Wednesday, July 6, 2011

One plate, two vases and an ashtray

It's on to vases for me right now. I'm kind of tired of making little plates and painting them. I have a few weeks, and I need to keep the motivation up, so it's vase making time. The one above should be about 9.5 inches tall when it's done. Made from about 4lbs of clay. It's nice and light! Though, I'm not sure how good that is for a vase. It shouldn't tip over and all once you have it full of water. And to tell the truth, I had no idea I was going to make a vase when I was throwing this one. I thought I was going to throw a bowl, but as I was pulling the walls up, it ended up being a vase instead. Happy about that.

This vase is made from a platter whose rim flopped over when I was taking the bat off of the wheel. I started out with about 9.5 lbs of clay. I think that 9.5 lbs of clay is a bit more than I can really center right now. I'm going to have to build up to it. After taking the flopped platter off of the bat, I then re-wedged it (air bubbles galore!). Somehow I managed to take off about 2.5 lbs of clay when I made the platter, because this vase was made from about 7 lbs of clay. Now, usually, you can't throw tall items from clay that was just thrown and rewedged. It's too wet. However, because of the weather and because I am stubborn, I got this nice piece. Yes, there are air bubbles in it, but if it dries enough, no worries.

Between the vases, I made this plate. I really wasn't in the bowl-making frame of mind, but I thought it might be nice to have at least one more platter made that I can paint on. There's an annual fundraiser for the East Bay Humane Society in the autumn, so this might be a good one. I just need to figure out what sort of design to paint on it.

Finally, an ashtray. In all my years of pottery (12 years!), I have never once made an ashtray or have been asked to make one. And then... last week, I was asked. Sigh... And now, my friend who asked me to make one has shown this photo to his friends who might want one too. On the one hand, I'm happy to get my work promoted. On the other hand, IT'S AN ASHTRAY! This is almost as bad as the ginormous nose shaped egg separator... Ah well, the things you do to keep yourself busy and out of trouble.

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