Back in the Studio

I had my first class of both courses this week.  The Sunday course on "Sets and Settings" with Fredi Rahn, and the Wednesday Porcelain course with Tanis Saxby.  I'm soooo excited and relieved to be back in the studio.  It was really difficult being locked out for the past couple of months.

In Fredi's class, I got off to a good start by throwing 5 plates.  I did a bit of stamping on them today, and trimmed two of them (although I needed to force them with a hair dryer, and even then the clay was so soft and sticky that the trimmings kept getting stuck on the plate, and I dented the rims a couple of times trying to handle them).  Here are a couple of the stamped plates :

I don't know why the photo quality is so poor, but anyhow, after taking this photo, I decided to trim a swirl into the plate on top also, and it looks even better now.  All my plates feature my hand made stamps, which I am enjoying very much.

This one I went a bit crazy with on the stamping, but I am fairly pleased with the result, even if a bit busy.

These floral stamps have really served me well.

I have a final plate which was too damp to stamp today.  I also have a very beautiful hump mould which I threw in clay, and need to carve out once a bit dryer.  I can't wait to get that bisque and into action.  And the final piece from Sunday was a mug that I threw, which needs to be cleaned up / trimmed and a handle attached.

Tanis encouraged us to think of a form today that we would want to create, and encouraged us to try several attempts at it, learning from each, until we got something we were happy with.  Anyhow, one of my thoughts is a wall-gripping dragon, but I don't think that will be a porcelain project, I'll eventually make one in sculptural clay.  So my next thought was the ammonite shape which has haunted me for a long time now, and I keep saving screenshots of them on Instagram.  Such as this one :

So today I made three different attempts, each one trying a slightly different approach.  All need to firm up before I do more work on them, but I can decide next week if I want to continue with all 3, or just pick my favourite one, and work with that.  So here they are :

The first attempt, was to lay a slab on the wheel, and draw the spiral (while the wheel was turning), and then shape the slab.  I ended up putting some plastic wadding in the outer spiral, to give it that round shape.  But it was pretty difficult/impossible to wad the inner part of the spiral, so I will just carve / press that part.  This approach showed some promised, but I decided I may be able to improve on it :

Here, the first attempt is shown at the front / bottom, and I've started to work on adding the texture.  The second attempt (behind / above) was to lay a slab, draw out the spiral, and then add extra clay to provide the rounding.  But that was a bit time consuming to smooth and round the clay.  And the center was still pretty flat, as I wasn't sure I wanted to continue adding smaller and smaller coils there.  When it is firm I would carve out  some of the excess clay from the back, at least in the outer part of the spiral.

My third thought and approach was to throw a big slab of clay on the wheel (I needed to borrow an extra large bat for this one), and shape it the thickness I wanted, before drawing the spiral :

So far this one feels the most promising, as I have a wonderful curved shape to work with, and a nice thickness of clay (again, I will carve out the excess later).

So these are the three attempts.  Not bad for one class.  I look forward to playing with any or all of them next time, learning improvements to my process as I go along.

If I can, I will add some holes for potentially hanging these.  Likely inside the first spiral, so they are not visible from the outside.  That should be nice.  I'm excited.  This is a really nice project for me.

When I have a chance, I'll post photos of a few items which I picked up Sunday, as they were stuck in the cage over the break.  Most of them totem pieces, and leaf with ladybug plates.  But a few other items also.