Using some of the new tools bought at NCECA, along with items of my own fabrication and collection, here's what I'm working on this week: bird things.
Adding Great Tools
Never mind jewelry and new shoes. Who cares? I went shopping for studio tools.
Bought some nifty and extremely useful items from vendors at NCECA 2015, and also added some items from elsewhere.
There's this wheat etched roller from www.4clay.com. Their booth was fun to check out.
(Texture roller for clay from Socwell LLC)
I'm thinking about having them make me a signature stamp for signing my work. We'll see. I blew the budget for now on this NCECA trip!
And these hand cut wheels and stamps from Stanley Hurst at meccapotterytools.com, whose motto is "Impressions last a lifetime; make a good one!"
(Mecca Pottery tools. The square and rectangle stamps have different designs cut into the other ends.)
They have a beautiful handmade feel which is unlike the neat laser-like etching of the wheat design roller tool. There's a place for both in my work.
Can't wait to use this brush with the copper ferrule (below at bottom) handmade by Joe Campbell. I tried out many of his brushes using water on colored paper, and chose the one that made the mark I liked best. I came back the next day and bought the other brush for a friend.
(Joe Campbell brushes)
It's going to be extremely helpful to use these dinnerware hump forms (below). In fact, I intend to start using them next week.
(Hump forms for making square dinnerware)
They're from GR Pottery Forms (www.grpotteryforms.com). I will roll slabs and drape the clay over the forms to shape square plates in two sizes, salad and dinner. The forms are very dense grained, the clay won't stick to them, and this set comes with an edge finishing tool for the vessels I will make from them. I'll throw bowls and cups on the wheel to create full place settings. My head was buzzing with designs and plans while I pondered buying these. Once I have some color and surface ideas planned, which I hope to have by June, I'll be offering a wedding registry! (Look for developing information about that on this blog over the coming weeks.)
I had already ordered this set of 11 biscuit cutters online before going to the conference, from Bill van Gilder's excellent site (www.vangilderpottery.com), to facilitate handbuilding perfect circular components for lids and bases and foot rings.
(Biscuit cutter set for making round components on handmade pieces)
And I had just bought this adjustible measurer (below) online from John Fulwood at Kissimmee River Pottery (www.riverpots.com), to measure vessels as I throw them on the wheel. This is a very fancy version of a tombo (Japanese measuring tool) to help me know whether I'm maintaining constant sizes for sets. I won't be making huge numbers of sets, but I will be open to commissions once I have prototypes of the dinnerware up on my website.
(Fulwood Measure from Kissimmee River Pottery in NJ)
I'm continuing to invest in the business, and it's exciting!
Surface Marks on Bowls
Simple marks are easy to make, and fun.
These were made by tools that were gifts from friends.
A simple chattering tool is held angled in the hand in different ways to make larger or smaller marks. This is simply a strap of flexible, bent metal with sharpish edges. Held a little out from the pot, it makes thinner lines. Held about perpendicular to the pot, it makes bigger, wider marks. Little chippy shavings come off as the tool bounces on the turning pot, and it makes a sort of whirring hum.
The little doodad below is a lemon zester. It gets pulled along the surface as you turn the bowl in your hands bit by bit.
Below is one of my usual trimming tools, used to trim excess clay from the bowl after it has firmed up quite a bit post-throwing. It made uncomplicated rings around the bowl.
(This is a Bison trimming tool, handmade in Las Vegas. Expensive, but worth it. It stays sharp.)
Here (below) is a link to a video of much more complicated surfaces made by Ken Standhardt on his beautiful pots, with tools just as simple as the ones above- a pair of can opener/punches, in fact, and a ballpoint pen. So much is possible using the most elementary tools! http://www.opb.org/television/programs/artbeat/segment/sculptor-kenneth-standhardt/
Human ingenuity used for good, not evil. Ohhhh yeah.
Simple Bowl
You know it's been too long since you sat at your potter's wheel when the liquid in your throwing-water bucket has evaporated to the thickness of pudding.
It's been at least a month of doing other things around the studio and gallery and teaching area. Plus holiday prep around here, plus NCECA.
I woke this morning thinking about "bowliness" and by 6:30 had gone into the studio to weigh 2-lb balls of clay and throw bowls. I want to bring the essence of "bowl" to the clay. The bowl was my first and favorite form. It is generous. It contains. It offers.
