draped slab dish - crackle white

Last week I blogged about the draped slab dish I had made and decided to glaze with a glaze I hadn't used before "crackle white". That blog can be seen here. When the dish came out of the kiln, it simply looked like it was glazed with solid white glaze (the underside had a clear glaze, so the terracotta clay showed through, as it does on the edges as can be seen in this photo).

To complete the crackle effect, some India ink and a paintbrush are necessary.

The ink is painted on the plate.

Make sure the whole plate is covered,

Using a damp cloth, wipe the plate

but if any spots are missed, the process can just be repeated.

The finished plate has a lovely crackle effect on the white glaze.

Here is a detail of the crackle white on this dish!

draped slab dish - glazing

Of course it was all so long ago that I was at the ceramics workshop. Everything went into lockdown in March and while workshops haven't yet resumed, the facilitator returned, with other staff, to prepare the building for a return to activities in the coming weeks. This enabled loading the kiln a few times to fire pots that had been languishing on shelves for the past three months, including some of mine! 

For these terracotta draped slab dishes, I decided I would glaze the undersides with a clear glaze so that handling the finished dishes would not be a rough sensation.

I hadn't tried the crackle white glaze before but decided it was high time that I did! This glaze is a two-parter: the pot is glazed solidly with the one colour and then after firing India ink is rubbed in to produce the crackle effect.

It is not apparent, when the dishes are fired, that there is anything special about the glaze - it will just look white. This is the view from the kiln of one of the dishes.

The clear glaze on the underside makes for a smooth finish. Next week I will show what happens with the India ink and the crackle white glaze.

Shamrock bowls - revamped!

In 2018 I made two foliage bowls, which I was really happy with from a beautiful results point of view, but realised that I put such a huge amount of effort into their making that I wanted them to remain unique, for my own use only. Last autumn I wondered if there was a way for me to create several similar bowls that I would be happy to sell at a reasonable price. I decided that I would make the bowls using one plant and that I would make them without "feet" thereby removing the necessity to take them home in order to complete. Details of making the fern and wild rose leaf foliage bowls are here and images of those finished bowls are here. I had a pot of shamrock in bloom, so I brought it into the ceramics workshop and cut sprigs from it for my design.

I was using plastic pudding bowls (I had 3 different sizes) as formers. Each bowl need a cling-film lining and then I swirled long sprigs of shamrock inside the bowls.

The clay was wedged and rolled out into a a large slab, from which I cut random pieces, which were fitted together as I worked.

I used my fingers to press the pieces together, letting the finger dents remain as part of the interior bowl form.

From the outside, one can see how the shamrock has been embedded into the clay from the pressure of joining the pieces. The cling-film creases will also add to the final design, apparent in the glazing process.

Here are the five bowls posing with the shamrock. Normally they need to be leather-hard dry before removal from the bowls, but since I was not adding feet to the bowls I could leave them until they were totally dry and ready for firing.

I glazed all the shamrock bowls with a food-safe green, wiping the glaze on the exterior in order to allow the glaze to only be in the plant and crease areas. I liked the way the glaze worked on the interior, accentuating the finger marks, however, I thought it was a bit too pale on the outside. I did submit them to the craft fair (more pictures can be seen here) but when they returned to me, I took the opportunity to make them better bowls.

For each of the five bowls I made feet that I thought were an aesthetic improvement. I knew that once they were fired some glaze could be used as a glue and the bowls could be re-fired with their feet.

I also took the opportunity to use a darker glaze on the exterior, with not such aggressive wiping in order that the creases were more apparent as well as a stronger appearance of the shamrock. For the deeper bowls I made tall feet.

For the two shorter bowls I made feet rings that were appropriately shallow. I am quite pleased with the results.

Draped slab ceramic serving dishes

In the late autumn last year I started making some draped slab serving dishes. My intention was to make them quickly and sell them at the xmas craft in December. Of course, things always take a bit longer than I expect, but they worked out fine. I had two formers, one of wood and the other of plaster, bowl-shaped and I overturned them in order to simply drape a slab over them, with a cling-film layer between the clay and the former.

I've been doing a new style of foot lately, in two pieces - two arcs making dishes "float" above a table surface.

