ceramic bowls out of the kiln

Good morning!

Today I'm going to be posting a sewing how-to, but before I do, allow me to indulge in this one little non-sewing related post :-)

I wanted to show off the beautiful bowls that I made in the ceramics studio:

same bowl, different angle

uneven contained squares bowl

this was just the practice bowl... But my ceramics teacher really liked it

The design was made using a technique I decided to study and develop. Each bowl is prepared as usual on the potter's wheel. It is left to dry to "leather-hard" state, at which stage the foot of the bowl is shaped on the wheel. At this point, I carved "grooves" about 1-2 mm deep and 1-2 mm wide, into which I pressed black (very dark brown) clay. The black clay smears all over the bowl, and you need to clean off this excess with a scraping tool. Finally, a sponge is used to clean up any remaining excess.

The first time I tried this, it was very frustrating because I was unable to get a clean defined line. Any amount of cleaning resulted in smearing. With practice I got better. After glazing and the second firing, any excess smeared outside the line is virtually invisible.

I really love this technique - I love the end result as well as the process. It's rare in ceramics to get such a straight defined line - if you paint on with a brush it looks more like watercolor. If you work with ceramic pencils, they leave a gritty line. I am so happy with this series of bowls and there are more to come!

In the photo above you can see that a piece of the black clay filling slipped out - this is due to the fact that the bowl was too dry, whereas the clay filling was still wet, when it was applied. The dryer clay had already naturally shrunk, whereas the wetter clay still had shrinking to do, causing it to detach at some stage. It's nice though, because it kind of shows you how the design was put together :-)

What do you think? I would love to read your comments!