clay: commissioned projects and saturday clay

I loaded the kiln on Thursday and unloaded Friday afternoon. 

I’ve more succulent propagation pots. My butter cover is now too short for the bottom dish. And since I just bought a shrink ruler, I'm gonna make another bottom as well as another top for the bottom, meaning two more butter dishes. Laguna's Speckled Buff has a 12% shrinkage rate. I need to remember when brushing on glaze, to add 3 coats.          

I think Cecilia's niece's pots look awesome, but again with the drainage tray, I should have brushed 3 coats of that gloss white.

The spoons were fun to make and a fun way to test how glaze will look on a clay body. I'm going to start to make them shorter with deeper bowls, so they can be flour and sugar and salt spoons.

I'll probably rotate basil in these pots because I'm not giving them to Cecilia's sisters.

 

And I've another salt crock to give away at Christmas as a kit along with my zine of how to make sea salted chocolate chip cookies, Maldon salt, semisweet chocolate chips, and milk powder.

Cecilia says one of her sisters likes the ocean and would like a pot with that texture. I'm super pleased with the pots for Cecilia's nephews although the drainage dish is a fail--not deep enough or wide enough for all 3 of the pots plus it was coming apart at one of the seams. I need to remake it 10.5" x 5" x 1" in its finished dimensions. Hopefully the shrink ruler will figure it out for me. Laguna's Electric Brown has a 12.5% shrinkage.

And I'm glad I stashed my clay tool bag in the car because I did use my tools yesterday in the Central Park ceramics studio to make a bunch of catch plates. And I found this fired whiskey cup and cocktail cup in the kiln room. I like them even though the underglaze is more subdued than I expected.  

And so I brushed on underglazes of fire engine red, yellow, pumpkin, soft petal pink and pink with a heavier hand, hoping for even more of a painterly effect on these 4 cups.

And I kept pausing in my painting to admire Meral's vase.

And so I want to make a coil pot from that recycled clay and use some of that Waterfall Brown and Bloopsie and perhaps some of my Downpour celadon because it's so fucking beautiful.