Me, Lillian, Annie, Cindy, Diane and Kathi

On Saturday, I took a one day hand-building workshop with 5 other people taught by Annie Chrietzberg at her studio.  In addition to being an accomplished artist, Annie has been writing articles for Pottery Making Illustrated and graciously shared her hand-building techniques and templates with us.  If you visit her website, check out her workshop schedule and download her some of templates for your own use.  I highly recommend taking one of her workshops if you happen to be in the Denver area or any other of her scheduled workshop cities this year.

Kathi and I making handles for our cups

We’re really paying attention and don’t want to miss a thing!

Rolling out slabs for our platters

Another demo

My cup

I’m super excited about learning how to make a more refined cup using hand-building techniques.  When I first saw Annie’s gorgeous cups, mugs and tumblers I wondering how she got that texture on her cups that look like they could have been thrown on a wheel.  The cups we made are HUGE!  I’m guesstimating that these would hold upwards of 20 ounces once fired.  That’s a whole lot o joe!  I love coffee, although occasionally, I drink a good strong cup of English tea or green tea.  Check out all the different ways one can drink coffee.

We also made a small platter with double sided texture.  These are really cool!  I imagine that I will further shun my wheel in favor of hand-building techniques.  My challenge now is to change the templates and to add my own textures.  One of my main concerns when taking a workshop is that my work will end up looking like the instructors.  So, I’ve got some work to do to make these my own.

I really enjoyed the day and am ready to make some new work!

Have a great week,

~Cynthia