After last night’s THROWDOWN challenge, we had only four people who made the weight restriction! Beautiful designs & careful craftsmanship. We were all so impressed by these Top Four… but even more enamored by the great shadows they were casting upon the table! Well done Taylor, Katie, Ruth & Jack!

We had some AMAZING carved bowls… now “baskets?”… last night in my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class. The challenge was to carve away more than half of the weight with a decorative design of cut-outs & piercings… keeping the rim & footring intact. Great work by all & some some fine learning moments along the way. Some people succeeded… while others didn’t quite make the weight… and others “may have” had a few breaks & implosions along the way!

Like Jack’s bowl that started with a great geometric pattern of diamonds & triangles… but a couple broken cuts & weight restrictions forced him to go all willy-nilly breaking out more support-connectors all around. Much to all of our surprise… his bowl remained intact, standing by itself & oddly beautiful in its free-form craziness… and now the lightest bowl of the evening by far!!! HA!!!

After trimming & weighing their “now perfect-ER” bowls…
the real THROWDOWN challenge last night was revealed.
And they never saw it coming!!! HA!!!

Since I had the weight of their bowls already written down, their final challenge was to carve a decorative design of cut-outs & piercings while keeping the rim & footring intact. But the real kicker?… they had to carve away at least HALF of the trimmed bowl’s weight. A much harder challenge than many of them expected. So much fun to see how they each approached the challenge… both creatively & technically. They only had about 90-minutes… so there was not a lot of free-time for planning. And then to see how they needed to pivot when they weighed for the first time and realized they weren’t even close to half of the weight!!! Creativity, craftsmanship & time-restraints meet structural integrity!!! More to come…

Last night during my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class, I had my students do a little trimming challenge. Taking their “perfect” three pound bowl from last week’s class and trimming the “perfect” footring on the bottom… making it an even “perfect-ER” bowl! We were also looking for a more refined & even wall thickness from top to bottom… giving them a chance to take off some of the extra weight they may have left at the bottom while throwing.

Out of curiosity, we also weighed them all before & after to see how much clay they trimmed off… or at least they thought that was why we were weighing their bowls!!! HA!!! More to come…

Last night in my Intermediate Wheel class, we tackled throwing larger bowls. I made two… one more vertical & another more shallow. Tonight I did some quick stamping to give them a little more flair! And now I’m off to teach tonight’s class… giddy-up…

Last night in my THROWDOWN pottery class, I challenged them all to make a “perfect” bowl using three pounds of clay. We were looking for a nice round interior with no “beginner’s ledge” or indentation from a flat bottom… and a nice rim. It was fun to see all the different “versions”… the size differences… and the one that flopped at the very last minute.

And now we’re all “waiting” to see what happens next week…
for the continuation of our THROWDOWN bowl project!!!

With my Intermediate students, we’re all working on “chip & dip bowls.” We’ve already thrown the traditional “all-in-one-piece” chip & dip. But last night we tackled a little gravity-defying stacked version! Fingers crossed… as I always love a class demo where we’re all trying something new.

Looks like might have “forgotten” my bowl at my friend Melissa’s house.
My bad.

Hope she can find a use for it… now that it’s been added to her collection!!!

One last alteration to my set of class demo bowls… on the bowl with a split rim & two indents. I told my students I might add a large loop handle on this one to make a fun “basket bowl.”

So I did.

Sure, the ombre’ blend of colored slips was nice… but I thought it could use something more! So I did a little carving with my favorite P1 carving tool from DiamondCore Tools this morning… and I’m glad I did!!!