Watch this Space…
So I was going through some pots in storage a few weeks ago and pulled out this lidded jar. It really caught my eye and I can’t stop looking at it, it is one of the last things I made before my youngest child was born. I have a feeling something similar to this will be on the cards again. They give a good variety of surfaces to carve, decorate and play with and I would like to get them into a saggar too, perhaps with a bit less decoration and let the saggar do all the work.
So this was one of three lidded jars I made for an exhibition I had at Fleetwood library, I chose three local sights, along with the ice factory I had the local beach bungalows and a fishing boat that I had drawn in a sketchbook.
These would be good to build at my day job as they have a little pottery cupboard upstairs that has a wheel, a slab roller and an extruder with no dies or end cap. If I can get all my slabs rolled out there it would be a bonus. The year ahead I have Fridays off to work on ceramics, so what may happen is that I roll out slabs on Thursdays and assemble on Fridays in my studio.
I need to make some templates so these are repeatable, as when I made them last time I just measured it all out with a ruler as I went along and made the process the longest.
I have learnt so much since I first made these and part of me is thinking about making some thrown examples too.
I have been thinking about my carving recently it has taken a bit of a back burner to my saggar work. As my drawing is improving daily through spending a couple of hours drawing every day but I have struggled to get the quality of line I like in sgraffito. I have tried using a knife which produces an accurate line, I have a Korean carving tool made by Adam Field which is good for the boundary marks as it cuts little coils.
A pottery pin / needle tool is a bit broad it doesn’t produce a variety of line that I line and an actual need just bends easily. What I would like is something line a dip pen that flexes as you draw but non of the dip pens I have are the right level of flexibility for clay.
Has anyone else any ideas?
A Signwriter’s fine brush, about an inch long? An interesting and informative post.
I use a sword liner for my cobalt decoration on other pottery, but I’m looking for a tool to remove the top layer of clay to help bring a 3d nature to the whole process, as you can feel the depth of the lines.