I made the bottom thin, and the walls, and neatly finished the edge of the rim. Four times, one for each 2-lb ball of clay. I am beginning to explore Bowl again in its simplicity.
Except for making the interior curve with no line of transition from wall to floor, and thinking about a balance of containing and offering, my main intent was to let go and flow with the clay. Maybe they will want to be stamped later. Maybe colored. Maybe left ivory. Maybe I don't know yet.
Went on and threw a couple of 3-lb bowls. They are thrown equally thin. What a difference a pound of clay makes.
What does 4-lbs of clay do? ...Tomorrow. Early.
After NCECA, Pausing
I've been to NCECA! Pronounced "Enseeka", that's National Conference for Education in the Ceramic Arts. It's big (nearly 5,000 people), it travels annually to a new venue (this year Rhode Island), and I hadn't gone in 14 years. And I would like to blog more about it. But it was too darn big and too much to assimilate and just la di da write up, so I'm going to have to think about that for a while.
All I can say for sure is, I came home with connection to a new friend, and having had interesting conversations with some diverse people, seen good clay techniques demonstrated by really fine artists, and bought some cool new tools and texture items for the studio. My appetite for all things and folks "clay" has only been further whetted. I should be half my age to do all the things I want to do in my field before I hand on my potter's wheel.
In any case I will go like gangbusters once I get back to work with clay, which will be another 9 days or so. This is the "busy life" time where I pre-budget a break from clay itself and pour my energies into all the things I need to do for our family life. Unlike my earlier days, though, this time is more than compensated for by longer hours and work weeks in the studio before and after the break. I have to say- it's hard to take a break after a flood of new ideas begins to germinate!
In the last week I've visited my 101 year old aunt in Massachusetts (what an impressive woman, lucid and personable), been to NCECA, and also registered for the Women Working with Clay Symposium in Roanoke, Virginia beginning June 8, 2015. Aside from that, I've made some resolutions.
The first is COLOR. Want. Lots. Underglazes to the max.
The second is PASSOVER. I'm on a roll. I can't stop figuring my way through Passover ware suddenly. I'm designing in my head till I can work with clay again. Matzah plates. Seder plates. Other Seder dishes and household vessels. I want to design like crazy and focus for a long while...and see what transpires. Most other things will wait!
The third resolution comes from the realization that working with clay is bringing me full circle to the creativity of childhood. I mean the unselfconsciousness, before undue external criticism and don't-do-that-art-thing hampered it. I am more my original art-self than I've been in years. My resolution is, go with it to the max.
There's one matzah plate left; click here. I decided that the slight line along the foot ring was a reason to lower the price from $95 to $75. It does not affect appearance or function, and you can still hang this plate on the wall! It is 19" in diameter, curved to resemble a round handmade matzah, and smooth and glossy. I made it from a slab of clay, used colored washes of underglaze and lettering on it (with clear glaze over it), and gave it a creamy coat of nutmeg glaze on the underside. People always ask, so I must add, it is food safe. All my pottery is. I want you to be comfortable using my pottery.
Enjoy the holiday!
(19" diameter Matzah Plate)
Tripling the Inventory & Pricing it Right
I did not realize how many pots I put away "for later" over the last 15 or so years (half my pottery working life) until I brought them into the light and began wiping them down and putting them on the gallery shelves. Much to my surprise, I believe I've tripled my inventory.
That is the main reason I've been neglecting my blog these last weeks (except for writing about this year's Passover pottery, which I'm pretty excited about). Who can blog when there is so much to sort and dust, to photograph, measure, weigh and describe, to figure price and put on the website, and price-sticker and put on the gallery shelves? It's been a tiring, time intensive but really interesting journey of rediscovery.
Some are styles I do not do currently. But they have me thinking that I have to do that again, whatever "that" is. Like, for instance, the interior of this cereal bowl- that was a cool effect.
These little personal cream & sugar sets... liking the slipwork I did on them. Have to do more of this sort of decoration on other types of pots.
My "walking jars" (below) were very interesting. Might do more, different but recalling certain elements, like those walky feet.
There are good glazes I hadn't gotten to work for me with my current clay, that were nice on previous clays; like this rusty red (below). (Although I think I may have solved that just lately and will use this glaze again...)
Another example- this black, which has never been this black again on my vessels since I changed from dark clay to light. (I keep working on it, though, testing glazes.)
