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President’s Message

Sunday May 6 is the Annual General Meeting. Carol Mayer will talk about her book
on Tam Irving and we will have copies for sale at the event (cash or cheque only). If
you can’t make it, please remember to send in your proxy vote indicating if you are
in favour of the resolution regarding membership. Having a fixed month for renewal
will assist us in our financial planning and reduce the burden on our volunteers.
Don’t forget the NorthWest Ceramics Foundation fundraising dinner on
May 16. Tickets are $75 each and can be purchased from any NWCF board
member or at the Gallery. There’s a great silent auction and the evening 1s
lots of fun. Proceeds are used to support our own ceramics community.

Jinny Whitehead

See you around!

Changes to BC Potters Website

Behind the scenes, we’ve moved the website to a different webhosting service
at hostmonster.com. We get more space, better e-mail features, better e-
commerce tools and a better price to boot. It’s very competitive out there on
the web so if you have a website provider that is not giving you good service,
features and price, you should look around. Most of you probably get a free
website from your service provider (Telus or Shaw) but if you have a site with
an actual web-hosting company. You shouldn’t pay more than $10/month.

In the members-only area (username 1s member, password is pottery), we
have a black and white version of the current newsletter. It’s a bit smaller in
size so itll download a bit faster and printing will save you some color ink.
Note, you can print in black and white with the regular newsletter by setting
your printer to grayscale or black and white only and that'll save you colour
ink as well.

The library catalogue is online in the members only area. @

Techno Tip: Glaze Chemistry

So your eyes are starting to glaze over already. Yes, this is a technical topic.
One that brings out the mad scientist in all of us. It can be quite a complex
thing, but with a bit of modern technology like glaze calculation software,
you can take a shortcut and make good use of it without getting your Ph.d.

So what’s glaze calculation software good for? Besides organizing, listing
and cataloguing my collection of glazes, here are a few examples of what I’ve
used it for: With a quick number change and click, I can get a recipe resized
from 10 k.g. to 5 k.g. to 300 g or even convert to 8 pounds, it’s a breeze with
calculation software and a quick printout can be followed and checked off as
you make your glaze!

If I have a glaze recipe that calls for an ingredient I don’t have, like some
kind of frit or feldspar. I could recalculate the glaze recipe to use different
ingredients that I have or can get more easily which will in the end, supply
the same amount of oxides, silica and alumina as the original glaze recipe. If
I dislike the Whiting (which gases a lot), I can replace it with Wollastonite and
silica and the software will calculate the amounts for me. It’s quite handy.

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Guild Library
Online!

You can now check the contents of the
Guild library from the comfort of your
own home. Go to the Guild website,
members only section. User id: member,
password: pottery.

At this point you will still have to come
in and check out what you want — if
nobody else has 1t out. You would be able
to see who that 1s and contact them (using
the on-line member’s directory...) to see

when they will be finished using ina
Keith Rice-Jones

Reminder of the
Potters Guild of

British Columbia
Annual General Meeting

ThePotters Guildof BCinvitesyoutoattend
the Annual General Meeting of members
on Sunday, May 6, 2007, at 2:15 p.m. at
The Western Front Society, 303 8"
Avenue East, Vancouver, B.C. (just east

of Main Street; street parking available).

Sunday, May 6, 2007

y

POTTERS

GUILD
i BRITISH
‘COLEMBIA