Final Finished Items from my Mud in Your Eye Course

On the weekend I picked up the remaining pieces, and these lil' babies were worth waiting for :

Here they are, one by one :

34) This was my practice pierced candle holder thrown from 1300 g of P570 white clay, before I switched to sculptural clay for the two pierced raku pieces (see them in this post).  Since we fire to cone 10, most of our glazes are pretty dark and drab coloured.  So I used underglazes to get some bright colours, and sprayed with Clear glaze.

Here is the piece in progress, adding underglazes, and using tape to create the sharp, neat edges :

I knew from previous experience that the purple would not stay purple, it would end up blue, but that was okay with me, although I would have preferred purple.

35) This little sake container (or vase) was thrown from 1300 g white clay.  It features an untrimmed bottom (something our instructor was encouraging us to try), and is finished in White glaze.

36) I really love how this little guinomi cup turned out.  If I hadn't kept such detailed notes on this piece, I'm sure I would have missed it, since I missed it the first two times I picked up my pieces.  It is thrown from approx 300 g of white clay marbled with the instructor's yellow clay, and then a lizard type texture rolled into the outside, and intentionally deformed to give it a "wabi sabi" flair.  I think I trimmed it just on the bottom edges, but the bottom is untrimmed.  It is stamped on the inside bottom.

It was dipped into Amber Celadon on the rim, and then sprayed Clear.  I love the textures and colours of this piece.  Particularly how the marbling came through very clearly, and is matched by the rich amber celadon rim.  And how there is a small ring where the Clear collected on the rim, when I sprayed the inside.  I would be really tempted to attempt a set of these.  I wonder if I could ever reproduce the same effects?

37) These 13 ceramic leaf beads/pendants have been waiting a long time to be completed.  I made them in the Spring, I believe, and was waiting for my order of high temperature wire, and then I built a rack to hold them.  They were decorated with underglazes in red, yellow and green.  I then sprayed them with a light coat of Clear glaze.  I'm a bit disappointed in the result, the colours really seem to have faded away.  Especially the yellows, they are pretty much gone.  I'll know for another time, either I need to raku fire them (the yellow underglaze survived beautifully in the raku firing, as seen in my fish bowl from Nov 1), or just stick to the reds and greens.

I would love to leave these stained and unglazed, but in my previous experiment (see the leaf pendants in #19 in this post), the underglazes which were sprayed Clear retained their bright green colour, and the ones which weren't glazed ended up going brown.  Tricky stuff.  I'll keep experimenting, until I get these to behave the way I like.  I am still thinking to collaborate with my friend Shelley for some hand made jewelry, such as in her beaded bracelets.