My favorite and most successful piece thus far has been this artichoke-inspired bowl, made using a variety of skills picked up over the past few months at Higher Fire. After throwing and trimming a slightly thicker bowl than usual, I marked the base with ten dots, distributed evenly around the foot as guides. Then I sketched out the outlines of each petal and carved each one using the tools I made. […]
Here’s my latest batch of test pieces. Glazes sometimes interact in odd and unexpected ways so I wanted to practice some different techniques and glazes before designing anything too elaborate. Some of these came out as expected while others yielded some fairly surprising results. In this bowl, for example, I was expecting a lot more red, alternating with the blue drip lines. It’s not very red at all. I […]
I love cities with a thriving street food culture. Seoul’s is particularly wonderful because on top of there being a wide variety of delicious foods, the stands in Gwangjang market come with heated benches, the likes of which I have never seen in the US. Imagine my surprise and delight when after hours of walking through the cold, snowy streets, I plop down on a bench for a late lunch and find […]
Pottery requires a lot of skill and you get a lot of things wrong before you get them right. It seems wasteful to just chuck or recycle a piece that hasn’t gone quite to plan, so here are some pieces that I’ve reworked into something else. First, the uneven rim or accidental dent can easily be turned into a heart shaped or wobbly rim. Collaring the neck of a bottle […]
The studio offers quite a number of glazes, some glossy, some matte, some runny, some very stable. There’s another wall of sample tiles showing how they look when double dipped. Still, it can be hard to tell how exactly they will interact with each other when on a larger piece. Take the Matt’s Flambe on this chip and dip bowl for example. Not only does the glaze completely change color […]
Stamping clay is one of the easiest things to do, and rubber stamps also work well. Here’s one of the first ones I did, a fish inside a lidded container that catches teapot drips. The glaze is a blue celadon. This is the lid for the tea drip catcher. I got some tiny cookie cutters and punched the holes out one at a time before notching the rim. The process […]
The first thing you learn to make in a beginner’s wheel throwing class is a small bowl. Let’s be honest, the first few are thick, ugly things. That’s ok though, because you can trim them down, sand them smooth, and hide your sins with glaze. I love this one, called Matt’s Flambe. Don’t be fooled by the photo – this little bowl ended up about 3.25 inches wide. They shrink throughout […]
I convinced a handful of friends to join me for wheel throwing classes at Higher Fire. Two classes later, I’m a member with shelf space and still learning so much! There’s a lot to share so I’ll start with tools I’ve picked up or made for these projects. Pretty much everyone has the same basic tools so I had to give them some identifying marks. Simply writing my name on them […]