Funny Little Pot

So here's a variation on two themes:  Surface treatment and the handbuilt pot.

I used a sea shell, a shred of some kind of plastic car-light part picked up in a parking lot, a wooden stamp, a piece of styrofoam packing and the end of a dowel.


The handbuilding was intentionally un-square.

It was okay to overlap the celadon glaze.

I have no idea what it could be used for.  But that's for the buyer to figure out.

P.S.

Remember the Racer?

 Here's what it looked like prefire.

I like the way the edges ran down the corners and pooled in the corners of the small square. I'll remember that the next time I make this form.

The mold for this is an el chipo plastic 1960s dish I found at the thrift store. Great place to look for clay forms. The good thing about this is I can lay a slab down on the plastic which I line with damp strips of newsprint, and just let it dry. The recessed center makes a good foot on the dish.

A "Racer"

In every kiln firing, there is usually one piece that comes out better than you dreamed. Some people call them "Racers". 

Here's my racer.

This thing has been setting around on a shelf waiting to be fired for a long time. It's big. There hasn't been a firing that allowed a free shelf, so this piece got put off and putt off. 

But this guy made it into the OVERFIRE kiln. Yikes. All these glazes are supposed to be good up to cone 6. I don't know how hot the last kiln got because the thermocouple malfunctioned. The chances of duplication? almost nil.

I do know that this is celadon and iron applied over it.

 

It did blister a bit, but no explosions or craters. 

I just love it. It's a keeper.

Combining Fibers with Clay

This little pot has a kimihimo necklace.

Kumihimo is the Japanese art of braiding. Toggle cords for netsuke or decorative cords for kimono incorporates kumihimo.

A friend gave me this little cord and it seems to fit nicely on the sauce bottle. Unfortunately, the bottle is no more, due to an encounter with a tile floor.

But the idea still lives and I'm thinking of doing some more of these kinds of pairings.

Celadon Fish Tiles

Experimental tiles done with fish impressions. The impressions are concave, made from convex bisque molds and celadon glaze.

I like the look of the celadon with the impressions.

Worth pursuing in a more controlled, larger set of tiles, I think.

What a Difference a Glaze Makes, part 2

These examples are roughly the same shape. They're the salt and pepper shakers I make both in singles and/or in sets. These are singles because they are experiments with form and glaze. The pear on the left is glazed in only celadon. It's an early one. The second has an underglaze of black applied to the piece when was raw clay. I brush the underglaze on using a slowly spinning wheel. Same form - very different outcome: One composed, quiet, the other zany and playful. The black & white one reminds me of an Italian clown's striped leggings.

This is how I make them: I put about 1 1/2 lbs. porcelain on the wheel, center, then make a donut shape by opening a hole that goes straight down to the wheelhead in the center. I form a cone-shape that's about about an inch+ tall, wide at the bottom, narrow at the top with a tiny hole at the apex. The hole is small enough that the head of a dressmaker's pin would pass through--bead sized.

Then I carefully pull the sides up into a pear shape closing the form at the top and sealing the air within. (You can modify the shape once the pear is sealed, manipulating the trapped air.)

I set it aside for a day or until it becomes firm enough to have the application of a stem and/or leaves on the top. Keep it on the batt. Sometimes I carefully indent the top before affixing the stem. A leaf or two can be formed and added too, but keep in mind how you're going to deal with the underside of the leaf when it comes time to glaze. I usually make them pretty form-fitting to the pear.

Then I let the pear dry on the batt. When it's ready to come off, I smooth the bottom, sign the clay and set it on the self to be fired. Sometimes I wax the very bottom and just set it on the kiln shelf; other times I stilt the piece, as in this shot.

How do they work you ask? You will notice there are no holes in the top. Everything goes it and comes out the bottom. It's physics. You turn the pear over and pour the salt/pepper in through the cone which now acts as a funnel, gently rotate the pear upright and when you want seasoning, just shake the thing straight up and down. The cone has retained the granules inside by forming a donut-shaped reservoir inside, when you shake it the salt or pepper flies up to the top on the inside and some falls out the tiny hole at the top of the cone. Depending on how large the hole is, the more stingy or generous the fall-out is. One customer, after puzzling over how the thing worked, suddenly 'got it' and said, "Isn't it great when physic works?"

Another Example of Appearance

This bowl is made with a basic white glaze and various glazes applied over the base coat.

This is a minuet, ballet music, pizzicato. It has a completely diffferent look than the second bowl--

The second bowl is only two glazes overlapped in different ways: A shino which breaks into a reddish color when thin; cream when thick and a satin black that reacts depending on which thickness it is over, how thick it is.
This is Wagner, trumpets and horns, drums and cymbals.

Form & Surface Treatment - What a difference

This is a bowl I made about a year ago using a 50's plastic salad bowl as a form for the bowl shape and cutting a newspaper pattern out to make the base. It is quite large and was absolute murder to put together. I had to form the base and bowl shapes, allow them to get leather hard, assemble the base and then mount the bowl form on top. Even though I thought I had estimated the curve, it still took quite a bit of twiddle to get the two forms to marry well. I added the side detail at the side of the base just off the top of the head as I was assembling the piece and manipulated the rim of the bowl to creat the undulations, then added the tendrals to finish it off. The whole thing is glazed in celadon. This form really encourages glaze run and I had difficulty after the firing with a stuck foot. (A previous piece which was just the base form only with an added bottom to make a square vessel did not work out well and the foot pulled away when I removed it from the kiln.)

What a difference between the top image and this one. The second piece has a Southwest feel because of the glaze. I love the variations of color on the base. This time I made the base a bit taller and the corners are joined at a different angle.
The second piece was constructed in exactly the same way, but appears to be very different because of the glaze. This is a shino from Cayote Glazes. And this time, I waxed the feet far up on the base to be sure that there would be no sticking this time to the kiln shelf. I also used lots of kiln wash which allows the piece to roll on tiny granules on the shelf surface as the piece expanded and contracted during the firing/cooling process.