Clay adventures update

It has been a long while since I talked about my pots. It was partly due to the fact that I did not have my camera with me to take photos of them for the past few months, and also because I thought I will be stricter with myself. So if i made a pot and I did not like the way it turned out, I will just push the walls down and start again. Thus my lack of finished projects recently.

Anyway, our house is running out of space to display my pots, so I thought it is time to be selective about what I made. Quality over quantity.

Unfortunately, unexpected tradgedies still do happen.

This is a canister with a lid. I am so glad that the lid fit perfectly! The green patch, however, is an experiment gone wrong. I was trying to introduce glass into my clay project. So I carved an indentation on top of my lid, and place glass bead in the hole. When placed in the kiln, the glass is supposed to melt and take up the space of the hole.

Sadly, the hole was too small and the glass overflowed, leaving a messy border. Otherwise, the nice crackled glass would have looked interesting. Next time, I will put the glass inside the canister instead, so that there will be no overflowing.

Another tradgedy will be the base of the pot. You can see that there is a crack in it. Believe it or not, this crack has a name. It is called an S-crack. It usually shows up at the bottom of a vessel (like mine), and it is shaped like an "S" because of the way the clay moves in a circular motion on the wheel. There are many reasons why this may have occured, but it is most proabably due to the fact that I did not compress the clay on the base enough.

As for the glazes, I used whip white for this, becuase I wanted the green glass to show without interruption to the colour. It turned out pretty sterile (or boring) on white clay. If it was brown clay, there will be specks which would have been more exciting.

Now, what shall I do with a pot that has a crack at the bottom? *ponder ponder*

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This is one of my happier pots. Just a simple Japanese cup with a nice profile and glazed in pine green. I love the glaze! It is so shiny at certain angles you can actually see your reflection in it.


There is a flaw in this cup. You can't see it. But once you pick it up you will know its problem: it is too heavy! The walls at the bottom are a little too thick (i.e. the base on the inside is too small). I should have opened up the base a bit more...

Will look nice if I had a pair of these, but making two identical cups is still a challenge to me.

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Here are some of my works in progress:

These are all bisque fired, waiting to be glazed.

Briefly, the heart-shaped bowl is hand-built (i.e. not wheel-thrown) using a slab roller (think gigantic pasta-making machine). I plopped the slab of clay in a wooden bowl and cut out the shape of a heart.

The small bowl is thrown and trimmed on the wheel. (It is the first bowl that I trimmed without making a hole in it. Hooray!)

And the bottle is made with the help from my teacher, Gail. I always wanted to make something with a narrow neck, but could not fathom how to "close up the clay" to get a narrow opening. (Mine always collapses!) The trick is to leave the walls thick at where the strain is the greatest, so that the clay can support the pressure of the neck. (i.e. right below where the neck starts.) Hmm... sounds easy theoretically, but I am sure I will find a way to mess it up. :P

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And these are what I threw yesterday!

Two plates! I was trying to make them look identical, and I think they are almost there. I am so praying that no S-cracks will appear when they finally go into the kiln. One of the other causes of S-cracks is if you let water sit on the base of your plate for too long. I did use A LOT of water while throwing these two guys because I needed water to act as a lubricant (otherwise the clay will tug on me...) Anyway, they still have to make it through the trimming stage before going to the kiln. Let's hope they can survive the ordeal under my hands.