Monsters of the Deep

A dark glazed bowl, just waiting for colour. Holding the bowl in one hand, I tip it at a slight angle, hold my breath, and sweep the inner curved surface with a squirt of iron red. I wait, don’t move, then again squirt, using a wider nib, and a contrasting white glaze. Then comes the firing to cone 6, in an electric kiln. How much will the lines run, how mottled will be the effect of the white breaking over the dark underlying glaze? And, always, the big question: how red a red will the kiln be kind enough to give me this time?

Grit. A tree trunk

You may think it surprising to see this tree trunk here; after all, it is a hand-thrown cylinder, like the Ghost Gums I made last year. More recently I have been making my barks from my hand-pressed moulds (see Tree trunk, black).

I really liked the grit that I’d pressed into the clay here and there, and I’d thought light touches of colour might complement it nicely. But it needed more work. I left the cylinder to wait for a more inspired moment. It waited quite some time.

The other day I decided enough was enough. I took a matte, black glaze that I knew well. and thought I’d add some local grit. Knowing from previous tests that the grit from around our studio fired nicely, I took a handful and added it to my pot of glaze. Then took my paintbrush and applied it to the base of my old cyclinder.

Being a second firing, this glaze’s colour fired to a very different colour from its usual matte black, giving me much lighter greyish tones. The parking lot grit adhered nicely.

Stoneware, fired in oxidation to cone 6. Height 12″; dia at base 3.7″

Nestled Tree Trunks.

My tree trunks are becoming more varied. Since my earlier blog post Ghost Gums, which were thrown on the wheel, I have more recently been using slabs of clay, impressed on trees, as moulds. I explained the process in my post Tree Trunk, black.

I press, and tear, and force the seams together, and they don’t seem to mind. I used quite a variety of underglazes here, adding sand to the mix, aiming to create an unexpected, slightly rough, bark-like effect.

These two seem to belong together, the one nestling in the lee of the other.

Stoneware. Fired in oxidation, to Cone 6. 1. Ht: 13″, dia: 2.5″; 2. Ht: 11″, dia: 2″

Drifting, bowl.

See a flaw, and I must make my peace with it. But when opening a glaze kiln and seeing a piece that yes, hold on, just might be fine, then, risking all, turn it over, and I see that all is well, aah, that feels good.

As I have explained in previous blog posts, the trick with these bowls is to have the piece trimmed and finished, and yet still damp enough to withstand the pressure I put on it, as I force the sides inwards and upwards, to create this distorted, wave effect. I cajole it into doing my bidding, while at the same time I must keep the foot from lifting, keeping it flat to the work table. Some bowls rebel on me and start to crack, others pretend to give in, only to settle back into their original shape as they soften in the heat of the kiln. Then some, like this one, let me have my way.

Stoneware. Fired in oxidation, Cone 6. Distorted. Dia: 13″ – 13.5″; ht: 3″ – 3.5″

Tree trunk, black

Stoneware; black clay: ht. 30 cm

Fired in oxidation to Cone 6

Here’s the latest in my series on tree trunks. They’ve been changing, radically, over time. The early ones, based on the Ghost Gums I saw in Sydney, were two thrown cylinders, attached, and made with a very white porcelaneous stoneware. Most of the cylinder remained almost pure white, with only the base dark, coated in a high grit, matte, dark glaze. In Cape Town, the variety of trees in the downtown Company Gardens was so astonishing, so huge, that to reflect their variety, I turned to underglazes, which I saw potters using while I was there.

Then at home during the summer, and with the studio closed due to Covid 19, I worked on my balcony rolling out slabs of clay, which I’d take on my walks, and press them against trees, for texture. I then tried to force the slabs into cylinders. I soon realized that to improve them, I really needed a positive impression of the bark. Therefore, when Gladstone Clayworks re-opened, I began bisquing some of these bark impressions, and continuing from there.

This piece came out of the kiln yesterday. I had dipped the entire piece into a matt black glaze, and then sponged most of the glaze off the raised areas. The result provides two tones, enhancing the rough texture of the vessel.

Gift bowls

Gift bowls for W.G.H. Old Girls

These are bowls I gave to fellow Old Girls during a Wynberg Girls’ High School reunion while I was in Cape Town in early 2020. These were among the pieces I made during the mornings I spent at Lesley Porter’s pottery workshop near Muizemberg.

