Last night in my Beginning Wheel throwing class, some of my students asked
to do some basic handbuilding… so of course, I said yes. I think they’ve all realized
that throwing & trimming plates on the wheel is a little tougher than they expected.
And now they know that handbuilding is always an option… just because it’s a
wheelthrowing class, does not mean they can only make things on the wheel.
It’s just clay. And the wheel is just a tool.
So we started with some basic instruction & demonstration of pulling slabs and adding
some texture to them. Once decorated, the slab was then “draped” over a simple clay
coil “frame.” The plate slumps into the frame and the edge is smoothed & finished off.
Then, as a quick “show-stopper” demo… instant plates trimmed right off the block of clay!
Using a stretched out spring to cut the squiggles, and a straight wire to cut the under side.
Tonight, once they set-up a bit, I added some small feet to the underside for a bit of lift.
I can’t wait to see how these sculptural “plates” will turn out when the glaze pools!
Pretty cool Gary. What did you use to make the texture on the platter – lower left side ?
Lower left side?… a very “expensive” tool I found at Ace Hardware!!! It’s just a plastic, mortar trowel for tiling. I’m sure you have one lying around somewhere at home?! If you drag it across the clay straight, you get grooved peaks & valleys. If you squiggle it back & forth while dragging across, you get this really groovy “dragon-scale” type pattern. The speed of your “side-to-side squiggles” and the speed of your drag across will affect the finished pattern. So simple… yet so impressive!
I love that pattern!!
How did the glaze turn out?
The patterns turned out great…. for one of them. The flat platter worked well. I inlaid a brown-ish temoku glaze into the textured grooves, and then wiped it off the top surfaces. I then dipped the whole thing in a green celadon glaze. The two colors really work well together, with the temoku really accentuating the textured patterns. Unfortunately, the squiggle-wire plates/trays have not been fired yet. I really want to fire them in the soda kiln, instead of cone 10 glaze. I think the atmospheric firing will really work well with the deep textures. So I’ve ‘put them on hold” until I do my my next soda kiln. But I’m still expecting them to turn out great too…