Exceeding his grasp

A chihuahua is the perfect intersection of short stature and minimal jumping ability to allow you to keep whatever you want on your counters. Nothing stops me from keeping his food out except that I don't want to see it. So I have to keep it on top of the fridge which luckily is out of line of sight for me. Combine that with how easy it is to function in the morning while I heat up water to rehydrate my instant coffee and his freeze dried chicken, I drop his food from the top of the fridge about once a week. So, what if it could be beautiful, like him? Then it could go on the counter, unlike him. 

This (above) is the first reach toward essentially a ceramic cookie jar in the shape of my dog, to hold his food. He is a little bit smaller than a cookie jar (maybe. 12" tall standing and 15" around), as well as quite a bit smaller than his bag of food. So far I still have to learn how to throw shapes that big, and shapes that go together. The skills are as far away as the counter top is to him. But, he is a very similar color to the clay I am using in class. So, it's all coming together. 

The vet explained that his rolls are just his skin, not fat. They are so cute. Sometimes a shape like that forms while trying to pull clay upward into the sides of a pot. So it seems pretty accessible to make them. 

This is my reference photo for the top of his head from the front. Verrrrry easy to form. Doesn't he look like a cartoon in that photo? To make the jar playful it would make sense to exaggerate his features but nature has already done it. 

He's actually a pretty poor live model. He bats at your hands to show that he wants them for petting him,  and he goes under the blanket. Which he only knows how to do by himself if no one is there to do it for him. 

Frequently people joke that he is my child. Is that who you all are making life size ceramic models of, in which to keep their food? Oh. 

Xena's Wheel Thrown + Handbuilt Serving Bowl

 

The serving bowl was given and graced ("graced") our Labor Day table. As planned, it coordinates with Mom's Fiesta ware. She also said it is one of her favorite shades of blue, even more so than her lighter and deeper Fiesta ware. <3 The glaze is called Spotted Purple.

The Swedish horses are special to us- our Swedish family was from the same area as the carved horses. I hoped the glaze might accent them even though the stamp (speedball speedy carve) was designed for paper and not for clay, which meant they are so shallow. 

This exact glaze didn't do that. It filled them in and smoothed them out. But the horses are still nice- a little secret- and it's interesting to see how the studio's glazes differ. 

As promised by our instructors, the clay remembered being wonky and went back to it in the final firing. One said you are not even supposed to let the piece flex when you take it off of the bat. Mom loves dishes and has every dish so to find something wheel thrown she even kind of needed, I had to make something beyond my Intro to Wheel skills. In class we keep making mug after mug, essentially by accident after setting out to make something else. Maybe because mugs are the size and shape of our cupped hands. But Mom has a shelf full of her favorite size and shape mugs plus a display shelf of her mom's favorite (which are small because you used to sit down and drink coffee as an activity, and just keep pouring cups from the... carafe). So it had to be this. 

Wheel Throwing: Serving bowl attempt

 

My mom loves dishes and has every dish. She has her mom's Noritake and her own Fiesta. Given that, I asked her if she wanted anything now that I am learning wheel throwing, and she said: serving bowls. It's true, we use a mixing bowl to serve from at her house. It turns out (triple pun) to be a shockingly hard request.

The design: medium height to fill in the need between serving plates and mixing bowl or crock pot crock. Glaze that will coordinate with the Fiesta ware- so, glossy and uniform. I will include a picture of some of her tableware broken up for mosaic, but she also has two shades of green and a second shade of blue not pictured. So I think this is pretty flexible- blue, purple, black, or white would all work. (Actually it is occurring to me that clear glaze would be a nice contrast with the Fiesta). Because it is a gift I am not going to follow my sea urchin accretion instinct but will only stamp a shallow debossed design on the bottom. And that means the bottom has to be flat before the trimming stage, because that stage will be too hard for the stamps I have already made.

The attempt:

Clay shrinks when fired, we were told our clay shrinks about 13%, so I was aiming to throw a bowl bigger than 12" across.

We learned to wheel throw by centering the clay into a puck, which is conveniently the diameter of the inside of my cupped hand. The base of a serving bowl is bigger than that. I found online a way to start with the puck and stretch it but the technique I learned for flattening the bottom, dragging one fingertip slowly across it, couldn't level such a big expanse. Then also the sides I was making slumped all the way down to the surface, the MDF bat. I continued turning it just in case I could learn more by continuing, but of course there was no salvaging the piece. For my purposes, the bottom was too thin and the piano wire clay cutter sliced through it.

