It took me almost 4 months to complete this post but I hope to get back on track with writing at least several times a month.
Jan/2010 - Time to get focused again on pottery after the holidays. On our way back from Florida visiting relatives we had a great visit to Ashville to see the New Morning and Blue Spiral Galleries. We also found our way into Penland as we decided to drive over Roan Mountain in North Carolina - what a spectacular place - both the mountain and Penland. Visited Cynthia Bringle there - one of my heroes and stopped by John Britt's place who is just down the road a ways. Unfortunately he was out but I could see lots of test tiles on his studio table!
Did lots of sketching on the drive down - it's someting that works well for me as I just sketch whatever interests me at the moment and then for several days I work on variations. Usually I do not have time to do too much sketching at home, but this was great and helped to while away the time on the interstates. On the way back I usually had to drive as my husband found my navigating on the back roads to be rather unreliable.
The sketches for the small oval serving dishes had lots of movement in them but once back home I was had a hard time trasferring that into reality. The dishes are made of porcelain, thrown, altered and a flat base put on. I pierced the overlaps and hoped that the celadon glaze would cover the holes and let light through which it did. Will need to work more on these as I rather like them, but as you can see in the close up the inside of the hole arrangement is rather messy.
The shellac dries quite quickly - in about 15 minutes. By wiping over with a wet sponge you can get relief designs in the clay as the shellac prevents the clay from being washed away. I like to paint an area with coloured slip first and then shellac, so the raised area is a different colour.
I had done some designs with pears, first trying various slips on tea bag rests and then after some sketches on some serving dishes. I use the Bringle slip with 10% black stain and cover it with Fraser Celadon with a bit of stain as well (as per Elaine Coleman's recipe) or just the clear celadon without any iron in it. I don't get a really nice blue nor white colour as I use Harlan House porcelain and it tends to grey the colour a bit, but it is very easy to work with.
