Ceramic house number

This week was rather packed with people at the open access, so I just worked on the new house number for my parents-in-law's new porch. Last week saw the starting point of creating the dish by using a plaster former and laying over a slab of buff clay. This week saw the next part of slightly flattening out the shape. This proved a little tricky and created a slight crack in the rim, which hopefully I've managed to mend.

Then I laid a print-out of the numbers onto the surface and cut through using a scalpel....not an easy task!

I then rolled out a thin rectangle of clay and attached it to the back of the dish and attached the insides of the number 8.

The idea is to after bisque firing, I will flood the inside of the letters with a white glaze after dipping then outside dish area in a deep green glaze. I also need to attache some screw brackets to the reverse of the dish to enable fixing to the wall which will happen next week.

The left overs.

Ceramics

Another night of practicing throwing, something that I'm slowly getting the hang of! I recently bought a sample pack of black clay, which is strangely deep red in colour before firing, and threw a larger version of a little porcelain bottle I made a few weeks back. It's got a tonne of grog in it and so became somewhat painful to work with. Here's the result.

I'm keeping the lip ragged as the original one followed along the same lines. I am thinking however, of taking away some of the clay around the opening as it's looking a little top heavy.

The same night I turned an urn thrown the previous week. You can also see my new initials stamped into the side at the bottom. This was done by using letterpress type from an old Adana press. I'm thinking of using the same method to sign my prints.

And finally, the starting point for a new house number plate for my parents-in-law to adorn their new porch. It's way too dished at the moment so I'll flatten it slightly and then cut the numbers out of the clay. More photos to come.

Vase

This is version 1 of the secret 'Project Vase'! The photo shows it prior to bisque firing, looking a little squatter than I'd hoped. It was constructed in two parts; the base, thrown as a lump and then carved down to the shape you see here and the top which was thrown up-side-down and a conical form, then closed and finally turned to create the opening at the top. The two were then joined with slip and some final smoothing to give the impression of a one-piece vase.

Et violas!

The finished, glazed vase photo will follow shortly.