clay: heath assignment

The advanced ceramics students had an assignment: to take pictures and then sketch dinnerware. I followed suit. I've made one or two cylinders with spouts, which I already given away or sold, and so I think of spouts still for my own pitchers. The lip of the spout on the left is pointy while the lip of the spout of the pitcher on the right is like a gutter downspout. I've a couple ceramic pitchers in my cupboard that had been made by my friend Patsy, and it's time to make more pitchers of my own.  I admit that I prefer the look of the gutter downspout.

 

Pitchers are so useful. I use the little ones I have to squeeze citrus juices or mix cooking sauces for mise en place, and they're darling individual sauce and gravy boats for the dinner table. 

However, I'm gonna need to watch videos on how to refine my spouts so that they pour without dribbling messily.

I still love, love, love the Echo Etched dinner plate from the Alabama Chanin collection. Just as I had hand built my own version of Heath's coupe with an exposed raw edge, I'd likewise love to make my own version of the echoing circular lines.

Whereas my coupe plate is a solid slab with no foot and a very narrow perpendicular rim with a raw exposed clay, Heath's coupe is even more minimalist at the edge with no rim, where the entire plate is a very slight bowl and which lends itself to the "serendipitous" concentric semi-hatched lines. I am wondering how to use the plate forms at Clay Life to make that same shape and then use a pencil and compass to trace those concentric circles on the bisque and use wax resist with a very fine brush before dipping the plate into a bucket of glaze. And I still don't want even a slight foot on such a plate, but want them to stack compactly in a cupboard? Yeah I'm thinking of a more graceful profile in my plates.

 

The matte Indigo glaze is so very lovely, but the only matte glazes we have at Clay Life are white and black. I suppose I could use the Nights in Black Satin on a porcelain clay body and the Satin White on a black clay body like Laguna W3.

I likewise love the Alabama Chanin plates, inspired by hand stitch work. My plan is to use my tracing wheel sewing tool for putting stitch lines on my leather clay plates. However, I think I'll use another sashiko stitch pattern rather than the flower of the Camellia Etched dishware. I'll need to return to the public library and check out sashiko books for a different pattern. I'm more in love with the seed stitch salad plates. I imagine I'd pencil randomly the seed stiches and then go in later with a fine brush and wax resist. I imagine too all the labor to re-create with my own hands. There's a reason why the Camellia Etched dinner plate is $182 and why the Seed Stitch salad plate is $127 at Heath--they're so labor intensive and such an intentional design.

  

With mugs, I always fear I would drop this kind of mug with hole-less handle, but surprisingly, Heath's handle is a comfortable grip. But since handles are not my forte, I don't think I'll attempt this handle though I have in the past created handles that are a completely round cylinder. Maybe my re-design be a "hole-less" round handle with an indentation for fingers for a petite coffee cup and saucer.

 

Lastly I took a pic of the mug with the low handle. It's funky, and I like it. I just don't know if I could make a comfortable-to-hold handle like the one below.

 

I perused plates of second and third quality at the back of the showroom. My dessert plate was only $8.50 minus a discount though I did pay $31 for the so very cute and wee plaza bowl, but with our class tour discount, I didn't mind.

Right away I used both plate and bowl that night and the next.

My new bluejay bowl and aqua plate are in frequent use in my dessert ritual of either citrus panettone or fruit and French whole milk yogurt this winter.