On the last day of August I was finally able to unload glazed pots from the kiln. The plates painted by ‘The Raiders’ the other day helped to fill it, along with the dozen jugbirds I’d made and stored damp since May! Covid and holiday travels kept me from the studio.
I’ll post photos of plates painted by my guests first, and below you can see my jugbirds, some experimental plates and cups.
These two lunch-size slab plates were painstakingly painted by Monique Fouquet. All my guests work quietly and with great concentration. It’s a joy to watch them painting.
Renée Van Halm worked on a large round bone-dry plate that she’d requested long ago. All of the artists used lines in their work this time. Renée had some good tape for edges. What a bold result she achieves!
Eric Metcalfe kept the number of underglaze colours to just these, with a simple design. He took his second plate home and I’m told he’s done more drawing on that one, with an underglaze pencil. We’ll see it another day.
My fourth guest, Karen Henry, hasn’t been ‘a Raider’ very often, but she was quickly comfortable working on a squared bowl form. Again, the tape helped with keeping the edges of the black lines sharp.
I took two photos of this piece to show its shape. I love chartreuse!
My twelve jugbirds took up most of the top shelf of the kiln. You’ve seen these guys before so I’ve just assembled them into one image for reference. Three already have homes to fly to in the States!
I do like throwing yunomi ‘off the hump’. They wind up being my excuse to do some free painting. The base is always finished with terra sigillata for contrast. Oddly, I see that the blue, white and green closely resemble a photo I took on Sunday on our ramble through the Chines.
This ‘Dazzle’ mug has a plate to match it. The jagged green on the other plate was made using paper resist for the hard edge. Clearly I love greens!
Finally, I’ll include this group of three fanciful plates. I’m still experimenting with sgraffito. The oak tree plate was a special request, the little bird in an oak tree works, but the eagle fishing may be just a bit too silly. Perhaps our grandsons would like it!
Now that it’s September I plan to switch to stoneware clay and start to make some pieces for a soda firing later in the Fall.
Thank you Gillian for posting these! I am enjoying seeing your experiments with sgraffito specially the plate in dark green and red.
Thanks Monique. Yes, doing sgraffito on a red terra cotta plate makes for a different effect than on a white one. Now I’ll have to do more!
I love the sgraffito, as well as all the rest. I don’t think the eagle is silly at all. There is a market for plates that look animated. Maybe not Jonathan but somewhere there is a person who will want nothing else.
Thanks Pene, I debated whether to show it at all! Grandsons do like it anyway.