Wedding Set Plates

I thought I'd take pictures of this plate making process which I've been doing all week.  

The picture to the left is the clay in the gloppy state.  It was completely dry and I added water and over a period of days scraped outer layers of clay off.  

I started off with about 50 pounds of dry clay.  There are easier ways to hydrate clay and next time I'm gonna do it the easy way! 

I placed the gloppy clay onto my plaster wedging table on the right.  After it sucked up the excess water, I wedged it and pressed it flat.

I placed the flattened clay between two pieces of linen fabric and ran them through my rolling machine until they were a little less than 3/8ths of an inch thick.

This process reminded me a lot of running a pizza dough machine back in my teenage years, except that one was electric.  Who knew rolling all that pizza dough would be a skill I used as a potter?

I sprayed cooking spray onto paper plates, and regular bigger plates, for the different sizes.  The spray keeps the clay from sticking to the form.  It also helps the edges not dry out so quickly.  In the beginning of this process I had some problems with cracked edges. 

I cut out circles and on the back placed my potter mark, which is my three initials all run together (nkp).

The linen pattern on this clay is subtle.  I plan to glaze these plates with a clear glaze.  The clay is a mid-fire porcelain. 

The smallest plate has a small wave to it. I placed round bisque beads under the edges as it dried to create that effect.

All together I made 8 sets of these.  Now I will be waiting for them to dry out so they can be bisque fired.  I hope they will all make it through to the final glaze firing or I'll be dragging out the rolling machine all over again.