The Tragedy of the Phoenix Pot

This is why you never get attached to a piece before it's been finished and safely placed within your house...

I had finally decided how I wanted to glaze it too. But, when your beloved kitty knocks over a cactus, you reach over the phoenix and your sleeve catches on it (and of course, your mother had already told you to move the pot before it gets knocked over), things can happen. Bad things.

Sorry, Lisa! The base pot is still ok and I'll probably raku it in frustration this week... Will take photos of it after it's been fired.

Phoenix pot

Painted the Phoenix pot with various yellows, oranges and a red underglaze. I think I'm pretty happy with it so far. We'll see how it is after it's been completely glazed and fired.

I also underglazed a bowl with a bunch of different blues. I'm not too happy with how it's looking, but will paint a few more things on it that will hopefully make it better.

Underglaze is basically pigment and clay in a very liquidy form. It's meant to be applied "under the glaze", hence its name.

I will be re-bisque firing these before applying the clear glaze over them. This will hopefully prevent the underglaze from streaking or getting messy especially with the cone 10 clear glaze since it's so watery. It might not matter with the phoenix pot as I will be brushing the glaze on it and smudging the underglaze might make it took cool. I shall have to think about it. I plan to do a few more pieces that will require a cone 6 glaze so I might wait until I get all those pieces made before I fire up the Phoenix pot.

No pictures tonight, maybe tomorrow or Tuesday.

Phoenix pot part 1

Last Tuesday, I threw a "poofer" pot. I don't think it's a technical term, but basically, it's a pot where you "poof" it out. It has a narrow base, wide mid-section and hopefully a very narrow opening. The opening on mine is a little wide, so it needed a lid.

On Sunday, the sale was a bit slow in terms of customer flow, so I trimmed up (cleaned the bottom) the poofer pot and then added a phoenix to the lid.

First, I shaped the body. Clay doesn't like to be thick and thin in the same piece. It can lead to cracking issues when a piece dries. So, I balled up a piece of newspaper and wrapped some clay around it to form the body. I smoothed the clay out and then pulled the clay using a lot of water and a gentle stroking of the fingers to form the neck of the phoenix.

Rolled up a small ball of clay for the head and then made and attached a beak. Scored the body and the lid, dripped a little bit of water on scored area to form a slip and then pressed the body onto the lid to get them to be one.

Then came pulling more clay and shaping it into curls for the head and tail feathers. After these had dried a bit (so that they kept their shapes, but were still malleable), I attached them to the body of the phoenix.

The pot itself had a nice shape, but I wanted it to look like it was part of the whole sculpture, so I added some snakes (also pulled from a lump of clay), scored and attached them to the pot.

After attaching the snake to the pot, I smoothed it and formed a peak to make it seem more like flames rather than snakes.

6 snakes attached and the bird on the lid.

I like this view.

The back side, so you can see what the tail feathers look like.

In looking at these photos, I should probably have added more snakes to the body of the pot, but it was hot and I was tired. I might do more decoration (with glazes, not with more additional clay) when it comes time to glaze the pot. HOWEVER... I did cover the piece so that it will dry slowly, so it might be possible to add more clay... Hmmm... I'll have to check tonight to see if it's possible. If not, oh well...

The next hard part comes in figuring out how to finish this pot once it gets bisque fired... I'm not sure how I want to go. Raku firing would produce some gorgeous colors (if I get it right), but the piece would be much more delicate. Low-firing would be an option. The colors would be less vibrant, but the piece would still be delicate. High-firing would be great for strength, but not so much on the colors... As soon as I decide, I'll let you all know.