While visiting potters’ workshops and exhibitions in Cape Town, I had been impressed with the use of local underglazes, and wanted to try them myself. Here I used paintbrushes in applying them to the bisqued surfaces, rather than slip trailers as I usually do when applying glazes.

I wanted each bowl to be distinct, but for them all to form a set, so that each WGH old girl at the reunion would have one which would be paired with the others, and decorated with the same motif. Here each bowl is seen as an individual leaf sprouting from branches of one massive, long-standing tree.

Stoneware, fired in oxidation, to cone 5.

Trout Lake mugs

Why not have a decal made of a watercolour I painted during a typically Canadian weekend at a cottage on the lake? Sure, no problem, says Art Petch (Ottawa).”Let’s see how close I can get to the colours in your original.” I left it to him to decide how to convert the RGB image file to the CMYK colour profile suitable for the ceramic pigments in the printing.

On the wheel, I had thrown a series of standard, large mugs of the same height and diameter. I needed the sides to be perpendicular, to allow for a smooth application of the decal. Applying the decal should be straightforward, only requiring careful smoothing of the surface, to remove any air bubbles or water trapped beneath the film.

But mistakes do happen; they may, of course, lead to intriguing results. Once, in a moment of inattention, I applied the decal the wrong way round. The decal itself should lie on the glazed surface, with the lamination on top. Switching this around gets you an unexpected, crackled effect.

Stoneware, hand thrown; decals.

Fired to cone 6, in oxidation.

Six Miniature plates

Recently I have been using classic, hand-thrown pieces as a canvas for abstract patterns, in sets. Each piece, sufficient in itself, should contribute to a pleasing view of the whole. Each plate is small, functional, that nestles lightly in the hand. I make them to be used in everyday life: on a dining room table for condiments, or on a dresser, to hold something special. For me, the magic comes in the glazing; it’s the glazes that create something unexpected, evocative, and that catch the eye.

The initial glaze I applied by dipping the entire piece, except the foot. By the next day, with that layer dry, I applied the design by squirting a variety of thicknesses of the second orange-red glaze, which, after firing, seems to ripple over the iron-rich black glaze underneath. The very fine lines of white, shifting and moving in the melt, evoke for me white breakers at night, falling on a dark, heaving sea.

Dia: 8 cm

Porcelaneous stoneware (Frost), overlaid glazes; fired in oxidation to Cone 6

Vase

Woodfired, on its side, perched on three scallop shells.

Ht: 14 cm, dia: 12.5cm

Fired with flashing slip, and oribe glaze. A number of us from Gladstone Clayworks went out to Brenda Sutton Mader’s studio in Alexandria, Ontario, where she has her Fred Olson woodfire kiln. Snow was still thick on the ground. The kiln fired in around 8 hours. Though the oribe may be underfired (according to the cones, the temperature in the kiln varied from cone 11 at the top, to cone 9 at the bottom – this piece was placed in the lower middle) I am pleased with the rough, volcanic effect where the glaze was thick, contrasting with the smooth surface of the rest of the pot.

Fired lying on its side, on three shells, the marks clearly visible on the finished piece (below):

Ghost Gums

Porcelaneous stoneware. Fired to Cone 6, in oxidation. Dimensions

Height:: 33 cm, 33 cm, and 25 cm.

Made during the month I spent at TAFE Northern Beaches (Sydney) – Open Studio – Ceramics.

I must have spent a long time gazing at the ghost gum trees I came across while walking in in the bush along the Sydney coastline, Other trees too, like the strangler figs, were equally stunning, but the ghost gums took my breath away, with their dark, decaying bark peeling away to reveal the naked smooth-white trunk reaching upwards towards the sky: fire and ash, decay, strength, and regrowth.

Nothing came of the project I had initially put forward to Christopher James (who runs the ceramics school there) as justification for being accepted into the Open Studio. But a series of these tree trunk vases/cylinders came out instead, which made me happy.

Two cylinders, thrown; the lower part of the base then coated with a mix of slips, oxides, grit and earth from my walks, to provide texture for the breaking, peeling bark. With the cylinders still damp, I then attached the second cylinder to the first, working on the wheel to fuse them seamlessly together. I added more slips and stains further up the cylinder. Once bisqued, I sprayed a fine layer of clear glaze to the surface, and fired the cylinders to cone 6, in oxidation.