Flower Plates

I decided to attempt to make hand-built plates using a mold. I can throw plates, and I'll try to take pictures and post the two that I've thrown so far too, but they are a little heavy and I'm not quite happy with that for everyday use. So, I took the first mold at Brickhouse where we had eight of the same plate. The studio manager, who is an amazing handbuilder and brilliant at glazes, had said I could use his molds while he was on vacation, but I felt guilty borrowing those for my first attempt at plates. Of course, he actually came in while I was making these and told me again that I should use his molds (and, specifically, that these will likely warp in the kiln). So, my next set will certainly be with his molds. I just wish he were here to help me as I stumble ahead.

So, I set up my molds, made a lot of slabs and sprinkled corn starch over everything so they wouldn't stick. I then trimmed to the edge of the plates and kind of "banged" the plate on the table to get it to sink into the mold properly. I then cleaned up the edges to round them and added a hand-coiled foot on each. (I somehow forgot to take any photos of the bottom of the plate). I sprayed white slip on them so that the colors of the underglazes will turn out very bright after glazing. After they had all dried enough to carve, I carved this hand-drawn daisy-like flower into each one.

I took these photos after the plates had been "bisqued" as I was about to glaze them with clear glaze using the spray booth.









I thought anyone who actually reads this blog might like to see a little of the process, so the following are three photos of the spraying process for glazing.


One plate set on a kind of bat that has ball bearings that allow the two pieces to spin smoothly, creating a kind of hand-wheel. This makes it easier to apply glaze evenly in the round, though I found it wasn't all that helpful in applying glaze to plates, since they are so flat. The shelf is in the middle of the spray booth, suspended by molded ledges in the plastic hood.



This first photo shows the plate with glaze sprayed on it. You'll immediately note that clear glaze is not clear before firing, but rather thickly white.



The second photo shows the spray booth from slightly further away so that you can see the spray "gun" and the set up a little better. It's a little bit like an airbrush, but with glaze filled in the container. The idea of the booth, as my Office of Research Safety friends would tell you is that a large fan pulls air away from you through a filter to try to prevent you breathing the glaze. I also wear a proper face mask. The glazes are safe to eat on after firing, especially because the shiny part of the glaze encases anything you shouldn't eat, but the particulates would not necessarily be healthy to breath (e.g., copper, cobalt).

The Lamps Are Bases

Well, the photos from the iPhone don't do these justice, and neither do the cheap lamp kits I bought. I need better lamp kits and I'm going to have a bit of difficulty finding shades that make me happy. A few people have suggested that I need to make my own shades, and I think they may be right. The cheap lamp kits seemed fine, until these were done. Now the cheap brass looks cheap and shiny.

I will definitely make more, once I figure out better lamp kits.

The flowers are forget-me-nots and orange blossoms with a little liberty on colors. I wanted romantic, loving flowers for our bedroom, but orange blossoms are actually white. I "upped" the color a bit to make them prettier. The forget-me-nots are a little more purple than they would be in real life, but not as purple as the photo makes them seem. The blue sky spray really turned out exactly as I would have wanted it.

Questions? Comments?

The Lamps Are Glazed

I began these lamps some time ago. I knew we needed lamps for our bedroom (we have one dented IKEA thing right now), so I figured I should make some. I knew I wanted to make slab-built pieces with an uneven number of sides (there are five, which you can't see because of my bad iPhone photo). So, I went to Brickhouse and made a model from cardboard -- actually, a Priority Mail box. It was a little too short at first, so I just cut it longer and then wrote on the cardboard how long that was. It was all a little off-the-cuff, so I was nervous. I sprayed them with porcelain slip to make them white.

Well, my teacher for hand-built work encouraged me to hand paint them, so I went home and came up with some floral ideas. I went back the next day and carved out each design with a pencil (really, a pencil), which will look darker since you will see some clay color where the lines are. Then, I hand painted the colors on with underglaze. Then, because I got a crazy idea (after painting the flowers) that a little blue behind would make a good sky background, I waxed over the flowers and sprayed a light-blue underglaze lightly all over the lamps.

So, today, they came out of the bisque kiln. In order to attempt to get the affect I want, I hand painted clear glaze on the flowers and then waxed them again, so that I could spray another mixture of clear and faux celadon glaze over the whole thing in the hopes that it will have an even more amazing "sky" look. They are waiting to go into the glaze kiln now.

Note: the one in the front has no glaze on the flowers yet, the one in the back has hand-painted clear glaze blocking the colors.