Jumping Frog Handle Mugs at Save The Frogs

Thanks go out to Dr. Kerry Kriger for sending us this photo form Save the Frogs offices in Santa Cruz, California.

Save The Frogs is America's first and only public charity dedicated to amphibian conservation. Our mission is to protect amphibian populations and to promote a society that respects and appreciates nature and wildlife.

Save The Frogs Day is* April 28th 2012 (http://savethefrogs.com/day)

Save The Frogs Day is* April 28th 2012 (http://savethefrogs.com/day)

*Everyday.

Jumping Frog Handle Mug sees Manhattan, New York, USA

Country frog comes to Manhattan!

Here he is riding down Manhattan's West Side Drive.

There is so much to see!

Maybe he'll run into Kermit! We all know Kermit still "loves" Manhattan! I've told my frog (no, frogs do not have ears, but they can hear) that Kermit and The Muppets crew are doing a new movie! We can't wait to see it!

We would like very much to hear from any Jumping Frog Handle Mug frog cousins that live here in Manhattan. Email us at funkwarepots@yahoo.com and we'll post your messages and any photos you send on the blog.

As Kermit says, "I'm staying! You hear that, New York? THE FROG IS STAYING!"

"..too cute to put away!" At home in Burton, Ohio

Thanks for the note Debbie!

Date: September 15, 2011 10:03:55 AM EDT

Thank you for creating this blog, every time I look at my frog mug, he puts a smile on my face!

He sits out on my counter at all times, because He is too cute to put away!
 
Frogs rule! Ha ;)

Debbie
Burton, Ohio

Jumping Frog Handle Mugs at home and abroad

Thanks for welcoming my Jumping Frog Handle Mug
into your home (and along on your travels) in:

• Santa Cruz, (Save the Frogs) California, USA. View the photo of the Jumping Frog Handle Mug at Save the Frogs [HERE].
• Tucson, Arizona, USA
• Garner, North Carolina, USA
• Milford, Massachusetts, USA
• Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Ashford, Connecticut, USA
• Canaan, Connecticut, USA
• San Monica, California, USA
• Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA
• Lake Park, Florida, USA
• Winchester, Massachusetts, USA
• Fairfield, Connecticut, USA
• Burton, Ohio, USA
Note from Debbie, "...too cute to put away!"
• North Stonington, Connecticut, USA
• West Hartford, Connecticut, USA
• Marlborough, Connecticut, USA
• Sudbury, Massachusetts, USA
• Norfolk, Connecticut, USA
• Goshen, Connecticut, USA
• Mansfield, Connecticut, USA
• Harwinton, Connecticut, USA
• Sandisfield, Massachusetts, USA
• Sheffield, Massachusetts, USA
• Hopping all over! New York City, New York, USA
• Larchmont, New York, USA
• Pittsfield, Massachusetts, USA
• Riverside, California, USA
• Denver, Colorado, USA
• Fort Worth, Texas, USA
• Wonooski, Vermont, USA
• Sharon, Connecticut, USA
• Paramus, New Jersey, USA
• Litchfield, Conne ticut, USA
• Talyor, Michigan, USA
• Lakewood, Washington, USA
• Seattle, Washington, USA
• Upper Montclair, New Jersey, USA
• Mount Laurel, New Jersey, USA
• Duck, North Carolina, USA
• Lakeside, Connecticut, USA
• Lakeville, Connecticut, USA
• New Haven, Connecticut, USA
• Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA
• Brattleboro, Vermont, USA
• Willimantic, Connecticut, USA
• Suffolk, Virginia, USA
• Tolland, Connecticut, USA
• Eastford, Connecticut, USA
• Stockbridge, Massachusetts, USA
• Corolla, North Carolina, USA
• Bourne, Massachusetts, USA
• Essex, Connecticut, USA
• Housatonic,  Massachusetts, USA
• Northampton, Massachusetts, USA
• Lansing, Michigan, USA
• Springfield, Tennessee, USA
• Wales, Massachusetts, USA
• Rocky Hill, Connecticut, USA
• Manchester, Connecticut, USA
• Portland, Maine, USA
• Bolton, Connecticut, USA
• Trappe, Maryland, USA
• Millerton, New York, USA
• Los Angeles, California, USA 
• Louden, New Hampshire, USA
• Scarsdale, New York, USA
• Portland, Oregon, USA 
• Canal Winchester, Ohio 
• Boise, Idaho, USA 
• San Mateo, California, USA
• Kings Park, New York, USA
• San Diego, California, USA
• Reno, Nevada, USA
• Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA
• New Canaan, Connecticut, USA
• Storrs, Connecticut, USA
• Hartford, Connecticut, USA
• Attleboro, Massachusetts, USA
• Watertown, Connecticut, USA
• Austin, Texas, USA
• East Point, Georgia, USA
• Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA
• Cromwell, Connecticut, USA
• South Windsor, Connecticut, USA
• Scotland, Connecticut, USA
• Rancho Santa Margarita, California, USA

Let me know how you have settled in together and how you two are doing. Getting a photo would be cool too! I'll post it here. My direct email is funkwarepots@yahoo.com.

