Ketchup/Catchup?

Jack is very suspicious of
the snow being!

the big thaw!

I've been slipping with posting. I guess there haven't been enough snow days this week to keep me from doing pottery work. I have been busy chasing the plastic! To take us back a few days, Saturday I spent outside in the beautiful warming trend and began to uncover the wood pile that I had covered with a most beautiful blue tarp. I also cleaned up around the kiln area picking up all the stuff the wind and snow had played with over the past few weeks of old man Winter.

I have dedicated this week and some of last week to being a pottery version of a cover band. It all started with the batter bowls and continues into this week with favorite pots that friends have made and I am giving a spin at. These include a hump molded dish aprés Bandana Pottery that I have revisited from time to time over the last few years. Another of the cover pieces is a bowl/vase pot from Bulldog Pottery that I got a little while back. I was reminded of Bruce's pot after looking at my jars upside down and that alternative form. Here is that board of jars upside and drying.




And here they are right side up with knobbed lids. Here is Bruces jar/bowl/vase.

The following are some of the bowls that came from covering Bruce's.

They're not exactly like Bruce's but I wanted to show you how I am taking the form and interpreting it and later I will show you what happened by the time I had made a dozen!

"loaf" of clay waiting to be cut into slabs with my specially measured wooden guage

I couldn't find my Bandana Pottery dish that I'm covering here, but I found the old bisque molds that I had made a few years ago. I decided to make a hump molded dish and used a Mudtools wavy wire tool to cut the slab. Then I let this molded dish dry a little and am using it to mold the final dishes.



Here are some pots I covered after Ron's videos last week. There were a lot of fun, but weren't as easy as Ron made them look! I'll definitely make more of these soon. It's a whole lot of fun and the problem solving and shape solving is very interesting and speculative from my point of view. I am guessing at prethrown weights and the scale of the pots are varying.

I'm sure you've tried this once or twice before. If not, why not pick one of your favorite pots from your cupboard and try to make it. That how all these great pots are kept alive for the generations to come. Here's one our favorite little sugar jars, similar to Ron's knobandall! This one was made by Douglas Rankin and/or Will Ruggles, of Rock Creek Pottery.


All of this mimicry is related to a conversation that has been happening over at Kristen Kieffer's blog on signature. I am working on another post about finding one's voice and signature style TBA.

But for now I thought I would just stick my head in the blog door and say hello and show you what I've been into the past couple of days.