StarDish

This is a nice example of a dish that has been bisque fired but has not been glaze fired. The red clay becomes lighter as all of the water has been removed during the drying and firing process. It is neat to see the clay in this state because many of the small bumps and roughness that are obvious on close inspection become smooth once the clay is covered in glaze and fired for the final time (click the pics to zoom in).

This also happens to be one of Paula's most creative designs. I really like the wavy walls of the bowl and from above you can see the neat star pattern. I am curious what glaze(s) she decides to go with.

Curved Lip Bowl

I think this is Aaron's last bowl of the season. We ended pottery a few weeks ago, but I still need to pickup our last pieces from the museum. The colors on this bowl aren't spectacular but Aaron was pleased with the curved lip of the bowl. He wanted to avoid the straight-walled bowls that he has been making plenty of.

Acorn

Aaron hit a creative streak and came up with this funky shaped piece. What is it? A vase? A water jug? Not sure, but he gets high marks for originality. The glaze colors came out smooth and have an Acorn color. I suggested that he make a brown lid that would make this look like an actual acorn.

Super Bowls

Paula has 2 bowls to present for your entertainment. The first is s smaller bowl that has really cool textures on the inside and outside. She used a stamp to press the bottom of the bowl and it made a neat "bump" texture. The utside of the bowl has cool ridges made by her fingernails. The glaze did some neat things around the ridges.


This dual colored bowl is very cool because the right side (tan/gray color) is actually the color of the red clay after the bisque firing and glaze firing. The left side was dipped in a blue glaze, but the right side was only dipped in a clear glaze.

Mug Shot

Aaron has made his first mug (handle courtesy of Paula productions). The outside is actually a darker blue than the inside and the edges (rim and handle egdes) turned a nice brown in the kiln.


Paula's best (but not biggest) bowl to-date. The glaze turned out really nicely, and the rim at the top is dark blue. The tough part about the bowls is making sure they're symmetrical at the rim and at the bottom too.

Pottery Expo

We have managed to keep up the pottery while spending a lot of time getting the garden running. Here are 2 new pieces from our collection. Paula made a new mug that matches her old mug shown here. She is the master handlemaker and anything I make that needs a handle gets gently nudged in her direction.


My latest creation is a decent sized bowl. I tried dipping the rim in a separate color than the bottom and inside of the bowl. The glaze drippped down from the rim and made a weird streaking phenomena. Kudos for making the inside of the bowl smooth, a first for me!

Warning

I don't want to upset our loyal pottery followers, but I must warn you that we do not plan on taking pottery classes during the summer months. The reasoning: we don't want to spend summer nights in a basement when we could be outside nurturing our garden. To keep you amused and to prevent the Pottery blog from going dormant, we have decided to gradually replace pottery updates with garden updates. While this post represents the first garden post, the pottery posts will continue through mid-June. Thank you for your time, we hope you enjoy.

Paula's swirl bowl

Slightly off-center, but a definite improvement over Paula's last attempt. It's hard to see from the photo, but there's a swirl stamped into the center of the bowl which glazed over well. Paula appears to have diverged from the dark glazes in her earlier pieces to softer, lighter shades. She's been focusing on throwing new pieces so you'll have to wait a little longer to see some of her new creations...

Gone Bowl'ing

Now the pottery machine is churning out goodies left and right. That is literal because everything we make leans to the left or right and is not properly centered. We are still learning. This is Aaron's best bowl and largest creation to date.

The glaze came out very well except for a few imperfections where it flaked off in transit to the kiln. Not bad, getting better.

Closing Arguments

Sorry for the gap between posts. Our first class (semester) has ended and now we are waiting for the 2nd session to begin. Here is a cool cup to keep you amused. I really like the glaze job; the inside of the cup is a dark brown and the outside is much lighter. We are getting better at throwing larger items. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but there are 2 large bowls in the kiln that should be blog worthy in 2 weeks ;)

Gravy Train

Another gravy cup....

You know your pottery stinks when everyone starts asking you about the glazes you used and doesn't mention the actual pottery...

Fired Up

Here are some more glazed pieces. This cup could be a good match with one of our first finished products shown here.
This is a terrible piece that came out looking like an egg holder. The white liner glaze underneath didn't work well.

Planter

This piece has my favorite glaze job so far. This is a double dip of obsidian and it is very smooth and dark and covers lots of imperfections. This piece is also a fine example of a well-pulled handle. Don't ask how to pull a handle. I will show you this image clipped from JH Pottery Tutorial and you can get the picture of the general technique.


A good glaze job on a holy piece of pottery.

Does anyone need a planter?

Goals

Where do we look for inspiration? A few years ago our friend Paul started taking pottery lessons and we witnessed his evolution from beginner to expert potter. I haven't seen any of his recent work, but I'm sure he has achieved grand-master status by now! The bowl pictured is a gift he made for us and it sits on our coffee table. It usually holds a pen, the keys to our mailbox and a letter opener, but for official guests it is emptied and displayed in its purest form.I don't know how long it will be until either of us can make a bowl this smooth and symmetrical, but we keep on trying. It may be even longer until we figure out how to put a cool swirl glaze on our pottery.

Another source for our artistic inspiration has been the artwork we have seen in our travels. We really enjoy mosaics and ceramic tilework. The mosaic pictured was not at the Alhambra, but it is available here. Recently, a NYT article suggested that medieval Muslim artists had found patterns for their mosaics that were solutions to mathematical puzzles that have only recently been solved. Here is a link to the original Science article titled "Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture".

Act II

The second round of items produced some interesting results. The black/blue combo of glazes on the red clay gave this piece gave an incredible texture.

This piece produced an interesting lesson in wheel pottery: when you have completely messed up the rim of a bowl or cup you can always make it a spout and pretend that was you original intention from the start! We'll see this strategy several times in the coming weeks. The glaze combo for this piece was a bust: clear chum under a blue didn't work.

In the beginning

Welcome to our pottery blog. We started taking pottery classes in January 2007 and we hope you will watch our progress as we learn and improve. Our goal is to become proficient using the pottery wheel as well as with slab pottery.

Here are our first pieces of pottery to succesfully make it from our bags of clay into finished, glazed products. Keep in mind that the pottery looks 200% better in the digital photos than it does in person. The bowl on the left is made using gray clay and the cup on the right was made using red clay.

I found a video of someone making a nice bowl. This guy makes his bowl/vase in less than 2 minutes... it usually takes us 10 minutes to get the clay close to being centered on the wheel. Throwing pottery can be very stressful, I found a video that gives a great example of throwing pottery in less than 15 seconds.