clay: speckled buff clay

I've been obsessive over clay these past two weeks of my winter break with a 25-pound+ bag of speckled buff. Besides a few candelabras and a couple of small planter pots, I also made this container for my sister-in-law's snake plant, which I noticed was in the original black plastic pot from the nursery. She said she likes neutrals, and so this clay body will suit her tastes. I wish I had made the planter a half inch taller as greenware.

I also made the drainage dish, which had to be larger in diameter. I searched the studio for a larger circumference and found it in a banding wheel. 

  

These two pots emerged as bisque yesterday, and I glazed them right away in Majolica.

I noticed a crack at the edge of the bottom where the circle bottom joins the walls, which will be okay since I did also make a drainage dish. This snake plant pot was a fast build because I had also been working on a large candelabra that I'm trading for a large salad bowl with a fellow potter, Cyrus. I'll be handing off another 25-pound bag of speckled buff to him, which I have at the parks and rec studio. Yesterday, I also meticulously constructed these two slab mugs, which joined the set of 3 candleholders from Friday on the greenware shelf along with a bunch of discs for a windchime.

 

I also decided to get rid of these clay balls, which will be going into a pomegranate rattle: I pinch potted a small hunk of more speckled buff clay and will punch a hole at the top in the middle of a 5-spiked calyx crown (I need to remember to exaggerate its length or look at pictures on my phone as reference) and punch a small hole at the bottom.

And that was my last Saturday of this winter break.

And today of my last Sunday of winter break, I wanted to make air plant holders with the last of my speckled buff. I was thinking a square box fronted with a frame of a 4-windowed pane, but I didn't even get to that bag of speckled buff this afternoon. Maybe I'll execute the framed air plant box on my next visit to the studio now that I've had some time to think about its design. I ended up making today's air plant containers from marbleized clay a claymate gave me: a very small cylinder and 2 circle wall vases like I've made in the past, which are just two discs banded by a strip that is short enough to leave an opening for a plant with a hole at the back of one of the discs to hang on a nail.                         

I finished my pomegranate too.               

I even inscribed text on it and then left it next to an incomplete sgraffito dish because its walls are thick to get bone dry. I'm going to have to be careful with adhering the pink and violet underglazes on it and may use a tiny brush instead of my usual finger painting on the greenware pot. I was thinking too of the possibility that the fired snake plant pot might not be tall enough; in which case, I'm going to snag some speckled buff clay from the bag I was going to give to Cyrus to throw my salad bowl.