Playing Around

I feel as though I wasn't as productive as I could have been this week in the studio, but I did get a second round of French butter crocks thrown (an observable improvement from the last batch, but more on that in another post), threw five mugs, and hand built a tall vase. I also played with some surface decorating techniques, namely slip trailing and scraffito.

Dunk and go is not my preferred style of decorating pots, but it is quick. I've made several attempts at shellac resist with mixed results, but the last pot was so disappointing that I decided to try something else.

Shellac resist with Spearmint glaze; below, the
underwhelming pot with underglazes.

The only glaze that I've really liked with this technique has been spearmint on a dark clay body. It breaks nicely and shows the depth of the design, but really, how many people are going to love this glaze. Plus, I don't like having too many of the same thing floating around out in the world.

The most recent pot, a vase, was less than pleasing to me. I tried highlighting the design with underglazes and covering everything with a matte clear glaze. Everything disappeared. It looks like random splotches of color with the subtlest of subtle designs. Hmm. Maybe this June is the month of disappointing firings.

Anyway, I tried my hand at slip trailing for the second time. Previously, I used a 19-gauge tip and felt the lines were much too thin. I used a 15-gauge and 17-gauge tip this time with better results, I think. The pot is back in the studio and can't be shown just yet.

However, the scraffito pots, though firsts for me, show promise. It's early. The pots are still leather hard, so nothing is certain until the final glaze firing, but so far, I'm pleased.

I took one butter crock to the market to carve while I sat there. It helped to bring my salesman with me (my husband) because he kept prompting, "Tell them about the butter crock," so I did. Now I have two orders for butter crocks! I'm crossing all my fingers and toes until they make it out of the final firing!

Mugs and butter crock with simple scraffito designs.