Don't know why I didn't wake up and see that I had some buried treasure. Anyway, most of the buried treasure is now on sale at ridiculously good prices. The gallery is too stuffed, and besides, I'm rarin' to make new work. You are welcome to browse the web pages here and visit the Gallery Downstairs (here on Windsor Way in Hillside, NJ) and see what I mean. The new "Sale!" web page and the same pots in my physical gallery should stay up a while, but I priced these things to go quickly. I'm putting up more of these pots several days a week. On to your new homes, kids! Mama's got lots of new work to make.
Passover is Coming...Spring, Too!
Several months of preparation have culminated in Passover pottery, new for this spring. Yes, here in the lower Northeast, the "S" word is welcome: "Spring"! It's going to arrive. I promise. Passover coming around is a major harbinger of spring at our house. One of its names is Chag Ha'Aviv, the Holiday of Spring, in fact.
I've been working on these new pieces since autumn, and I'm happy to have them to present on the Jewish Life page on my website. I've kept the color palette simple and low-key, so you can coordinate them with most table settings.
The matzah-textured plates are new this season. I love the design. They're big, too, for handmade round matzahs! You'll be seeing more of these next year.
(17" diameter matzah plate)
(16" diameter matzah plate. My personal favorite this year.)
Also new and extra-big, but smooth, with one large "matzah" written on it (drawn freehand with underglazes, under the glaze):
(19" diameter.)
For those more economically minded, I added small vessels for the Seder table. They can be arranged (as shown here) on your own 13" diameter plate to form a Seder plate:
And I made some small dishes- very useful indeed for salt water, Charoset, Karpas or the like if you want small portions of these things placed along the center of the table for a larger group:
I have some Searching for Leavening (Bedikat Chametz) candle holders as well, which you can find by clicking here.
And here's an important studio update:
While the Passover pottery for 2015/5775 has been on ongoing project, I've continued to unpack and do inventory on the last 15 years of pottery I put away "for a while" in the kiln room and around the studio, pottery which I am in a way rediscovering. Many beautiful things here! I have probably tripled my inventory with these. Who knew I had so much? Not I.
There will be a new sale section of these on my website coming in perhaps a month or two. Although I did not put them out for sale when I first made them, they are good quality, and some represent various styles, clays and glazes that are slightly different from my 2015 ones.
I am doing the unpacking and inventory between making new pottery and teaching in my studio, so this will take a little while. When it comes together, sometime this spring I hope, the prices will be seriously affordable. Check back from time to time to see if the Sale page has gone up, especially when you have a gift-giving opportunity and need to find something nice (and handmade, and affordable) quickly! I will also send out one of my rare email mailings, which you can only get if you are on my list (sign up via my Contact page, above in the menu, to get this!)
As ever, thanks a million for reading the blog, and for staying up to date with my studio. Mention it if you see me. I like to know whose been reading!
So...Been Making Pottery Lately?
I'm often asked, "How's the pottery going?"
It's going well, thanks- I'm excited about it. After all these years of making pottery, I'm finally building a business.
Since most shows are Saturday/Sunday combos, and I don't "do" Saturdays (they're all booked forever), I've had to think of how to build a different sort of business.
So I'm making a certain amount pottery, enough to have fresh pieces on hand every couple of months, and the rest of my time I am working a whole lot on those other parts of my business.
Lately I've been working with a consultant and building business infrastructure. It's time to grow my business sensibly. There are so many moving parts to a business.
For example, we've been creating a better annual calendar of work with realistic finish dates. Also, we've been planning a couple of types of sales in my studio gallery, and working on how best to do them. I've been scheduling couple pottery-date nights and the occasional family-group pottery session. I've wanted to bring people into the studio (it's so solitary!) and create an alternate source of income to supplement the pottery sales, but I hadn't done these things until lately.
Also lately, I took an online course on branding, licensing, and writing about my craft, given by two fine and thought inspiring potters, Ben Carter and Molly Hatch. That was a rare and timely opportunity. I'm always reading and learning about my art and craft.
Luckily I'm still in the phase of life when I can keep trying to make better or other works in clay. That means growing and stretching creatively!
If I made pottery all day, every workday, and did nothing else, I'd be busy and justifiably tired. But at the end of the day I'd be left with... lots of pots. So now, instead, I make pottery some of the time, and spend lots of time on ways to get (and keep) organized and to let people know my studio and website and gallery are here and available.
