Incised Ceramics II

 Before the KC Clay Guild shut down in March along with everything else, I started working on some planters and incised flower themed pieces.  After six months of letting ideas ruminate, I had a nice little group of cuties when our class started up again in September. Several ended up at the Kemper Museum Shop, and the rest are available directly from me online.

First I hand-built the base forms, playing around with adding shapes together.  Then, while the clay was still a bit soft (leather hard for those in the know), I carved lines into the surface, this time with either a needle tool or pencil, depending on how thick I wanted the lines.  Before the first firing I painted underglaze in several colors on the designs.

group of planters and vases

carved

underglazed

After they came out, I added clear glaze and more underglaze into the lines of some.

finished planter with clear glaze
sold

vase with copper wash and underglazes
available at Kemper Museum Shop

underglazed and glazed planter
available at Kemper Museum Shop

glazed and underglaze vase
available at Kemper Museum Shop

finished vase with clear glaze and blue underglazed lines

Those links again:

KC Clay Guild

The Kemper Museum Shop

Eighty Acres Art Ceramics 

Incised Ceramics I

 I went on quite a streak of trying a new technique at the beginning of the year--incising ceramics.  I was inspired by this cute metal vase I saw at Urban Mining and a Vasily Kafanov plate I came across online.

I don't even know what those are supposed to be.

Vasily Kafanov
h/t Worthpoint

This even preceded my bigger drawings, and now that I think about it, I'm sure was an early step in producing those.

A friend gave me some cool porcupine quills...they were sitting near me so I used them to dig into the soft--but not too soft!--surface to make some lines deep enough to hold underglaze and make a crisp line.

Carved with a porcupine quill.

Fired to cone 6 with underglaze and clear glaze.
Decorative wall plate.

pinch pot

yes, please.
cone 10, b-mix, underglaze, copper wash, glaze

This is my favorite early one, but I haven't been able to recreate it.  Instead of underglaze in the lines, I used copper wash. Copper reacts with glaze and the different environs of whatever kiln fire it's in differently.  This was finished in February.

cute bebe cat planter

I began to think maybe just black lines with a touch of color could be a nice way to go.

no thanks

I also used copper on this vase and, although many of my friends actually really like it, I hate the way it came out, looking like bloody scratches with pink flashing.  If it was just a geometric or organic design not meant to be representational, I think I definitely would have run with this application.

Spring Ceramics, Vase Edition

I have been thinking about using manhole and utility covers in my ceramics for a very long time, and I finally got around to taking impressions to use as stamps.  Then I used paper clay (clay that has paper mixed in for stability) to make the forms.  So many stamps...so many possibilities!

Throw on some olive oil, press in some clay, pull off, wait a while,
bake at 1000 degrees or something, wah lah.

I used a lot of mason stains to rub into the designs so they'd really pop.

Hand for scale!

Don't forget!  I'M ALL OVER THAT INSTAGRAM THING.

White Vase with Seam

Another cylinder vase with a decorated seam.  This was supposed to be a bluish celedon, but that just didn't happen.  It's a nice neutral, though.

hand-built cylinder from recycled cone 10 clay

Again, pretty messy in there.

A lot of the iron in the clay got pulled out by the white glaze upon firing.

There was a bit of wipe on/wipe off action before I painted the celedon on the
seam decoration...just that little bit of thinning of the glaze really changes the surface color.

Button Vase

 To hide the seam of this hand-built cylinder vase I used both the impression and expression of a grate that covers a drain in my basement, then cut those in circles.

recycled cone 10 stoneware

First, dipped in white, then painted buttons with celedon and iron saturate glazes.

Nice speckles!  And finger prints.

Clearly, I need to work on pouring evenly.  I'm very messy.

Ceramics V

This reddish vase was made from some free clay that was laying around the Clay Guild and given to me as a gift for being a human garbage can.  It's bronze stoneware, so it reacts with the glaze differently.  Also, it was fired to cone 10, which is complicated to explain but let's just say it gets a lot hotter in the kiln when that much energy is used.

bronze stoneware, cone 10, impressed with a little sliver tool

Ceramics: Volcano Vase

In the coming weeks I'll just be posting pieces I've made throughout the year...

pipe end and paint brush end, blue wipe on/off w/two different white glazes dipped as an experiment

Quick Digital Sketches: Still Life: Vase

Ceramic Heart Vase

I've been playing around with my computer and doing what basically any seven-year-old can probably do now, but I'm An Old so my time has come.  This is a digitally manipulated picture of a vase I made.  I was trying to take a decent picture with a poorly-made homemade light box to document all my ceramics adventures from this year.  As I was trying to adjust the light and whatnot, I hit a wall and just started screwing around.  That is how this series was born.

Some of them have been uploaded to Society6 and are available for purchase, because why not.  They are all small, though, because most of them were taken on my phone and aren't high enough resolution to blow up and print on a T-shirt or whatever.

Don't forget, Instagram is my jam ---> @eightyacresart