Recent At Home Projects

A few weeks ago I went one of the oriental grocery stores in my area to scout out some design possibilities. I came away with this fabulous wooden bowl. I knew I would use it for a mold but after an initial failed use with some stoneware clay put it on a shelf for some future thought. One of the projects in Ceramics I was to coil clay using an armature. The idea was to smooth the outside but leave the inside with the clay coiled in attractive designs.

I did the project and it was fun. I have done a bit of this at home but not by using spirals, but simply round 'dots'. What I learned in class was that it was possible to retain the texture of the coils but only if the clay was a certain texture. At the time the clay I was using was too new and not plastic enough. It came out okay but another student did such a beautiful job on his that I thought I would try again at home.

The clay I used here is Laguna B-Mix but it has been sitting in the reclaim bucket for a number of months. I was wedging a lump for wheel work and decided instead to utilize this bowl with the spiral technique. I had to let it sit overnight before it would pop out. I liked it so much I did it again with similar results. Today I will make another one. I suppose until this particular clay is available I will continue to make these.

I'm thinking of keeping the clay unglazed on the outside and using a dark liner on the inside, maybe a cobalt blue or a bright tomato or dark lime green. We'll see.