I never took photos of how I attached the feet to the 2019 dishes, but I did for recent ones (note the date). After deciding where the clay arcs would be placed and tracing their outlines, the areas would be scored and slipped.

The feet are also scored and slipped, and after affixing to the dish, I lightly paddle them down (with a wooden paddle) in order to ensure that there is no air between the dish and the foot. This is usually apparent when some slip oozes from the joint.

Dried and ready for the first firing, here are two terracotta and one white buff draped slab serving dishes.

After bisque firing the pots are ready to glaze. I decided to glaze the underside of the dishes so the texture when handling wouldn't feel abrasive.

Though this may look like only one glaze, there are actually three different glazes on the terracotta dishes: a base layer of cobalt blue with splashes of two runny glazes (aquamarine and sea green).

I had already witnessed these colours interacting in a lovely way, and was not disappointed.

Both dishes were bought within two days of being for sale, so again I was pleased.

While I made a draped slab dish from white buffclay, I later made two smaller dishes from grey buff. I decided, since I was including them in the xmas fair that I would glaze paint a holly design on them.

I forgot to take pictures of the finished grey dishes before they sold, but they had a white glaze underneath the holly. The white buff dish simply has a clear glaze underneath the holly design. This dish is larger than the grey ones and I'll see it again on my Christmas table setting!

Chrismas Craft Fair

The annual Christmas Craft Fair at Signal Arts Centre opened on Mon Dec 10 and will be open 10-5 daily (including Sundays) until xmas eve. The first thing one can't help but notice on entering the gallery is the beautiful aroma of handmade soaps and potpourri.

The galley has been transformed into a lovely craft shop and one is enticed to browse.

There is a great mix of handcrafts - ceramics, cushions, handmade notebooks, xmas decorations, tea cosies, hand decorated t-shirts, felted scarves, stuffed toys, handmade cards - the list goes on!

I contributed a number of things: handmade pocket note/sketchbooks (left), hand-painted tiles (left) and some handbuilt pottery (to the right can be seen two of my shamrock bowls), Also featured on the display steps are my husband's beaten copper tea-light holders (left) and a number of his versatile ceramic teabag/cooking utensil/key holders (centre to lower right).

Here is another view of the display steps.

There are a few more pieces of mine not on the step display - another shamrock bowl (shamrock in flower was embedded to print into the clay before bisquing) and one of my tile paintings.

As well as the terracotta blue-glazed draped vessels (which I don't have a picture of in this blog!) I made a few festive draped-slab serving dishes from grey buff and white clay.

This is a view down the hallway. The display steps are on the first white-clothed table.

This is a view of the corner of the main gallery space. Gorgeous felted scarves are on that clothes rack in the corner and copper jewellery in the centre. Best wishes to all who contributed their work to the fair. There are some real bargins here and the craft work is such a high quality too.

Tulip bowls

In previous blogs I have described the making of bowls and plates through handbuilding, rather than throwing on the wheel. One of my main projects this year, in the ceramics workshop, is to create a dinnerware set. Details of the large and small plates of the dinnerware set can be found here, here, here, and here. Here are two of the bowls for the set after I put the feet on them, using two thin semi-circular slabs.

When the four bowls (it is a quartet tableware set) came out of the bisque fire, I drew the tulip designs directly on them with a pencil. I talk about the bowls and my plans for glazing here.

I started with glaze painting the flowers - two different colours of yellow.

I glaze painted the leaves and stems with "tropic green" a speckly green that I particularly like, but I painted a coat of "apple green" over the stems as I wanted them to vary from the leaves, but still have that nice speckle.

Since a glaze fire was announced, I worked at getting one bowl completely glazed. The background and inside of the bowl are glazed with the same "speckled turquoise" that are on the plates.

I was very happy with the firing results of the bowl! I found out that the tropic green is one of the runnier glazes and really liked that gravity pulled it down a bit to accentuate the terracotta lines. I also enjoy the random dripping into the stem from the leaves.

Here is another view of the first finished tulip bowl. The "speckled turquoise" is a consistently beautiful colour and the interior of the bowl is very smooth.

Another view of the finished bowl! Once I finish glazing the other three bowls, I will start work on 4 mugs to complete the dinnerware set.