Tedium pays off

 This baby pot is 1 1/2 inches tall or should I say 1 1/2 inches "short". This is before applying and firing with a transparent glaze.

 The "adult" pot is 8 inches tall including the lid.

When I threw this pot I was a little confused about the clay I had. It looked dark but after I had pushed the ferns onto the pot and actually painted on about three coats of slip, I had a memory flash. I remembered that the clay fired buff not brown and probably had iron speckles in it. The speckles I figured were a good thing but the buff clay wouldn't give me the contrast of dark and light that I was looking for. Ugh!  So instead of scrapping the plan, I took some dark brown slip and then painted each fern leaf. Talk about tedious. But it worked. What surprised me, was that the underlying clay color showed through the slip layer and gave it an antiqued look. I'm going to have to make more like this but without the tedious parts. A full layer of dark slip under the white slip should do the trick.

New day, another technique

There was a time, about a year ago, when I was sick and tired of having glazes ruin my pottery. If the glaze didn't crawl, it blistered. If it didn't blister, it was just plain ugly. So, I was looking for an alternative decorating technique. The bottle above is made of a buff colored clay, so on the greenware bottle, I brushed on some white slip. After that set-up,  I randomly (and maybe artistically--Your call) brushed on an oxide. Then I actually scraped off areas that were too dark for my taste and added more white slip. The firing brought out the buff clay color to contrast with the white slip and oxides. Has potential, I think.

On this one, I borrowed an American Indian technique. I brushed on two different colored slips on just some areas of the greenware vase and burnished it in with my favorite smooth pebble. The way the colors got blended with the burnishing reminds me of a a cow's horn. I thought it would lose the smooth finish in the firing, but it didn't. Also has possibilities I think. Let me know what you think. More ideas are also welcome.