After just about 30 years with clay, (I'll reach that milestone in March) I have lots to say and do on the subject, so I also teach several private students some of the ins and outs of this medium. That's a challenge, and it's fun because the students are so motivated. It also guarantees a certain amount of income while I'm figuring out some of the other parts of the business.
I'm glad to be using lots of energy and really engaging my brain. Some of my fellow clay folks may be saying hi to me at NCECA (National Conference for Education in the Ceramic Arts) in Rhode Island in March, and maybe one or two of you might be going to a great symposium in June (Women Working with Clay, at Hollins University in Virginia). I'm always bursting to talk clay with other people who work with it. I'm looking forward to meeting in person some of the potters whose blogs I follow.
Did you know there are lots of potters? While we're not a dime a dozen, being a tiny fraction as many as accountants, say, or bus drivers, or dental technicians, there are a bunch of us low-profilers out there. (Maybe there are as many of us as there are philosophers...) It's just that we do what we do pretty quietly, in our solitary studios, so you don't hear about us much. Not every one of us likes to write incessantly about pots like I do, either!
You probably know by now- I'm always looking for inspiration.
Looking Through the Back Room Shelves
All those pots I have put away over time in the back room of my studio (aka the kiln room) for "later" ... are about to become a windfall for a bunch of shoppers.
"Later" is about to arrive, and it won't cost much.
Bring friends because it will pretty much be a once in a decade-and-a-half event here. My last one was that long ago. Come because $5 will buy you something you can use and enjoy.
This is where I assemble lots of nice pottery objects that I wanted put aside to look at for a while or come back to at some point and consider. I'm looking and considering now!
There are all sorts of items. There are vessels made from various types of clays. Some were experimental designs. There are also many, many bowls in ice cream, cereal, soup and side dish sizes; mugs from espresso to jumbo with all sorts of handles in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and various glazes; some vessels with minor flaws that won't affect use; and singletons of a particular color or style whose peers went on without them. Many have not been seen by eyes other than mine.
Stay tuned for the date and time of "the sale of a decade and a half", please! It will take a bit of time to price these pots and set them up in the gallery. I'm thinking sometime in the next 2 weeks...
Matzah on the Plate...
With some Seder plates bisqued and ready to glaze, I went on to make some matzah plates.
After last Passover, I made silicone molds, brushing layers of liquid silicone on the surface of a couple of square matzahs. It was especially messy because the matzahs sort of dissolved or embedded themselves in the silicone as it set. But I was able to wash out the matzah residue after the silicone hardened.
(Great for texturing a slab...)
I rolled a couple of great big slabs. This involved lots of whacking a big chunk of clay with a big mallet into thinner (about 2" thick) pads, stretching each slab so it would be wide enough, and rolling them one by one to at least 20" in diameter and a bit under 1/4" thick.
I put them into Selma's big, curved plates, which I am using as slump molds. Selma was a lovely friend who died at 93 or so, a few years ago. I inherited her big bisqued plates, which she had never gotten around to glazing. Now I've decided to use them as slump molds to make these slab plates, and I think of her when I use them. I'm thinking she would probably have enjoyed this matzah plate process, too.
I textured the fresh clay plates, rolling the textured silicone matzah sheets into the surface. If you click on the photo below, you can see the texture better.
These plates are made to hold the large, round, handmade matzahs ("hand shmura") that many people use especially for their Passover Seder. They are 18.5"-19" at this point, but will shrink to about 16"-16 3/4" by the time they are finished, glaze and all.
Here are the slabs supported in Selma's bisqued plates, textured with the silicone sheets and some brushwork that says "matzah" in Hebrew randomly all over. One is round and one has a "handmade matzah" edge.
("Hand shmura" plates firming up so I can add a foot. Strips of clay for the feet are under plastic to the left. Click for larger image!)
Once the plates were firm enough to remove from the supportive forms, I flipped them over onto upholstery foam and added a raised foot to the bottom, each foot made from a strip of slab about 22" long. I put 4 holes through the foot so the plate can be hung on the wall as a decorative object between uses.
(By contrast to the textured top surface, the bottom surface is fairly smooth. I don't want it to catch on your tablecloth or scratch your wall.)
Remember, the gray clay will be a warm ivory, and glossy. Should come out really nice if all goes as planned.
Sorting Commences on Sale Pottery
The sorting commences for all those pots that were hiding in the back room, that will go on sale at really great prices in about a week.
Here are some glimpses!
Students: Ongoing Creative Process
When you teach, it's great fun to see students growing skills and confidence.
