Chalices

Chalices: Time consuming... beautiful... harder than it looks.

Patience required.
Made my first chalices today. Made the top part yesterday... Tough to make the bottom part. It messed up on many more stems of the chalice before I got four that were good. I have a few friends interested in purchasing communion sets, which is wonderful. These are made with earthen red clay. they're smaller than they look and they'll shrink for sure. Next, I'll make several different sized plates. Overall, I"m pleased...

Made them in two steps:

bowl part... top part of chalice (in this pic, turned upside down). Then I made the stem (or whatever it's called) and slipped and scored the two pieces together.

This all took so long. Got one of my bowls out of the bisque kiln and it had a few cracks in the bottom. That was the first time that's ever happened. Put glaze on it anyway to see what'll happen. Made another bowl...

Things just didn't come easy today. Yes, I tell myself; there will be days like this. Didn't even have time to run.

Oh, yesterday, I also finished this plate by puting a sgraffito spiral design on it. I'll do some different glazing with this one.

Tails and Stories

You never know what'll happen at the Clayworks studio. Tonight I was there putting some slip on some pieces and saw Greg's latest work with his class.

They're using this to make brushes. Yes, you too can buy moose, bucktail, and elk hair to make your own brush. The two on the bottom I flipped over so you could see that the hair is still attached to the hide. Gross! Oh well... Always something happening in his class. And in addition, I heard great stories about carp lottery, cow chip bingo, and oh, I forget the last story already.
Becky and I worked on our own projects... for her it was adding terra sig to birds. I added slip to some yunomis and began to work on a plate. Becky was using a process she learned from Jim Whalen. I wonder what her brush is made out of? :)
Meanwhile, I was interested in learning new techniques to apply slip. I remembered Ron's teaching about newspaper. Becky helped me out too... First, paint some slip on. Next, apply a design shown on wet newspaper. Hard to see in this pic. Then paint another coat of slip on top and then remove the wet newspaper carefully. A great effect, adding depth to the design. Now, I'll sgraffito ontop of this slip. What fun!

First in my Cupboard

These are the first of my pottery in my cupboard. Many more will find their way here in the days to come...

Good End to an Okay Day

Spent some time in the studio today making hodge-podge different shaped kinds of pieces. I'm trying to find forms that I really like. So, I just experimented some...

Made these four cups and also two plates of different sizes.

Looking down... Side view...

Also put ben gareen blue cone 5 glaze over Ron's creme cone 5 glaze on these two cups made from earthen red clay. Greg, the master glaze teacher tonight said that the ben gareen blue will run over the creme, which is exactly what I want to have happen. Here they are...

The day got better when I came back home and learned that I have several potential orders. :)
And, I decided to splurge and get some food as I've been trying to eat out of my pantry instead of go to Harris Teeter. I'm trying to spend little $ these days, being out of work. It's exhausting and not fun. I made this for dinner. Only ate half, but it seemed to taste better in a handmade piece. :) This is on a Ron Philbeck dish.
And, before I forget, here are the finished raku pieces.

This had turquoise luster, blue green, and superstition glaze.
The superstition glaze is on the inside. Great colors!
Here's the other one... this pic doesn't do the piece justice. This is the one that I sprayed alcohol on... check previous Raku post for more. The bowl has more color than this pic.All of this said, I think I really like working with the earthen red clay and slipware these days.