First Finished Ceramics from Pottery Tools Course

We had such a good time in our last course, making pottery tools from wood and bamboo and metal and such.  Many of the tools have already become good friends, and have proven useful for throwing and decorating.  We also made a few ceramic tools : anvils, a countersink-like pointy hole cleaner (sorry, don't know the proper name of this tool) and foot trimming disks.

I also experimented and made a number of ceramic items, many of them during the open workshop, since I couldn't pull myself away from the power tools in class to sit at the wheel.  Here's the set I picked up today :

It's interesting that so many of them are a reddish brown, but I have recently discovered the magic of Carbon Trap Shino and Amber Celadon, mostly when making guinomi cups in our Mud in Your Eye class.  Carbon Trap Shino glaze can give some unpredictable results, but some spectacular ones.  This time, it didn't disappoint.

1) This sweet Bartmann jug was actually one of five such jugs created during my Mud in Your Eye course, but I had held back on glazing this one, thinking I would include it in a future soda firing.  But I since decided to go ahead, and I can always make another for a soda firing (I'm signed up for one in July 2016).  This little cutie was created with 1200 g of white P570 clay.  His hair and beard were touched up with red iron oxide, and then he was sprayed with Carbon Trap Shino glaze.  I think the parts where he is more gold/white, around the face, was where I sprayed a bit heavier, and the red/brown was a thinner coat.  There is some of the Shino magic on the rim, where it is a bronzy gold metallic colour.  Love it.

2) This sweet vase was created with white P570 clay marbled with iron-rich Yellow Clay.  The egyptian sprig and the snake handles are mostly the Yellow clay.  It was sprayed with a very light coat of Carbon Trap Shino.  I love how the thin spray of the Shino gives a rich reddish brown, and the marbling shows through as a richer tone of the reddish brown.

3) These little goblets were created at the end of my Mud in Your Eye course, and didn't make the glaze deadline, so I finally got them finished and home now.  I really like how they turned out.  Lots of Shino magic again.  I am particularly pleased with the metallic gold colour which shows quite prominently on both, and on the rim of one of them.  I thought it funny that there was the reddish waist on both goblets, and I realized immediately that this was where I overlapped the glaze when I dipped the two ends of the goblets.  Interesting.

4) I really love this piece, and learned a lot from making it.  For example, you can see from the bottom of the piece (see bottom right photo), that the marbling lines are very distinct.  This is where I used my rib to really clean up the piece after throwing.  On the top part, the marbling is blurred, where I had applied the sprig too hastily, and was not able to clean up with the rib.  It is finished with the dark chocolate colour of Amber Celadon inside, and sprayed on the outside, probably a bit too thinly, with Gerstley Borate.

5) I love this one also.  It was created in a similar way, but I think for this one, I remembered to clean up the marbling before adding the sprig.  It is finished with Amber Celadon inside, and then Amber Celadon sprayed lightly on the outside, so the marbling would still show through distinctly.  I really like that colour combination.  I don't know what happened on the rim, that I ended up with that pitted texture.  Perhaps I added another dip of the Amber Celadon, but don't know why it ended up reacting that way.  but it adds interest to the piece.  I really like that grape leaf sprig.

I would love to keep going with my other photos, but I'm very tired.  I had a wonderful first class of my Garden Pottery course, but it was also physically challenging (I threw one piece which was 10.5 pounds!).  So I think I'll need to save the remainder of the photos, and the photos and notes from today's class, until another time.