Another thing, I know there are more Jumping Frog Handle Mugs out in the world living in other towns and traveling in other places, so if I've missed (I've only just begun looking through my old paperwork...) you and you want to get on this post just send me an email.

Thanks again,
Joey

PS: You can always post a comment to this post and let me know how you two are doing.

Making a new batch of Jumping Frog Handle Mugs

After throwing the mugs and shaping the frogs - the "new hatch" is drying in the pottery.

It is always exciting to see the new jumping frogs all lined up. Peaceful now but I never know where they will jump. First, though, they need to jump into the kiln to be bisque fired.

But in this damp weather they are taking forever to dry.

Finally dry they are ready for the bisque kiln firing. Jump frogs!

Here's a little bit about that process from About.com: "The purpose of bisquing is to change the clay into ceramic material, without fully fusing it. Most pottery goes through a bisque firing before it is glazed and then fired again to melt the glaze and fuse it to the clay body. Bisque firing pottery is important. This allows the potter to do much more decorative work with stains, underglazes and glazes with a greatly reduced risk of the pot being damaged. Because the bisque firing is brought to temperature much more slowly, bisquing also reduces the chances of pots cracking or exploding in the glaze firing. Read more at
http://pottery.about.com/od/firingthekiln/tp/bisqfire.htm.

Then out they jump when the bisque kiln firing is complete! And what a nice bisque color you have become. Not quite like tanning on the beach though. Maybe I need to take them to the beach sometime and see how they like that!

Stay in line now, stay still and get ready for glazing.

More about glazing from About.com: "Ceramic glazes each have a temperature range that they should be fired to. If the glazes are fired at too low a temperature, the glaze will not mature. If the temperature goes too high, the glaze will become too melted and run off the surface of the pottery. For success, a potter must know their glazes' temperature ranges at which they become mature." Read more at http://pottery.about.com/od/temperatureandmaturatio1/tp/glazerange.htm

As you can see the way the glaze coat looks before firing does not reflect the final color. That will be the work of the kiln Gods. Will they look favorably on this hatch?

Don't be embarrassed little frogs. Wait until you see what happens. But frogs are shy creatures.

And they love to tease.

Almost ready to jump over to the kiln for Glaze firing.

Great care goes into loading the kiln. Especially with the frogs wiggling all around.

In you go little guy...

31 hours and 2,200 degrees later... The firing takes 7 hours and then there's 24 hours of cool down.

They are ready to hop to your house or in this case today to the Norfolk Farmers Market in Norfolk, Connecticut about ten minutes from my studio in Canaan.

You never know where... Let us know if one jumped to your table!

Frog resources and other fun and interesting stuff

I have assembled these links to be resourceful as well as fun!
If you have links that you'd like me to post please email them to me at funkwarepots@yahoo.com and I'll check them out.

• Green Schoolyard Network: http://greenschoolyardnetwork.org/
• Save the Frogs: http://savethefrogs.com/
• Designing Ponds for Wildlife (UK): http://savethefrogs.com/ponds/images/Guide-Build-Pond-Million-Ponds.pdf
• Build a Frog Pond: http://sagebug.com/howto/frog-pond.html
• Green Living Guides: http://sagebug.com/howto/green-living-guides.html
• Million Ponds Project (UK): http://www.pondconservation.org.uk/millionponds
• Frogland: http://allaboutfrogs.org/froglnd.shtml
• Life Cycle of a frog: http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/cycle.html
• Frogs hatching [VIDEO]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddohXRybDLw
• Frogs can tell you if the environment is healthy: http://www.ecokids.ca/pub/eco_info/topics/frogs/indicator/index.cfm
• Frog habitat: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/frog-habitat.html
• Save the frogs: http://savethefrogs.com/climate/index.html
• Jumping frog Jubilee: http://classiclit.about.com/b/2005/05/19/jumping-frog-jubilee-mark-twains-frog-in-literature.htm
• Frogtown: http://www.frogtown.org/ 
• The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County: http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/price/frog.htm 
• Jumping frog [VIDEO]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVNKL1j6Gak  
• Jumping frog origami [VIDEO]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9lVHvfzMY 
• Jumping frog mug sculpture [VIDEO]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpv7TlA4fBc

More to come..

Jumping Frog Handle Mug at Mark Twain House

In this anniversary year of Mark Twain's first commercial success, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, I wonder what Mark Twain would have thought of my Jumping Frog Handle Mug in his house in Hartford? 

"It certainly had a wide celebrity...but I was aware that it was only the frog that was celebrated. It wasn't I."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography [Quote site]

Well the people at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut like it enough to offer it for sale in the gift shop. Many thanks to a dear friend and former pottery student of mine who introduced my jumping frog mug to them. I am sure that Mr. Clemens would have had something to say about that too.

