Dotting around...

Making perfect square vases takes time, time and patient I do not have. It has to be quick! Quick can become charming somehow, can't it? 

Found a good clay called porcellaine clay. Becomes rather white by itself. Has got a very special texture and does not really like being bent. It cracks then... Little tricky as square vases (even the charming ones, read "not perfectly square"...) require some kind of 90 degree angle, which falls into the "too bent" when it goes into the porcellaine clay field.

Dots, lilac to start with... It resulted in three rather similar and rather small vases. Two of those for growing spices without holes at the bottom and one, with the same purpose, but with holes in the bottom and a plate under.

Winter term 2008 #4 Dotted vase without holes

Mixed lilac and purple underglaze. Turned out, well, a mixture of lilac and purple.... White shiny glaze on the top of it.

Spice vase demand fulfilled by offer. Found some neat stone candles at Finnish "crap store" that needed a plate. So here is the result. 

On one of these, I went wild and decided to go for lines instead of dots....

Bad choice not to be repeated :O(

Even offer for stone candle plates started to surpass demand. Next need: spoon holder for my cooking activities. 

Winter term 2010 - Cooking spoon holders

Winter term 2010 - Cooking spoon holders from the side

Made actually 3, but I gave one to daddy for Christmas (imagine his happiness, poor guy...). There the purpose was explained to be as a "tea ball holder". But, well, whatever you call it, it looked pretty much the same as the other two. All of these were also made with porcelaine clay, though the dots were done with purple. More than purple it looked like blue, but well... Lilac was not available any longer so no choice... :O(

This term I went big... likely the largest project done in the world with porcelaine clay. :O) Crazy idea.... Big vase is needed though for my basil cultivation! And classifying as a spice, it needs to land into a vase with dots as any other spice. Hadn't even started closing up the vase, a cascade of cracks started appearing. Not being the precise type, patched them somehow as quick as I could (booooring!). HHU! Big stuff!

After having dried it cracked. It did not look like critical cracks as they were on the inside. Didn't even bother to think about patching those in the hope glaze will do wonders...

Glaze... yes... try to glaze such a humongous vase without any "spraying" option. Result is doubtful, but what would be the option? Delayed the glazing part until the end but now my basil requires a bigger vase so... 

And both lilac and purple underglaze are out.... Mixed leaf green with yellow instead...

Spring term 2011

Easter has been on too... Did a blooming dotty vase (= vase formed as a flower with dots). Here again porcelaine clay. Here again... a lot of corners indeed. Cracking expected. But it did surprisingly only get 1 crack. Nice teacher repaired it. Me too lazy.... Had to use the mixed leaf green and yellow underglaze as my favorite option not available any longer. It is supposedly hard to buy underglaze. :O( Had to make chickens with lilac colored dots instead to keep the dots balance stable... (see coming post!)

Spring term 2011

And, as the vase was supposed to be filled with gras, the chick'ns had to rest on something. One heart for the two larger chick'ns was best and for the chicks of course two egg-formed platforms.