clay: herb planter for a male recipient

Cecilia asked me to use a dark clay for her nephew’s herb planter. Clay Planet was out of Obsidian, and so I bought two bags of Electric Brown. I rolled the slabs on a Thursday and managed to make the three pots, but an hour and half of clay club was not enough time to also make the drainage tray, which I constructed on Saturday. On Sunday, I rasped and burnished the pots as much as I could. I kept dinging and scratching the pots accidentally with my nails as I was trying to rub out the ghost marks around the text. Aaargh.    

And today it's Tuesday, and so I'm bringing them to the high school ceramics classroom to sand and then put on the greenware shelf. I'm hoping they get fired by the time we return from the Thanksgiving holiday, and maybe even midfired before Christmas break. However, there's no overglaze going on this planter, which is why I tried to get the clay as smooth as possible though I may do a test glazing of low fire black glaze inside the text and maybe on the rim. And that's a reminder to self to create test plates.