7.11.11

two glasses of wine, a huge bowl of curry rice and veggies, and about 15 grapes later...

Weird day, as all Mondays... I dread them and then once I'm at school and things are falling into place I feel stupid for having dreaded it so badly, then I have a few hours of something in between being terrified I won't have time to get all my work done and just wanting the time to pass faster so my classes and Monday will be over, then once my afternoon classes (three in a row) start in I'm OK and the momentum carries me, then choir, which is generally a pretty good way to end the day before coming home. Since then... refer to the title plus add to that (for this evening anyway): petting the kits, wrestling with Sammers, and watching the David Tennant Hamlet.

But all that is completely irrelevant. Here are the two latest pots (as I write this Sammers is in the kitchen playing with the pictures on the wall - never a dull moment...) one of which I love, the other I'm fairly indifferent to (and no that's not any kind of false modesty)...

Here's the indifferent one. Same goes here as with what I said before - I'm glad Erin had us do the stuff she had us do but I'm not ecstatic about the pieces. Our required work for the class:
1 pitcher
1 closed form pot
1 lidded pot
1 teapot

Of those, one was required to have a pulled handle and one was required to show at least some slab-building. When we got to the teapot I had yet to do any slab building and for some reason the night I started this I was feeling weirdly self-conscious on the wheel plus was just kind of pooped and a little less-than-social so I decided to start my teapot with slabs (slab building takes one into a slightly different area of the studio than where the wheels are). It kind of snowballed from there and the pot ended up entirely slab-built. I hardly ever do slabs so I'm really proud of it from a technical standpoint - I did a really good job with all the joins, etc. (altho the joins between the spout and the rest of the pot had a couple of iffy spots but ended up fine) - even tho this pot is decidedly not Me.


The glaze just made it even weirder - we all tried this glaze on a few things this time but it did a really strange thing in this firing and ended up basically Baby Shit Brown with a few flecks of green when it usually fires much darker (deep deep almost black brown) with a green iridescence to it all over. But so much for that.




It holds one large mug's worth or two medium cups' worth. I didn't do the strainer treatment inside in the clay but went ahead and cut a hole in the body that is the same size and shape as the base of the spout. In general I think those strainy openings for teapots are pointless. You have to make the holes pretty big so that glaze won't plug them up, which makes them too big to do any real straining. I'd much rather just use a tea strainer.

I do love the handle - every single thing about it - I love the join of the horizontal part to the vertical part and I love how I split the slab to join it to the pot in both places. I also really think my little triangle on top is Quite Inspired. It gives a nice thumb rest for pouring stability but also if you look closely you'll see that the one point extends over the back of the lid - which keeps the lid from tipping out as you pour. It works quite well.

Below is my closed form from the class. I really love this pot and keep imagining it with some harissa (hot sauce for couscous etc.) in it or something. The glazing is a reenactment of the glazing from the lidded pot from before which ran like crazy and basically messed up the entire piece, but this time I was careful to glaze pretty thin plus someone had watered down the glaze a bit.


I'm kind of addicted to closed forms now - anytime something starts going wonky you can almost always make it into a closed form, then cut a lid out and it's the easiest lid to make, too, altho you have to be pretty careful when you cut and the pot always ends up quite thick-walled due to having closed it in on itself and compressed a lot. I trimmed tons off of this one.




This is my new favorite kind of lid handle - it's particularly good for closed form lids b/c they are so thick there is plenty of clay to dig the handle out of, but also I really hate making handles for lids.

So there. I have one more closed form that should be out of the bisque fire by tomorrow night and I'll be back on the wheel tomorrow so we'll see what develops.

I have the hiccups.


4 commentaires:

Bill a dit…

The title of your post sounds great! Now I'm hungry and of course being at work wine is not going to be a possibility (neither is curry rice unless I get in the car!).

Two more great pots Susan, way to go. I will agree with you that I like the closed form the best of the two. The lid especially has a great aesthetic appeal to it. I think you have a great feel for the closed form and for bowls in general. This particular one looks like there is some sort of wave impression along the bottom (am I seeing that correctly??). The glaze is perfect for this one.

I didn't know what harrisa was so I had to Google it. Now I hungry again!! Sounds great and since I love couscous I guess it's going to be a trip to Whole Foods to find some harissa.

If you taking suggestions for your next project let me know. Ciao.

Susan a dit…

Thanks so much Bill - my crazy several days are coming to a close this evening and tho I have 4 tons of work that has been put to the side just as much as emails and fun online socializin' here I am diving into the latter... eyeroll! Anyway that ripple effect is what happens often when one trims a pot after it's a little too dry - some potters call it "chatting" - sometimes it's a drag (npi ha ha) but I rather like it on this pot, too - merci!!

Bill a dit…

Went to Whole Foods where I thought for sure I'd be able to get some harissa but they did not carry it (at least at that particular store). Bummer.
Trolling through Amazon to see where I can order it. Hopefully this will be as welcome an addition to my taste buds as the infamous Panache was/is.

Susan a dit…

Holy perseverance, Batman! :) I don't know that I've ever seen it for sale, Bill - I found what appears to be a pretty easy recipe for it - I'll probably make another batch of couscous over Christmas and go ahead with the harissa that time so that I can see how it goes - I'll have to let you know - maybe I'll even blog about it... stranger things have happened...