Notes from the bench

Term One ceramics had eight bowls and a lidded jar ready on the Monday after session four. The kiln on the back landing was packed in the afternoon, cones in, and fired overnight. By Tuesday the landing was still warm. Two handles had hairlined along the join. The rest came through with a quiet ash glaze we mixed in January.

The hairlines were expected. Both handles had been pulled a little fine, and Singapore’s wet week had kept the joins from drying as evenly as the walls. We showed the cracks at the next evening, then wrapped one handle with a coil of the same clay after a biscuit soak, and left the other as a pouring bowl. An understood crack is easier to live with than a repair that hides the lesson.

The glaze clipboard now has the load: cone, hold, and which shelf ran hotter. That sheet goes home with the course in week six. If you are holding a ceramics seat later in 2026, this is the kiln you will use. It is a small electric, vented, and it does not like pieces with walls thicker than a thumb.

Open bench on 11 April will take any Term One piece that still needs a second fire. Bring it wrapped. We will find a gap on the shelf.

The studio starter is a jar on the kitchen bench, fed on the regional flour we use for the Saturday course. In February it was lively to the point of climbing the lid. By late March, in a drier stretch, it slowed and we reduced the water in the feed. That is the whole method: watch the jar, then change one thing.

Term One did not run sourdough. The Saturday bench was joinery. We still baked on the fortnight between terms, because the oven needs to be used and the starter needs a bake as much as a feed. The loaves were for the look-around table on Saturday afternoon, sliced, with butter from the shop downstairs.

Term Two bread starts 4 May. The sheet you take home will say: Singapore kitchens are warm, so bulk fermentation is shorter than the European books suggest, and the fridge is your friend overnight. If the starter you take home sulks, feed it once a day for three days before you call it dead. We have not lost one yet that was only tired.

Flour stays the same through 2026 unless the mill changes the bag. If it does, the sheet will change with it. We will not send you to a brand we do not buy.

June was hard on the vat. The lid stayed on, we fed it, and the flower still looked thin on a Wednesday. By Sunday the reduction had come back enough to dye, just slower. The Term Two course dipped longer, and the cloth went from green to blue in the air as it should. One piece came out paler than the sample on the wall. We hung it anyway, and wrote the dip count on the corner in pencil.

An indigo vat in a shophouse is a living barrel. We tell people that before they pay the deposit. Even navy is rare here. If you want to understand why a vat smells the way it does, and how to keep one on a landing without annoying the building, three Sunday mornings are enough to start.

Gloves, aprons and a change of clothes remain good advice. Indigo finds the one shirt you like. The window table is where the cloth hangs; we move lettering off it on dye weekends. Term Three Sundays will use the same vat. It should be kinder once the weather turns again, though we will not promise a colour.

Offcuts from June are in the rag box for resist samples in September. Nothing that took dye well is thrown away.

Term Three binding brought in the usual mix: a cheap stapled notebook that had split, a child’s picture book with a broken corner, and one decent case that had only lost a headband. We repair what can be repaired in an evening. We also say no, gently, when the paper is crumbling or the owner cannot bear a visible stitch.

The cheap notebook was the useful one. We pulled the staples, folded fresh endpapers, and sewed a pamphlet into a new cover of millboard and cloth. It is now a book that can be opened flat on the bench. The person who brought it will use it for glaze notes. That is a better fate than another stapler.

Bring a book you are willing to alter. If it is the only copy of something that matters, we will ask you to buy a practice volume from the shop on Arab Street and leave the original at home. Repair is a set of honest stitches, and they show. The course is four evenings, which is long enough for one new case and one modest repair.

Thread, board and paste for 2026 are the same as Term Two. If you took that course and want a second repair, the November open bench can take one extra book, wrapped, with your name on the paper band.