This really seems like a job for handbuilding... roll out a piece of clay, line a pot with saran wrap, drape the clay and press it into place. Leave it for some time until it dries enough to flip out of the pot and out of the saran wrap. The two things that stop me are: I don't have a pot with the perfect size and shape, and, I am learning wheel throwing. I am accepting the process. I am welcoming the challenge. 

This really looks so much closer to the intention than it was in person. But looking now at this photo it looks closer than I remember when I was making it. And look at that beautiful rim. 

Notes for me for next time: started with 3 pounds of clay, could try 3 1/2. Was hard to manhandle so probably not ready for 4. Maybe find a rib with a straight side for the bottom. Okay for walls to be thick to accommodate trimming texture for grip. 

Wheel Throwing Week 3

 Unfair that tonight I have to trim my two weeks ago bad pots

 instead of making today good pots.

I spent any available taking-good-photos-in-good-light time gouging and ungouging my pots so will have to make do without visuals: 

My first two weeks of wheel, my items are not the same center all the way up. So I placed them today, upside down with the rim centered, checked the center halfway up the pot by placing a tool in its way and noting if it scored in only one place. Those parts were centered: the rim, and halfway up. However, the bottom of the pot which I had to actually remove clay from to make a little foot for the piece to rest on, the bulls eye center of the piece was off to one side like a fried egg. 

I planned to be fastidious about only making things that I have a real need for. I just moved into my completely own apartment for the first time. When I stayed here the first night before I moved anything, I got some ready made salads at the grocery store thinking I would definitely have some kind of fork or spoon in my bag or in the car. I had one chopstick. I had to eat my salad by hand, with the one kitchen towel serving as placemat and napkin. Now that I have all my stuff, there is nothing I need like I needed a second chopstick that night. But there are things that were communal at my old house, that I now do not have. 

In particular, a big bowl for popcorn. From our old house I took our chipped communal garlic grating plate, so it would please me to make at least a second one for my brother now that we are not sharing, and maybe one to replace the chipped one. Unclear why I have zero mugs, I suppose they might have moved out with someone else. I have been happily drinking every beverage from the same pint glass. This is working perfectly except when I have to take medicine when the glass is in the dishwasher and had to put water into an empty coke can. This has happened twice in the six weeks I have been here. And if I have a guest they have to drink out of their own water bottle. So it would be nice to have two coordinating hand thrown mugs. I'm also imagining a to go cup. So far, I only found two bowls to pack, one cereal and one soup. The soup bowl can fit a packet of ramen (while it is still square) but the cereal bowl can't. So if I had a guest, I would have to cook my ramen brick one side at a time. Altogether a rather long list. 

1 Popcorn bowl (blue)

1 garlic grater (blue) 

2, 15 oz mugs (blue)

1 to go cup (purple)

2 ramen bowls (white) 

The plan is so clear. And yet I have thrown:

 1 garlic grater, 

1 flower pot, 

1 ramen bowl (kind of small), and

1 ?Can of soup cozy?

 I can't believe last week the clay was controlling my body. The instructor explained that I shape the clay, that I brace my arm into my leg and put my weight into it. It felt like I was doing these things, but the wobble in the clay was a cam pushing my arm into my leg, every rotation. She would observe, tell me again to brace my arm, I would try again, the clay pushing me as it developed more and more wobble. This week, I don't know why, I was resolved to stay in one place. I made myself into one unit, feet braced to the floor, straight back leaning to bear down on the clay collecting bucket with my forearms, pressing on the clay hard with my linked hands and elbows stabilized at my legs. Since our instructor isn't doing all this I expect I will be able to back off a lot of this as I get more skilled. But it just seemed obvious this week that the clay couldn't overrule me and as I was looking down at it spinning compliantly where I wanted, I couldn't believe how we were both behaving last week, my first time at the wheel. 

So glad to have found this studio, I will go there for a long time. Ideally the only things I fire will be things I need. I most need a popcorn bowl. The one I have been using is staying with my old housemate. I have been picky, looking to thrift a blue glass bowl.