Wednesday, December 24, 2008

waterfowl


Another try at using the idea of cross sectioned slices of thrown ring shapes. Reminds me a bit of a flock of geese or swans on a lake.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Some newer things





Here are a few glimpses of things that haven't been glazed and fired yet. Just playing around with these odd protruding elements. The clay will fire up to be a dark brown, and I will probably only glaze the insides of the pots. Still deciding though.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

detail of crackle glaze

This is a detail from one of the pots by Ursula Morley-Price that are featured in the previous post.

Ursula Morley-Price @ Mackenzie Fine Art






My friend Crista Grauer alerted me to this show of stoneware pots. Their maker is English, but lives and works in the Charentes region of southern France. They seem unglazed, but actually do have, in places, a very slightly crackling glaze that is quite close to the look of the clay body itself. Very subtle. We like. At first, I thought the flange elements that protrude from the vessel must be made by slicing these wafer-thin pieces and then attaching them, since their shapes are very uniform and very fragile, but I couldn't see how that could be accomplished without damaging the piece in the course of forming it that way. ( Of course, not everyone is as clumsy as I am. ) In fact, she ingeniously lays down thick coils that are adhered vertically to the underlying shape and then pinched progressively outward. She works exclusively with coiling, paddling and other hand-building methods. Really intriguing and beautiful.