#handbuilding

**making a round bottomed pot in an unfired puki

*no-one said this, i just assumed it was the case

Anyway apologies for the terrible late night pictures. But look ! I made some pukis earlier and was bemoaning the fact that i couldnt make any round bottomed pots with them Now, but with a bit of plastic wrap it is completely doable. Im very happy with this small round bottomed eating bowl. I do not eat at a table at home, so this will be easier for me to hold. I also want to make a few round bottomed mixing bowls, but I might wait for those pukis to fire first.

The new things are:

5 small lilypad plates (the top one is wheel thrown, the rest are coiled... I really prefer the coiled ones)

A large ladle with a hollow handle, coiled

2 big mixing/serving bowls. I could have made them a lot thinner but I am not sure that pulling everything as thin as I can is the right move... what if things collapse ? So, still figuring out how thin I should do it. But neither are that heavy, and I suppose they'll be sturdy. Both coiled

And then lastly a soap dish... this is a really rough proof of concept for a draining soap dish that drains the water back into the sink. I will hopefully remake this better. This was slab built, and I really am not enjoying that process.

The pasta board, thrown lilypad plate, and the pomegranate salt cellar are all that remain of what I've made earlier. The salt cellar will also be remade/recycled, I'm just waiting on my new clay. I want the old one to look at while I make the new one and I dont want it to crack in the meantime...

2 more pieces, and now I'm gonna have to place a temporary ban on more claywork, because sitting here working is getting super painful and aggravating some injuries. I think I need to start doing this in my wheelchair... it's not doable with the pottery wheel but definitely is for coil or slab building, I just haven't because I'd need to bring it all to the one table I own that is the correct height for my wheelchair, which sounds annoying to do.

Anyway, I made another lilypad plate, which is a lot thicker than the last one (which was wheel thrown) but also much neater so far. Hopefully I can thin it down once it dries a bit. I'm pretty happy with the shape--I just coiled a short vertical pot and then scraped it into a plate. Worked a lot better than I thought it would !

And then I also made a pasta board. I've been making a lot of pasta using the back of a fork, which does work, but I know they make big textured boards for that so I figured I might as well try. This one is slab built since coiling really made no sense. I have to say, I am not a fan of slab building so far. Doing the texture was very fun but the rest of it just felt like putting together flat pack furniture, which I do not enjoy. Hopefully it'll all hold together. I probably could have added more structural elements, but I was sick of rolling out slabs so I didn't.

Typical pasta boards are just flat, but I tried holding the fork flat and it was much less comfortable to use it that way, so I've got it at an angle. We'll see if it works !

I built this pomegranate salt cellar last night, and then this morning I got pretty much all of the finishing work done

Took about 4 hours, mostly doing and redoing things while I figured out how it needed to be.

I will admit the lid doesnt fit perfectly, but since it is a salt cellar I think it will be okay to have a little gap. It's definitely better than the previous jar in terms of fit.

I'm sooooo pleased with it. Hoping to glaze it red, if it survives the firing. Definitely going to fire this one unless it warps when drying (it's covered up now to slowly dry).

The only thing that im worried about is I once again trimmed the bottom too much and had to add more clay in. Since I've never fired anything I have no idea if the technique I'm using to add clay will work or not. So, that makes me quite nervous. Also the tips of the pomegranate are very delicate and I would not be surprised if they break. However, since that part will not be touching the salt, there's a lot of glues I can use to fix them if they do break. So we'll see !

labia series

this was a magnificent pot that broke, RIP