had the third one thrown and carved, and it had been drying slowly in the studio. It must be very dry before it went into the bisque kiln. But the humidity had been high, and this took several days. Finally, he said it is ready. The third and final pendant went into the kiln for the bisque firing. He was going to make the deadline, which was now next week. He started the kiln at a very low temperature to begin the slow drying process. The temperature must not rise too quickly, as this would cause any moisture still left in the pendant to expand the clay and crack it. So he watched the temperature closely. After two hours at two-hundred degrees F., he could then safely increase the temperature and let the kiln finish in another ten hours or so. He reached that point and increased the temperature. After about four hours, he heard a loud noise and peered into the small holes in the kiln’s side and the chimney at the top with a flashlight. The pendant had cracked violently all along one side. It was ruined. He had other pieces in the kiln, so he had to continue on with the firing. He texted the designer with the news and asked if she wanted him to deliver the two good pendants and continue to try, or to simply cancel the entire order. Sitting alone in his studio ten years later, he was looking at the two light pendants he had made so long ago still sitting high up on a shelf, covered with a little dust now, and at the twenty-five pound ball of clay on the wheel. He was about to throw the third pendant for the two hundredth time. He tried to remember what he had learned from the last failed pendant firing. The restaurant was still open, but with three store-bought plastic light pendants hanging over the bar. His father was long gone, and he thought of him. He would be proud of me, he thought. He had told me to never give up. Ever. So I will try again. He had one more thought: A lot of people do the same thing every day, but they don’t really know what they are trying to accomplish. At least I know what I am trying to make. And the restaurant still needs this third pendant. [Author’s Note: This is mostly a true story about my potter son. The ending is my imaginative turn toward the fantastic, though. He hasn’t made the third pendant, as originally ordered. He took the first two light pendants to the restaurant, and they discussed how they would hang over the bar. The restaurant bought the first two pendants, but we still don’t know if they are now hanging above the bar in Elizabeth’s restaurant at the Corpus Christi Art Museum, as he never heard back from them after that. Covid discouraged us from going to the museum to see if they were there during that time (ca. 2020). We’re planning to go look someday. The photos show one of the two successful pendants.]