We started out with our student pair of handbuilders making similar vessels. As they learned techniques over the course of the weeks, I left our two hours more open. By that I mean that I gave them guidelines based on materials available that day, but they began choosing what they wanted to do with them. As neither had worked with clay in any regular way before starting with me, the challenge became more and more fun as they learned how the clay handles best and they started to test its limits.
In today's session, A. began by rolling a slab. She chose a slump mold to build a vessel, a rounded-square wooden salad bowl. She carefully laid the slab into it and trimmed off the overhanging edges.
A. rolled a second slab, made it thin, and brushed it with a warm palette of underglaze colors. This would be used as "fabric" to cut clay appliques from.
She cut shapes from the slab and applied them inside the very damp surface of the rounded-square vessel.
(The clay of the vessel will be ivory when fired.)
Then, with a thin layer of plastic over the vessel, A. was able to impress the clay into the surface without marring the layer of underglaze colors on the inlay.
D. began by rolling a big slab and fitting it over a plaster hump, aka hump mold. She made a large, open bowl.
(It received black and white underglaze brushwork. ...And now you know who D. is.)
D. brushed the outside of the large, open bowl with black and white. It had to firm up a bit in order to be taken off the plaster hump mold (so the interior could be underglazed), so D. turned to her next bit of work.
This time D. let a thin clay slab drape naturally into a bowl I keep hanging around the studio (spare bowls are very handy as slump molds). The slab formed great curves as it folded into the smaller bowl, curves which she had the good sense to just let be! She added brushwork in the interior of the drapey bowl.
(Some mixing of colors in little cups before brushing. The feathery white will give the colors a floaty looking base.)
We went overtime but there was so much to do! Some days two hours are not enough. Whatever wasn't finished got wrapped up in plastic till next week.
A good day at the pottery studio.
Seconds and Orphan Pots, Your Time Has Come.
There are lots of pottery seconds (in very acceptable condition) and orphans (whose sets went on without them), and fairly nice pots I just put away for a while and never took out again. They have been hanging around in the dusty back room where my kilns live.
Isn't it time to shine them up and clear the kiln room? Yes!
Dang, there's a lot of them!
Keep your eyes open for an upcoming sale in the next couple of weeks. The prices will be really affordable. I really need the space on the kiln room shelves! I am ready to say goodbye to nearly all of these pots that have been hiding in the back of the shop. They need to overcome their shyness, face up to their worthiness, and go to good new homes.
I'll keep you posted!
Shake, Rattle and Listen
This rattle came from friends, who bought it in Israel. It is a closed hollow form with a few clay pellets inside.
One of my students yesterday liked the idea of adding sound to her work, and made a rattle like this, only bigger, and of course it has its own, different sensibility. It's a lovely thing, even before it has been fired. She added a stand so it can be displayed upright.
Some of the vessels made by Toshiko Takaezu, a notable clay artist who lived for many years in New Jersey, were closed forms ("moons", as she called them), and some of them have tiny clay pebbles inside them. I read an interview where she said that she liked to put this occasional surprise in, to be discovered if one should lift or move the vessel. It would be unexpected music. I suppose that for those "moons" on pedestals in museums, visual presence is their first function; they will rarely be touched or moved; but when they are, there will be that tinkle of sound as the little clay beads shift inside.
Growing with the Passage of Time
I had a birthday this week. Suffice it to say I've been making pottery for a looooong time. I believe there are still a few new wrinkles left in me, though ;)
How many years have I been attempting (between bowls, mugs, plates, and more), for example, Seder plates and Chanukah menorahs? Oh, since 1985 or so. And how many of those items have I made that worked out reasonably well? I could probably count 'em on two hands and two feet. Making the pieces that carry out the envisioned design has always been many miles of trial and error.
What's taken me so long? Hoo boy. Besides the time spent on those trials and errors, I like to say, "Life intervenes." Our children and extended family, time spent attempting to write, a break for a brief, unsatisfying (and poorly paid) job in retail, a side trek to learn some jewelry making, a year here and there when I lost the yen to work with clay, a late return to finally graduate college, and more cooking, laundry and dishes than I ever dreamed I'd have to do; that's what intervened.
And "that completion thing"..? Ah, yes, finishing anything that last 10%-15%... I have a global-type approach to life, not linear, and my distractibility...can you say "Oooh, shiny..." and dart sideways frequently? After all this time, I understand that's my wiring. I look to its benefits, and I work with it.
