End of Semester One

The semester is coming to a close, and my candle holder has finally emerged from the depths of the kiln, looking more beautiful than ever. The two coats of Turkish Amber glaze shine like mud puddles after a rainy day. The glaze also soaked into the textured lines fairly well. The smooth cutouts of the phrase "Light a candle in the mind" stand out from the rough textured pieces. Here are the pics:

I was also had time to make an extra credit project in this unit. Coasters!! Personally, I think coasters are extremely fun and useful household devices. The name kind of reminds me of rollar coasters, and those are the best. Except, if you think about it, coasters and roller coasters have opposite purposes because one is meant to make things safer, while the other is supposed to make you feel unsafe and daring. Roller coasters are actually pretty safe, though. They always make sure to test them a lot before letting people on.

So, I put flower designs on my coasters because I am a girl who enjoys pretty, flowery things. They have not gone through their glaze firing yet, so it may be hard to see the patterns in this photo because of the clear glaze. Underneath the clear, there are different colored underglazes: (starting in the top left and going clockwise) red, yellow, white and purple. Hopefully they will show through after they've been fired. I'll be sure to post the pics!

Happy end of the semester! More importantly, this Friday is Lee-Jackson Day in the wonderful Commonwealth of Virginia, so bake yourself some Confederacy cake and have a good time.

Happy Holidays!

It is almost holiday break here, and we're in the home stretch of finishing our current pieces! I am working on a candle holder, but it is in the kiln so there are no pictures to show you. The candle holder combines different types of textures, with very rough patches of lines and dots interspersed with holes spelling the words "Light a Candle in the Mind". The finished project will look cool, I promise!

In the spirit of the holidays, here are some tokens of knowledge about clay:

• Leather Hard - Clay which has dried sufficiently to be stiff, but is still damp enough to be joined to other pieces. 
• Bone Dry - Clay that is completely dried but not yet fired.  Clay forms are most fragile at this stage.

It is important to connect slab work (like the candle holder) when the clay is leather dry because slabs are hard enough to stay in place, but not so dry that they won't attach to the other slabs.

Happy holidays, and hopefully there will be lots of fun pictures to show next time!

Glazing Part 2

The coil pot has finally been glazed and fired! I dipped this pot in the Chun Plum and Blue Rutile glazes. See if you can find the hidden heart in the design! Well, in truth, I did not hide it. After dipping the pot in Chun Plum, I painted wax resist over the heart so that no blue would get on it. That way, it is a surprising little pop of red underneath the swirls.

I think I am happy with my coil pot, though the blue separated itself from the plum more than I expected. This would be prevented in the future by not putting that combination of glazes on a coil pot. You can see from the picture that the blue has sunk into the lines made by the coils and swirls.

Update on my extra credit project, the glazed pencil holder:

Glazing

Glazing is an intensive process that must be completed with the correct steps. The 'bisqueware' is in a very delicate stage, because it has been fired for the first time but does not have any glaze. The dry clay will absorb whatever touches it, so you must wash your hands well to avoid oily spots. It is also important to wipe off any dust that has collected on the pot so that there is no barrier between the glaze and the clay.

When glazing, you need to apply wax resist when you are dipping into a bucket or have a lid or edge that will touch something else. With the buckets of glaze, the pot should only be dipped for roughly one second. Bucket glazes can only be dipped, not brushed. This is because the minerals in those glazes would not all go smoothly on the pot if a brush was used.

Now, the part you've all been waiting for: the pictures!

Finished pinch pot

Unglazed coil pot

Extra credit!! Pencil Holder

Hand Building: Coil Pot

The coil pot is coming along well so far! Making the coils was difficult at the beginning, but it got easier as I went along.

I have followed my original silhouette. The pot ended up a little wider than I originally intended it to be, but it still has the straight sides. If I do change anything from my drawing, it would be in my detailing around the top edge.

Right now, there are groups of spiral coils around the top. The finished product should have spirals all the way around in an asymmetrical pattern that is somewhat appealing.

Where I am today

Here it is, the finished product of my pinch pot!

The pinch pot came out exactly the way I wanted it to. Once I got to the line design, I knew how I wanted it to flow with the mix of curved lines, straight lines and dots. The scalloped edge gives good emphasis to the asymmetrical shape of the top.

But, as good as it turned out in the end, the clay did not always do exactly what I wanted it to. I had trouble getting the clay to curve out and back in again in a graceful way. If you would like an idea of how this pot used to look, refer back to "Pinch Pot: Vase, Week 1" (9/7/12).

To get the clay to behave the right way, I just kept smoothing it over and over, with one hand on the inside and one on the outside to ensure an even width. Putting water on my hands also helped to smooth and shape it.

Coming up next: a 7-inch tall coil pot! More surprises are in store for the top edge once I finish building it up to the optimum height...

Pinch Pot: Vase, Week 1

This is my first project in ceramics class so far, pinch pot in the shape of a vase. It is still in its developmental stages, but hopefully I will be able to fix the top section of it soon. 

I was able to make such a large pinch-vase because of a method called 'slip and score.' Slip and score connects two sections by making indents in the connecting edges of both parts and then putting 'slip,' or clay mixed with water, on the edges before sticking them together. The slip acts like a glue, sealing the two clay sections tightly together. If we did not use this method to connect our pots, there would be air bubbles or it would not fully connect and fall apart at some point. 

In order to make my pot symmetrical, I used a knife to cut the top at a slant the way I wanted it. I then started to round out the middle and turn out the edges, though that got a little bent in storage. Currently, it is not looking extremely symmetrical, but that can be easily fixed. When I originally drew out this pot, I meant for the top edge to be higher up then the bottom edge. That way, it isn't just another vase on the shelf.