Trimming Faux Pas

While I was getting ready for the Potter’s Guild show in April, I made a grave mistake. It’s one that many novice clay people make and apparently one that I make too occasionally when I’m in a hurry. If there’s anything I’ve learned about myself it’s that I can’t rush because it results in mistakes! When I was cleaning the other day, I happened upon this non-functional porcelain bowl that was previously destined for the gas kiln before I trimmed right through the bottom! Doh!

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been making little porcelain boxes which start out as slabs of clay. I don’t normally wedge this clay up unless I’m throwing, so imagine my surprise when I saw brown clay swirled into the creamy white porcelain clay. I complained to Mile Hi - it’s apparently from the first batch when they’re making it and are switching clay bodies. You might remember that I don’t use brown clay at home since I don’t want to contaminate the white clay I use. It’s easy to do. I decided to take a deep breath and left the swirls intact.  It’s okay that it’s not what I expected - oh, what’s that Japanese term I’m looking for… maybe, “wabi-sabi“?

Work in Progress

These 6 boxes above are still in progress. The lids have been cut off and I’ve added knobs, feet and also an embellishment to the front of the boxes to hide the little notched section. My goal for the Summer Art Market is to have 20 of these boxes of varying sizes. I sat down with my sketchbook and decided to make a list of themes that I’d like to explore. I divided it into botanical and animal/insect/bird sections and each box has a theme that I’ve dictated based on the knob. Most of these will get additional painted details in the next week or so.

My favorites are the ones with intricate knobs such as a crow…

The chicken…

And the monkey (though he is a little scary)…

Meanwhile, I finished constructing 8 more boxes in various sizes and will cut off the lids and begin adding the knobs & feet today. I have 6 more boxes to construct to make my goal of having 20 in time for the Summer Art Market June 14th and 15th. I’m not going to have much else this year, however. Early next week, I might throw a bunch of mugs and bowls - but that will be about it.

It’s Memorial weekend here in the states - we’re going to host a BBQ and basically take it easy. Well, I’ll be working just a bit on these boxes - but at my leisure. I only have one thing I HAVE to do. The show in Evergreen closes tonight and I’m going to make a drive up to the mountains and pick up my work tomorrow. I wonder how much sold???

Have a great weekend,

~Cynthia

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 6:42 am and is filed under Handbuilding.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.