All my life I have loved observing, drawing. playing in the mud, examining textures, exploring colors, and mulling things over. And all those side trips have taught me many things that I cherish and which nurture me as a person and as an artist. I am imagining and thinking about things much of the day.
Am I living richly from the proceeds of my pottery? I don't know any potters personally who are, though I think there must be a few somewhere (maybe Japan, where potters of note can become "Living National Treasures"). In fact, most potters of the dozens whom I know have other jobs so they can pay all the bills, or have spouses through whom they have supplemental income and medical insurance. But we still do what we do, and never, ever think of it as a hobby. As one of my students said last week, "there's something about the clay..." Yes ma'am, it's habit forming, tactilely satisfying, and magnetically creative.
In the last year I've had an uptick in business, putting my work out for public consumption on a regular basis more than ever before. My Gallery Downstairs and website both turned one year old a short while ago. And with the help of a very organized consultant who CAN think in a linear fashion, plus my own dipping into online seminars, books, articles and videos, I'm finally learning some important things about the art of doing business. It's a very different art than I am used to.
It's also only in the last year I've been teaching regularly in my studio. I balance space and time for my own ongoing work and the work of my students so we can share the same studio. I balance my work time and theirs, and try to keep my non-teaching schedule productive and on point. Often I work into the evening, knowing that three hours will be knocked out of my next workday because I will be prepping the studio, teaching, and cleaning up after the students leave. But I confess, it has added a dimension to my workspace and my plans that I am enjoying very much. I wanted the challenge. I wanted people around who are drawn to clay, as I am.
A year older I may be, but what a year it was! More of the same would be delightful.
Making the Seder Plates
After making the 16"-17" Seder plates on the potter's wheel, and trimming the Seder plate feet, It was decoration time.
First, a light coat of white underglaze on the leather-hard plates.
Then, a sheer, pale orange brushing of underglaze.
Once that's been thinly distributed on the surface, I put down a template that will help me space the brushed decoration and start drawing with a fine brush and black underglaze.
With the shankbone (z'roa, symbol of the Paschal lamb) drawn, I draw the egg (symbol of the holiday offering in the Temple in Jerusalem).
Then comes the drawing of horseradish root (bitter herb, symbol of suffering of the people in slavery in Egypt).
Charoset (my choice, since there are many different recipes for this food) is represented here by the bricks and mortar made and built into cities in Egypt. (My family recipe for this is 1 apple, 10 walnuts and sweet red wine to mix.)
(I added a trowel of mortar later...)
Parsley to symbolize spring, (which gets dipped into saltwater at the Seder to represent tears,) and a romaine lettuce leaf which many people use in lieu of eating that impossibly sharp horseradish, complete the Seder plate drawings.
It's not done yet! A wash of several subtle underglaze colors over the images, and a slip-trailed border of light blue underglaze, and the plates are ready to dry and fire in the kiln.
(This is another from this batch, similar but not exactly the same.)
I think this design has staying power. More matzah plates coming up, too!
A Mess of Shavings
I threw 3 Seder plates on the potter's wheel last week. At 16" to 17", these plates were too large to fit within the splash pan that goes around the wheelhead, which could have contained the wet stuff. Instead, I had to take the pan off and just get to messing with the clay. It was purely mud-puddlicious. The spray of water and clay extended in a four-foot radius around my potter's wheel while I made these. I had half an hour's job just sponging up the mess later from over, under and around the wheel and adjacent studio furniture. I still found more dried bits the next day where they had fallen from where they were sticking underneath things.
Trimming the excess clay from the bottom of these plates (there were 3) on Sunday similarly made a deep pile of flung shavings on wheel, floor, and my jeans-covered knees. The photo hardly does this heap justice. Even after shrinking a little in the drying, the plates were too big to fit inside the splash pan that would have collected the trimming shavings.
A HEPA-rated dust mask was necessary to gather up the dry scraps after I trimmed the leather-hard plates with my trimming tools. (Breathing this dust for years could give a potter silicosis.) Once it hits the floor I don't recycle clay, due to bits and motes of floor shmutz getting into it that will interfere with making new pots from it later on. I threw all this scrap out instead. Frugal Me doesn't like this, but Hardworking Me struggling to throw new pots with floor stuff in it knows this is just practical.
Next: Making the Seder Plates!
More Slump Adventures
Using those slump molds some more. When I made them I had some ideas how I wanted to use them, and here are two.
