Pottery

I’m not sure if I have ever mentioned this but I do pottery.  I took Ceramics I and II in college as my art classes and this past summer I took a pottery class taught by someone at my church.  She has a different teaching technique than my college professor did and I learned so much more this past summer than I did in the two semesters of classes in college.

The reason I am mentioning this is that last night I started another round of classes.  The goal this time around is to make Christmas presents.  I’m thinking of Christmas ornaments, pie plates, vases and a pitcher or two.  Oh, and the big thing, a snack tray for someone.  I can’t say who because she does read this on occasion but, actually I will say, it is for my sister.  I will give her other gifts at Christmas but I am planning on giving her this before her caroling party so she can use it to serve veggies and dip or chips and dip or something along those lines.  That is, if it turns out well and I can get it out to Michigan without it breaking.

It will be like this although not red.

I’m not sure what color I will glaze the one for my sister but I’m leaning towards a nice cobalt blue.  I made this one for a friend and her husband in honor of their 25th wedding anniversary.  It’s fairly large, about 15 inches across, I think.  The bottom half is molded onto a plastic snack tray and the middle part is a pinch pot.  I thought the center of the plastic snack tray was too shallow to hold enough dip so I made the pinch pot to rest in the center and hold a LOT of dip. It takes a lot to do it because after molding clay onto the snack tray (no small feat), I let it dry to leather hard and then carefully removed it from the mold. Then I trimmed it, polished it, removed rough spots and then let it dry the rest of the way.  Then it went through the first round of firing, I undercoated it with red twice and then clear glazed it twice.  After it was fired the second time, I sanded off any rough spots and finally it was done.  The pinch pot received the same treatment as the tray did so I had to finish that at the same time as I was working on the snack tray part. It was quite the long process and other members of the class were quite impressed that I took it on.

Anyway, that is what I am doing for the next couple of months.  Playing with clay.  And making presents.  See, it’s a two-fold kind of activity.  I get the joy of playing with clay and other people get to benefit from my play time.  Win win all the way around.