A Lunch Box

Once upon a time there was a customer who wanted a ceramic “lunch box” in which to take a couple of days worth of undressed salad fixings to work where he could keep them in the frig to graze on. This customer had read about all of the plastic we’re ingesting, including tiny pieces of plastic shed when transporting and keeping food in plastic containers and bags. He wanted to start getting away from plastic. He asked me if I could invent something for him. Sure, I said.

Whew! Not as easy as it sounded. I decided to handbuild the lunch box so that the piece, which is fairly large, would be light enough not to give him a hernia when he hefted it. The first version went back into the clay bag, along with two lids that refused to fit—one of which broke into pieces as it dried. I started over again several times. I was finally happy with what I produced. My customer wanted to rubberband the contraption together for transport. The knob on the lid is designed to hold the rubber band. Works like a charm and my customer is very happy. I told him he could even cook the salad in this pot if he so desired.

Also, here is the berry bowl (see below) that this customer purchased first. He wanted a color that was as close to gray as possible. Hm, I said. How about light brown? Okay, he said. So I found this Potter’s Choice glaze from Amaco called light sepia. Amazingly, it turned out to be a grayish brown that leans a bit towards purple, depending on the light. My customer now has two light sepia brown creations of mine. Going for a set?

Simplified Raku

Also as part of the class I took in surface decoration, we did a raku firing. Unfortunately, our temperature did not go high enough for the beautiful metallic glazes you can use with raku or there were none of these glazes available–I wasn’t clear which. In any case, we could use underglazes or oxide washes if we wanted to. For surface decoration we had horsehair and feathers available to throw on as the pots emerged from the garbage can kiln.

I chose to put avocado green underglaze on the luminary on the left and used a red iron oxide wash on the orchid pot on the right. There was another luminary, but I didn’t move fast enough with the horsehair, etc. and the pot got cold too quickly. I need to reinvent that one. I did better with the green luminary, then overcompensated a bit on the orchid pot and got lots of carbon flashing. It’s an interesting process I wish I had more opportunity to explore, but somehow I think our homeowners association, neighbors, and the local fire marshall might frown on potentially setting fire to dry leaves in our backyard.

First Pit Firing

Wow! This was my first opportunity to do a pit firing. It was part of my degree program–a course in surface decoration. Who knew that a low-temperature firing could produce such compelling results?

The red in the vase on the left was created by ferric oxide doing its flashing thing. I also applied some faux (non-fired) gold luster. The test tiles on the right have combinations of cobalt and copper oxide washes. I believe sugar was also involved.

I’ll look for other opportunities to do this!

A Couple of Funky Vases

For the vase on the left, I was experimenting with texture and two of my homebrew glazes. I built this vase out of two thrown pieces and then ripped the top. It started out with “The Shape.” Someone liked this turquoise and metallic vase enough to buy it.

The other vase is handcoiled. It features my “soapstone” glazing technique and is decorated with decals I made by impressing the backbone of a dolphin whose skeleton I found on a beach last year. That dolphin has been showing up with regular frequency in my work this year. The glaze on the decals is Amaco Saturation Gold. The Shape? Sort of!

An Array of Mugs, A Couple of Them Sporting “The Shape”

The blue mugs are recent, as evidenced by “The Shape.” I thought I would move from vases to drinking vessels, positing that the wider shape at the bottom paired with the the narrower shape at the top might help to keep liquids warm longer. The small “Shape” vessel at the top right is a carafe. The cup below it belongs in that set of two.

I made the rest of the mugs shown a long time ago using high-fire clay in hopes of getting them into an atmospheric firing that never presented itself (covid, covid, covid). So I fired them at the lower cone 6 temperature using some test glazes and techniques. The unattached handles at the top was not my best idea, particularly the one that looks like it might break off in a strong wind. I don’t think I’ll adopt that technique moving forward.