Class five

We were supposed to make butter dishes at the fifth hand-building pottery class, but I kind of steered us toward finishing techniques. My popcorn bowl from last week wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but I wanted to make it better. One method is using a rather large rasp to trim away excess clay and make the walls more consistent. Once again, no pix.

When I was satisfied with my popcorn bowl, I decided to pinch a little pumpkin. The instructor showed me how to make the ridges using a shaping tool, the same one I used to make the toes on my turtle pieces. It's one thing to *have* pottery tools, but it is another thing to know how to use them.

Then I laid awake that night, thinking of different ways to make pumpkins, both large and small, most of the methods horribly inefficient.

At home, I glazed another platter I had made a while ago. This one is similar to the previous one, but this time I decided to use both Celadon glazes over the underglaze. Fingers crossed it turns out okay.

Dark green underglaze, applied to leaf

Dark green underglaze, wiped

I've taken several pottery classes, but I don't recall being encouraged to "rib" in any of them. Ribbing a slab after rolling it out not only smooths the surface, but aligns the clay cells. I obviously did not rib this platter, nor the previous one.

Using a "magic eraser" gave cleaner results removing excess underglaze, but the small imperfections on the platter's surface held onto the color.

Jade celadon, applied to leaf

Wasabi celadon, applied all over

Both of the leaf platters are at FW Clay, waiting to be fired. The store charges by the weight; the two platters weighed 3 pounds altogether. Since I used my own glazes, the total was $5.25. (Bisque firing is free if one purchases the clay from the store.) I could see where someone doing mass production for an art festival might find this method expensive, but I don't really have anything to compare it to besides the maker space I was at, and they recently changed their pricing policy for kiln use, probably because they were getting so many big producers in there.

We do not have class this week, due to Thanksgiving. Hopefully, all my pieces from class will be bisque fired by next week, and the platters glaze fired as well.