Long time no blog...

This is not because I haven't been using my wonderful new kiln; just not had time to write about recent work due to visiting relatives, Christmas and flu. Time to get things up to date.

Before Christmas, as well as being busy making some more birds and little pots to sell at a lucrative Thrive Christmas Coffee morning, I was also making test tiles to check out all my glazes, etc in the kiln, AND (more interesting) trying out a few new ideas.

Pots with yew and paua handles

My little pots are travelling far and wide; one has now gone to New Zealand (very appropriate as this is where the original idea stemmed from, as did the little bits of paua) and I think that another has gone to Israel.

One of the new ideas was to make a triple bowl combination with a koru handle to use for dips. Here is the first attempt at realising my design.

The bowls were a little too small and the green slip too pale.
I then made a template to use to ensure consistent shape and size of the 3 bowls and had another go.

Better size and shape, but the brush-on green glaze has not given good coverage (not sure whether this is me or the glaze?)

The bowls were still a little small, so third time lucky?

Okay, so now I am happy with the size of the bowls, but used a new marble green glaze which I knew would run if applied too thickly. Unfortunately I was too conservative in my application of the glaze. So this idea is still work in progress, but one that I think I will persue.

Here is another new idea which I plan to try to improve upon.

The night light just fits in, and looks good when it is burning. Next time I plan to make a larger bowl and will try to get a more even twist on the upright coils.

I then played around with some circular thin slabs of clay...

Like the shape, but the black slip with sgrafitto not so good.

Shape worked well, as did the brown slip with sgrafitto.



Still lots of other work to show and talk about, but will save this for some more posts...