Shell Soup

Leaf Season

The Spiral

The spiral:

my favorite shape;

my favorite motion;

my favorite plot-line.

Small Blue Bowl:
clay: soldate;
glazing: sea foam.

Froggy & Company (More Clay Play)

Playing with Clay

Clay Vessels

Or, I need to find a summer studio, you know?

It's A Devil-Duck World . . . .

(Sand and pebbles from Monastery Beach.)

Beware of the Critic

Sign outside the art studio.

Hexagon: New Bowl

Stoneware; floating blue and transparent brown glazing.

Spiral Dreaming

A new bowl from the kiln.

Stoneware; floating blue and transparent brown glazing.

Cocktail Party: Eight Fingers of Fun

Octorina, at play, with Ophelia Rising in her background.

Kudos to CL for the octopus.

Work In Progress: Clay, Glazing

Roundness

Wet Clay

Bowl: Diver In Clay

The New Tea Mug

That's the same bowl I posted in yesterday's entry here, but with the light from a different angle, suddenly there's a shiny band about the upper section.  I had some luck making this piece, both in the throwing and the glazing, especially as I was using up some rather dried up clay that I should have wrapped better.

I could point out the three flaws -- or more? -- in this small piece, but I like it more than enough to keep it for my own tea-drinking.  The piece is short (only 3" high, 3 1/2" wide), but the shape is quite right for holding and sipping.  (The slightly flared top; the slightly bulging belly; the smooth and rounded lip, neither too thick nor too thin.)

Also, with the flaws, I have an excuse not to give it away to anyone I like, right?

Tea Bowl: studio-mix clay (stoneware + Navajo wheel);
transparent brown, floating blue, and clear glazing, layered and dripped.

B Is For Bear; B Is For Bowl

"You Too Are Mortal"

Wasn't that what the official anti-hubris clerk kept whispering into the Great Emperor Darius' ear?  Or was that Xerxes?  ("Remember the Greeks"?  "Give the Hellespont 300 lashes"?)***

More appropriately, The Humble Potter's Handiwork.  Or, Look Ma, Hands of Clay!

Ugly pot.

I let this one dry too much before trying to trim it, and then I failed to secure it properly to the wheel so that it went flying off during that belated attempt at trimming, though I did catch it on the bounce. You can see stoneware clay improperly mixed with this Navajo wheel /stoneware hybrid at the rim, a failed stamp on the side, and that odd, flawed bottom.

I did manage to put a decent foot (that you can't see). The glazing will be a crucial step.

Just a run of the mill off-piece, truth to tell.  I like to try to save such pieces too.


***A reliable source nudges me towards the Romans and the triumph as the source of the memento mori. 

(I thank EHS and trust the correction -- of course, of course -- but I also continue to resist checking, despite how easy that would be in this day and this age.  There's a perverse pleasure in quoting or citing from memory.)