Seder plate, rawware
1) This is a Seder plate for Passover with the dishes for the various Seder items on it. It's about 16" in diameter at the moment, though it will shrink 12%.
Same plate and small dishes with underglazes on showing what the Seder items are; below. (Has to dry and be fired, clear-glazed and fired again.) Seder items drawn here are: horseradish root, egg, shank bone, parsley, lettuce, with bricks and mortar to represent charoset.
(Slab, slump-mold to form Seder plate, with underglaze drawing on it. Mimi Stadler, 2015)
Some of the colors will change fairly radically. Clay will be ivory, not browny-gray, and underglaze colors will darken.
2) Matching in color, without the black images and with the addition of dark peach letters, a Matzah plate. It was made from a slab I slumped into a great big, round plate that had been made and bisqued (but never glazed) by my old friend Selma. I added a foot ring, also made from a slab.
(Matzah plate. When the underglazes are bisque fired, I believe the word Matzah, spelled here in Hebrew but hard to see, will be darker and easier to see. If not, I'll go over it in black. Mimi Stadler, 2015).
You can see that the plate has a raised profile. If you look hard you can also see that it has a hole (actually 4) through the foot ring so it can be hung on the wall:
My further slump-mold adventures.
Branching
The first glaze kiln of 2015 was a nice one. Each kiln now seems to contain vessels that point the way in new directions. Some are really worth pursuing. For example, these thrown-stretched-slumped vessels are conjuring up a whole line's worth of ideas.
Here is the plate/bowl with simple line drawings in black on ivory.
Now here's the same sort of thing, thrown and stretched and slumped, only bigger and with a bit of extra edge manipulation, and a completely different glaze treatment:
Here is another type of very shallow bowl, only made from a rolled out slab instead of being thrown on the wheel first. It is stretched like the ones above and, like them, slumped into a form I made (and showed you in this blog last time):
Because they were made from slabs, they have no well defined rim like I leave on thrown plates or bowls, so they're pretty even in thickness. They feel thin and light, minimalist. The glazing is simple and utilitarian, easy for me to put on and therefore making it easy for me to do more of should I be asked. Different beginning, same treatment otherwise; another branch to explore, like the side branches off a river when I am kayaking.
I intend to keep following and exploring this whole line of slumped dishes in its varied permutations and see if it keeps being satisfying. So far, so good. Following and exploring a line of thought and process is what potters do, which you know if you're a potter but you might not otherwise.
This exploration seems bound to branch down simultaneous, different paths for a while. I can make these thrown vs slab, with or without rim manipulations, with or without handles, with either brushwork or colored glazes. Who knows what variations I can add, given experimentation?
In other news (still interrelated because of the black and white line brushwork) here's a deep plate/shallow bowl, with a bit of Art Deco design inspired by summer (I hear we're having snow tomorrow but in the studio I can dream of summer):
Here's a thrown plate (the one above is also thrown) with more of that black on ivory brushwork:
I wanted the back to be interesting, too:
These are decorated using brushes made from deer and squirrel hair by a Northern New Jersey brushmaker named Mitch Nottingham. The brushes almost seem to make the marks themselves. While I am decorating this way, childhood summers sort of take over my whole attitude. I spent a whole lot of time outdoors looking at the way plants and animals moved, and that flows through the brushes while I work. It's very engrossing and relaxing.
I Try Making Slump Vessels- and Like It!
First I made those bottomless circles on the wheel, really just bowl rims without the bowls, that flare outward as they rise. Then I bisque fired them to make them permanent. Now they are a kind of slump mold. I blogged about that lately. But now you can see how I am using them!
(Bowls and a plate from wheel-formed slump molds and wheel-thrown slabs. Photo Mimi Stadler 2015)
I threw round flat plates on the wheel in three sizes, from 6 oz, 11 oz, and 3 lbs of clay respectively.
I let them firm up very slightly. They were still fairly sticky. Then I lifted each one carefully and one by one (still carefully) threw/pulled them against a piece of canvas on the table to stretch them into flat ovals.
Then I formed dishes out of them in the new slump molds. I laid each soft, stretched plate onto a bisqued slump mold and gently fitted the clay to nestle down into it. I cleaned up the rims a bit, let them firm up, and removed them from the slump molds. Voila! Freeform dishes. Can't wait to put some color on them.
This is the first item on my new "Trying New Ideas" board on my Pinterest page, by the way. Because I like it that much.