Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Passion for Terracotta

Terracotta

Terracotta means in Italian “baked earth”. This type of clay is often used for flowerpots, bricks or ornaments. 

In Vietnam the clay will be taken out of the river and refined. After refining the clay will be molded into a desired shape and dried. Drying will take place outside under the sun and when it is dried, it will be placed in a kiln. 

In ancient times the first clay sculptures were dried (baked) in the sun after being shaped. Later, the sculptures were placed in the ashes of open hearths to harden and finally kilns were used. Nowadays, we are still using the similar techniques. 

The natural finishing is brown/ orange reddish but the most important is, is the large varieties of finishing for Terracotta and that's what we love about Terracotta! 

Terracotta Apple

Happy Halloween!

Autumn and planters

When cold weather arrives, we have different ways to capture the spirit of harvest season.

First a few ideas and tip to clean up the garden before decorating:

• Prune the hedges for the last time.
• Rejuvenate the plants that grow every year.
• Roses, trees and hedges can be planted at this period of the year. 
• Retrace and fix climbing plants.
• Pull out weeds. 
• Plant flower bulbs and tubers. 
• Make compost heaps to protect the garden against heavy rainfall. 
• Add protection to frost- sensitive plants. 
• Keep the pond free from falling leaves. 
• Clean tools. 
• Clean the greenhouse.

It doesn't hurt to let leaves and branches in the corners of your garden. This will attract hedgehogs and toads for hibernation. So let's move on, the tips below can be used for indoor and outdoor. The main focus for today is outdoor. 

How to decorate your garden for autumn?

The color palette
To warm up cold and dark evenings, combine campfire colors yellow, orange, red and brown. With light colors, such as grey will bring the bright colors in front.

Source: http://design-seeds.com/

Optional colors
The optional colors are tree brown and autumn leaves colors in different shades. Do you already getting warm?

Source: http://design-seeds.com/

Decoration
Because the weather is getting darker the leaves are falling, we will be losing lots of colors in our view. So it is time to bring lots of colors in the garden. Fill big pottery/planters with pumpkins/ squashes and add some flowers and plants. Find some pumpkin chandeliers for tea lights or light some lanterns to create the warm ambiance in the garden.  

Happy gardening!

Rosa Planters Vietnam

"We bring boo- tiful pumpkins to your garden."

Bring pumpkins and scary entities into your home&garden because Halloween is coming!

A little history before we move to "Halloween in your home&garden". Halloween is originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. November 1^st is the time to honor all saints and martyrs. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween). Over time, Halloween evolved into a community- based event characterized by child- friendly activities such as trick-or treating. No matter what history tells us, Halloween we see today is warm, fun and a little spooky.

Halloween in your home&garden.

The color pallet

Pumpkin orange is warm, happy and brings our mind to autumn. Midnight black represents darkness of the winter. It brings mystery, power and protection.

Optional colors are:

Bloody red (blood, fire and demons), eerie green (goblins, monsters and zombies), ghostly white (ghosts, mummies and the full moon) and deep purple (supernatural and mysticism).

Decoration

Add objects to make people curious and scare them right away. Create the eerie effect with black lights and scary lanterns. Dig graves and add fake body parts. Hang up skeletons, ghosts and catch people with spiders and their spider webs.

The most important object of Halloween is the pumpkin. The pumpkin comes from the myth of Stingy Jack, who died and finding himself rejected by both heaven and hell. He was forced to seek a resting place for his soul in darkness and legend has it that he hollowed out a turnip and used to carry a coal to light his way. The first Jack-o-lanterns were carved in turnips and changed to pumpkins when the tradition was brought o America.

Ceramic pumpkin head

Put the pumpkins heads everywhere in your home&garden, use real pumpkins or ceramic pumpkins. Let them laugh and scare the guests.

Happy Halloween!

Rosa Planters Vietnam

One, two, three and Fire!

So, after the pottery has been formed and dried completely it will be fired to stay in this shape permanently. The kilns I have experiences in Vietnam are the normal kilns and the Dragon kilns. What are the differences?

Kiln

The firing happens in a kiln. A kiln is a type of oven that produces temperatures to complete processes like hardening, drying and chemical changing. A kiln in Vietnam is made of bricks and the opening will be lay by bricks after the pottery is placed.  To fire the pottery, the kilns are fueled with rice husk or wood.

Kiln and rice husk

The Dragon kiln

The Jagama, also known as the Dragon kiln is also a common used kiln in Vietnam. The combination of Anagama, Noborigama and the Waritake kilns is the Jagama. Wait, what?

Jagama

Anagama

Anagama

The Anagama is considered the oldest kiln. The single-chamber, tunnel-shaped kiln (Anagama) is build with an opening in the front (1). After the opening, the firebox is found. (2) In the middle there is a stacking floor. (3) Dampers are found at the end of the stacking floor. (4) And next to the dampers, the flue is found. (5) The flue is an opening in a chimney to transport the exhaust gases from the firebox. (6)

The Anagama is fueled with wood. A continuous supply of fuel is needed for firing as wood is consumed rapidly in a hot kiln. Burning wood produces heat and wood ashes that will settle on the pottery during the firing. The interaction between flame, ash and the minerals of the clay forms a natural ash glaze. The appearance of the pottery depends on the placement of the pottery, the closer the pottery is to the firebox, the heavier the coat of ash is. 

The Anagama style kiln, Waritake, has the Anagama style but walls are built every meter through the length of the kiln. Each partition can be stoked aside.

The multi-chamber kiln (Noborigama) is built on a slope. The Noborigama is a chambered climbing kiln and each chamber is situated higher than the other one before. Also all the chambers have stoking ports.

When we combine the Anagama, Noborigama and the Waritake, we have the Jagama.

So now the Jagama, this kiln is a long tube shaped kiln up on a slope and divided by improvised walls which are created by stacking pottery. Each “chamber” has a stoking port and the fire starts from under and climbs slowly up.

In general, all these kilns are unpredictable. That is why no glazed potteries are fired in these kilns. (Glazed potteries are fired in the gas kilns.)The firing process takes days and the most important part of the firing process is the right cooling off. If the potteries are taken out too soon, the pottery might have cracks or even break. 

Thank you for passing by today!

Rosa Planters Vietnam

It's all about the hands

Hello to the world! 

Buying season has started for us and I have found some quality time to continue the word of the week. I hope you all enjoyed it last week. Today we continue with techniques for making pottery.

Pottery can be made in different ways. Also pottery is available in different sizes, how do pottery, bigger than a person, is made? The first technique makes it possible. The hand-building technique needs skillful hands and clay. The clay will be pinched into a bowl and ropes of clay will wrap upward until the right height is reached. 

Second technique is the slab building. The slab building is often used for mid- size pottery. For slab building we need hands, clay and a mold. The clay will be flatten and the flattened clay will be put into a mold. After drying, the mold will be removed. 

Slab building

The last technique is the potter’s wheel. For the potter's wheel we need hands, clay and a potter’s wheel. A potter’s wheel is a wheel on a stand that can turn around. The potter’s wheel can be powered by hand, feet or electricity. This technique is common used for small sized pottery.

Drying

The next step is drying, all the potteries need to be dried before the kiln...so what happens in the kiln...?

More fire next time!

Rosa Planters Vietnam
www.rosaplanters.com