"The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."
Mark Twain - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

If you happen to be one of those people who purchased one of my Jumping Frog Handle Mugs at the Mark Twain House (Thanks!) please enter a comment to this post and let me know where you are from and where my "Jumping Frog" mug now resides. Anyone from Calaveras County? Now that would be fun!

I never know where my Jumping Frog Handle Mug will jump to next!

Nancy Today: Pottery sculpting lesson inspired by my frog mug [VIDEO]

A few days ago when we started talking about doing this blog we found this video that a potter made using my Jumping Frog Handle Mug as a model. Get that! My Jumping Frog Handle Mug as a model! How cool is that! 

 

 

So I contacted Nancy Today:

 

YouTube.com Uploader Comments (NancyToday)

• Hi Nancy - this is Joey Jablonski of Funkware Pottery, the person who made the frog mug you were inspired by. How lovely to see your work. That mug was inspired by my son's love of frogs and for the past 12 years I've been making them for people all over the country. Just started an Etsy site and will be starting a frog mug blog and was hoping I could link to this video. Thanks for giving me credit for the design. Best, Joey

  joeysagejablonski 3 days ago
• @joeysagejablonski I am so honoured to meet you! I am so glad you found this video and can see the ripples of your inspiring work! I have received so many compliments on your frog! I am glad you put the name on the bottom clearly enough that I could give you credit! I'm so glad I knew where it was from! I love the care you put into forming its little toes and knees, the chin over the lip of the mug! It receives SO many compliments! I shall send them your way!

  NancyToday 3 days ago
• @joeysagejablonski Yes, you can link this video!

   

Thanks Nancy Today! This is really a fun thing to see! [WATCH IT HERE]

North Canaan potter shares the joys of Funkware

Reprinted from a 2008 story in The Lakeville Journal.

 

NORTH CANAAN - Joey Jablonski describes the functional pottery she and her students create as "everyday joy." From the fun of making it to using the dinnerware, bowls and even bathroom sinks, there is always a place for it in life.

Jablonski is in the process of moving her Ashford, Conn., studio and Funkware Pottery to her new home on Trescott Hill Road, [in Canaan, CT] where she is accepting students for wheel-thrown pottery classes that officially begin October 1.

Her artfully glazed pieces, from berry bowls to mugs with frog-shaped handles, were on display at the Railroad Days professional crafts show. Jablonski greeted customers with her brilliant smile, one that gets even brighter when she tells The Journal of leaving the corporate world behind to apprentice with John Macomber at Greenleaf Pottery in South Windsor.
The East Hartford native with an MBA went back to school, taking sculpture classes at Lyme Academy and the University of Connecticut, where she later taught continuing education classes. She finds affirmation in that many of her students continue to take her classes well beyond their need for instruction.

"I have students who hang around for years. It becomes addictive. Forming a piece of clay on a wheel is such a stress-relieving, very meditative thing."

Yet there are other students she has helped start their own studios. She also enjoys the diversity of people who come to learn.

"A class I have right now includes a 70-year-old woman, a 55-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman."
Why Funkware?

"I just used to do, and still do, a lot of funky stuff."

Jablonski encourages her students to experiment with sculptural elements and other advanced forms of decorating wheel-thrown pottery. She also teaches hand building skills. Classes are limited to three, which is the number of wheels in her North Canaan studio.

For more information and to register for her morning and evening classes beginning in October, contact 860-933-1101 or funkwarepots@yahoo.com., or visit her Web site at funkwarepottery.com.

From: Pottery teacher at Paint a Miracle in Rochester, MI

I thought I would share a message that came in to my Facebook page.

Mary says, "Hi Joey. I found some of your work on web sites while trying to get inspiration. Your art work is very funky! Love the frog handles. I'm a pottery teacher at Paint a Miracle in Rochester, MI. It's a non-profit studio for adults and children with disabilities. Pictures of your work will inspire these special people. They do wonderful work. Thanks, Mary."

Thank you, Mary. I love hearing that my work inspires others.

Welcome

Over fifteen years ago my now college (University of Washington, Seattle) grad son spent the summer in our canoe in the shallow pond in back of our home catching frogs. It was then that I made him the first Frog Mug. I had no idea that today that stoneware ceramic pottery mug with the jumping frog handle would be held in the hand of so many people from all over the country.

 Four Jumping Frog Handle Mugs

that are available at my shop at Etsy.com.

I am so excited to offer my Jumping Frog Handle Pottery Mugs at my shop on Etsy.com and to begin this blog which I hope that frog lovers everywhere will read, enjoy and contribute to.

Happy frog day!
Joey

PS: Please see my other ceramic work at FunkwarePottery.com. There you can view and shop for a full selection of bowls, dinnerware, platters, vases and ceramic sculptural works as well. If you don't see what you are looking for, please feel free to contact me. I'm always happy to make something special in the shape and the glaze you want.