The past month, I’ve been taking a summer ceramics class at Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch. The class was Monday-Thursday for 4.5 hours each day. Needless to say, I created a lot of pottery using various techniques. New pottery = lots of pictures = new post. So here goes …
Technique 1 – Texture Using Napa Cabbage Leaves
Somehow in my pottery learnings, I neglected to use this common texture technique. So, I bought a small head of Napa cabbage and use the leaves to create several pieces. Some pieces were soda fired; others were reduction fired. In general, I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out.
- First bowl, soda fired
- Outside of bowl has nice buttery color
- Bowl 1
- Small tray
- Another small tray
- Both small trays
- Vase
- Vase
- Detail of bowl 2, showing crystals
- Buttery inside; small crack is in the flashing slip, not in the bowl
- Bowl 2
- Bowl 2
Technique 2 – Sgraffito
I actually posted results of this technique earlier but here are the photos again:
- Underglaze transfer
- Dark clay; then added underglazes after bisque firing
- Dark clay
- Underglaze transfer – Now you see me; now you don’t
- Farm Yard
- Night Owl
Technique 3 – Mocha Diffusion
Interesting technique using slip and then dropping a mixture of mason stain/water on the slip. These are semi-test pieces to see what the effect would be with different firing environments. Basically, the pictures make them look better and I have some other pieces to fire. Like using this technique and will probably do it again.
- Mocha diffusion in soda kiln
- Mocha diffusion in reduction
- Testing a new sparkly glaze
- Testing another new glaze
Technique 4 – Using Extruder to Create Pieces
I have an extruder that’s not used a lot. But, every so often, I’ll run some clay through it and then see what happens. This time, I used it to create a series of triangular shaped vases. There are 10 vases altogether but they can be grouped in various ways, making them very versatile.
- Three pieces
- Seven pieces
- Five pieces
- All ten pieces