Yet More Terra Cotta

I don't know exactly what to call this piece. "Tile Bowl"? "Tray Bowl"? I don't think I've ever seen a piece of clay with this particular combination of pieces.......but that's the joy of being a clay engineer.......inventing new forms.

This piece has a black underglaze decoration and a transparent glaze. I like the primitive look about it. The design is sorta' reminiscent of ancient Ainu (native people of Japan) designs. I was thinking along the lines of that and a bit like the Western Pacific tattoos or modern arm tattoos. Maybe I'll make "Tattoo Pots". huh? Didn't want to go overboard, though, and wanted to only enhance the form.

When I repeat this form, and if I use terra cotta, I'm planning to burnish the surface to see if there is a difference in the whole look of the clay. I'll make my own slump mold with this piece in mind and maybe even engineer in the tray form when I make it so that the whole process will go faster.

I used a plaster block mold that had a bowl indentation in the middle. First, I made the bowl, then formed the spout and attached it. Then I made the tile from a slab of clay and pinched and added the feet. The beauty of using the mold is that the bottom of the bowl and the indentation of the tray marry perfectly because it is using the same curve.





Here's it's ugly cousin. Remember this from last September?

Snake on a Plate

So here's the finished product of the snake plate. It is now hanging on the wall in the entryway.

When I pass it, I think about what I've learned lately about snakes and the Southwest.

It seems that snakes have a mixed reputation among the native people and I haven't come to understand it fully yet. It depends upon which group you're talking to.

Recently, I went to an Indian Market at the Arizona State Museum and while there, asked a Navajo artist about snakes in art.

The news wasn't good. I gather that snakes are not well thought of.

I was reading Halo of the Sun and the author writes that while learning Navajo rug weaving, she put a snake into the first rug she wove. There was much worrying about the fact that it could bring her bad luck. When she placed two roadrunners above the snake at the top of the rug, it seemed to neutralize or at least keep the snake in check.

I also read in the same book about the custom of weaving a pathway with an opening design along the side of a rug to 'free' the design and release it to be used again.

Now, the design of my snake is within many lines and bars. So I'm hoping that will keep it held inbounds and that it can only reside there and not find a pathway out. It cannot call other snakes in. There is much to learn here.

We'll see.

Oh, and by the way. Never speak to a snake.

More Terra Cotta

Two weeks ago, I made this little round-bottomed bowl using a plaster mold and added a spout to it. I thought about making a clay spoon to rest in the curve of the spout, but instead decided to make the bowl more 'important' by putting it on a rounded pedestal. Today I leveled the feet of the base and drew test lines to see where I would like to put some black underglaze. I was originally thinking about making the whole bottom of the bowl black, but when I looked at it on the base, I decided to change the decoration to just strong lines on both. Unfortunately, I got so caught up in the doing of it that I forgot to take any more pictures!

I did, however, take a few pictures of the large platter I've been working on. Here's the beginning of the snake plate design:
I've had this in my designs/doodle notebook for years.

**I generated some pages for the design notebook by drawing pages with blank circles and curved oblong forms to draw design ideas in--ready-made basic forms drawn with Superpaint. Loved that old program. I did a lot of graphic design with it. **

I did create a commissioned bronze plaque from this design idea. But I didn't go much farther with it because in the Pacific Northwest, snakes are taboo. I doubt I could sell this plate there. But in the Southwest, it's a different story. Having grown up in Missouri, I learned my how-to-identify-a-poisonous-snake lessons early and don't really have a dislike of snakes.

They have been revered as keepers of knowledge in some ancient cultures. At the bottom of a temple excavation in Bahrain of the Dilman culture which was the contemporary of Babylon, there was discovered a fragile skeleton of a snake curled around a perfectly round rock and tucked neatly into a delicately woven basket. The interesting thing is, that whole idea is shared with ancient Chinese culture as well. ( Just thought you'd like to know that little brain tickle.)

I was lucky enough to be able to go down into this particular dig when we lived in Bahrain in the early 1970's.

Anyway. Here's the translated snake from an oval form to a round one using 3 coats of black underglaze on greenware. It's ready for the bisque kiln and then I'm planning to glaze it with a non-shiny transparent glaze, letting the clay show through.

Handbuild Salt & Peppers

I'm drying these handbuilt shakers at home. They're made of terra cotta, freely cut out and constructed. I brought them home because I didn't have a good pattern for the cork holes for the bottom. So now they're rounded up and are sitting on my kitchen counter so that I can look at them and decide how to glaze them. This is foreign territory for me, having never worked with this clay. I slabbed the clay out, then flung it on a table top until it began to develop a texture. I like the look of it and would like to preserve the surface. They are interesting to hold. It's a guess as to the size of the holes, not knowing how much this clay will shrink in firing.

I'm tempted to use a black underglaze and paint a strong line down each side seam, make the base and feet black and maybe the pouring part. I'll either do it in class on Tuesday or drive across town today to the supply store and pick some underglaze up along with a few other things to work with.