One more Day of Throwing in the Studio

We are making porcelain works for Cousins in Clay which will take place here at our place in Seagrove on June 5 and 6. We have one more scheduled work day in the studio and then we will begin to glaze. The first glaze kiln coming out on Thursday, will be out just in time to pack up and head towards Washington DC for the Pot Hop and Jam with Mark Shapiro and Sam Taylor. I am excited about the tall bottles that I am working on this week. It is a great feeling when we bump into a form that we feel motivated by. I made two of these at the end of last year and we enjoyed the way the glaze moved and looked on the tall forms, so I will continue to explore them further. I have begun to call these my Jesses. I have named them after a wonderful fellow and collector that has been adding these tall forms to his collection. He has one of the most incredible personal pottery and painting collections we have had the honor to visit. He has chosen all of the artwork for his personal enjoyment and vision. These tall slender bottles fit in just wonderfully between all of his other pots.

Below I am working on a few over sized plates. I am hoping to glaze them with a combination that we did some years back. Gloria has a couple of those plates in her collection. We think it is a great idea for us to keep work that we have made throughout the years. This helps remind us of glaze combinations that we have worked on in the past. Such pieces are a gentle reminder of glazes and processes that we need to unearth and revisit.
Bruce is working on throwing a couple of tall urn shapes using a two piece "capping" technique of throwing the top part first then adding it on to base and then throwing it further up and out. By doing this the base piece can be thrown much thinner and still support the piece, giving a bigger pot and using less clay weight for the same size. This is especially true with porcelain as it tends to fatigue quicker than stonewares do when throwing large forms.