These past few weeks I have been focusing on making functional work, and applying surface design in the leather hard state. Since finals are fast approaching, and this is my last semester in the pottery studio here at CSU, I tried to make anything and everything that I have been thinking about making all semester. Here are some photos of work I have made in the past few weeks:
For these wall vases, I went off a simplified Henna design. I wanted to create something that would hang on a wall and hold a small flower arrangement. The flowers will go into the thrown water chambers. I used this Dolan sgraffito tool to carve the design. This was really fun for me to make because I don't typically make slab built things! I'm planning on adding some beading embellishments to the 3 holes on either side of the water chamber.
For this flower brick, I wanted to make something that functions as a lidded bowl, so that the inside can easily be filled with water and cleaned when not in use. But it will function as a vase when the lid is put on. The flowers will be placed in the holes carved through the lid.
I have been seeing drip coffee sets all over the place lately and have been wanting to make some of my own! These were so fun to make, and I can't wait to glaze them! The top portion is essentially a teacup with a wide flat foot, and a hole carved from the interior of the cup, through the center of the foot. So when one goes to make coffee, they would place a filter in the top cup with coffee grounds, pour hot water through, and coffee will drip down into the bottom cup! I also starting playing around with a bit of slip transferring, which you can see in the detail shot above and on the pie pans below. Here is a little video explaining that process. The same can also be done with underglaze, onto leather hard clay.
These are pie pans that I made, and then decorated using slip transfer on newsprint. I like the kind of rustic, worn down look you get from doing this process.
And then here is just one last shot of everything. Whew, what a week! I'll post more when these are all glazed.