Post #776183 by danlovestikis on Tue, May 23, 2017 7:47 AM

There was one Wish on the list that I missed. So As soon as we were back from our trip I went to work on it.
This is for Jeffrey Bannow's home bar. It is a combination of a passion fruit and a wave.

Here is the fruit which also dictates the color of the mug.

My reference wave which also helps with coloring the mug.

I choose the mold which would work best. I soothed off all of the coconut texture on the outside.

I blew up this balloon with it inside the mug and made it have lots of pressure. It job is to keep the mug from collapsing as I roll it around the table to make the shape that of the passion fruit.

After I positioned the fruit on the turntable I also in addition to rolling the mug I began to add clay to form the shape of the tip of the fruit.

Now it's getting there.

I used tape to flatten the end with the opening into the balloon. This allowed me to now add clay to close it off. Since the balloon can be pressed to make room for a brush I did that and smoothed the clay inside the mug also.

Little by little until this end was closed up.

After the clay had firmed up again after a few days I started on the wave.

I go slowly and carefully so there are no air pockets between layers of clay. These would explode in the kiln.

Then I carved the name of the bar. This is a combo of the fruit name and the Hawaiian name for wave.

Jeff decided that he wanted the stem so that it looked more like the fruit.

Next I cut the opening at the top of the mug that will be large enough for ice cubes even after it shrinks from drying and firing. I popped and removed the balloon.

All done.

At the base of the stem are some dead pieces of leaves. All the leaves are placed to prevent the stem from breaking off.