Post #644567 by Trader Tom on Wed, Jul 18, 2012 3:06 PM

Well, I finally got around to playing in the mud again...

I stumbled across a great place for supplies in the general Portland area called Georgie's last weekend, which is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest supplier) of ceramics stuff up here. I wandered their shop for about an hour looking and asking questions before I finally walked away with a big slab of clay to work with.

Here's the fruits of my labors from this afternoon. Slab construction for most part. The first thing is a "Virgin Volcano Bowl".

I made the bowl using a metal mixing bowl as kind of a reverse slump mold. Then I textured the bowl with a woodgrain pattern roller. Then I used a funnel to make another piece, the inner volcano, which I attached with scoring and slip. Textured the volcano with a pumice stone.

Then I used an old Holland pin-up mold from the 1960s as a press mold to make some virgin wahines for two sides, also attached with scoring and slip. Originally I'd intended to use the mold as a slipcast mold as originally intended, but was advised by the helpful folks at Georgie's that the slip would shrink at a different rate then the rest of the project and was likely to crack off. So, I took their advice and used just half of the mold as a press mold using the same clay as the rest of the vessel.

I pushed in the still flexible sides of the bowl to make a squared-off shape just to be different. The original Vicious Virgin bowls had a triangular shape done the same way.

As an afterthought, I put a few holes in the volcano to let air/gas escape during firing.

I still had slabs of clay out on the table, so I made a matching mug for the bowl.

I'm going to cart these over to Georgie's to fire later.

I think I'm going to do a mahogany ceramic stain wipe on them to make the wood grain pattern really stand out.

Anyway, hope you enjoy looking. Love to hear suggestions or comments!