Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Pottery Still LIfe........


A drastic change from seeing birds on my Photo a Day to now viewing clay pots.  I made my first piece of pottery when I was in college in 1970. That was the first time I had worked with clay making things by hand0-building and throwing clay pots on the wheel.  It was a treadle wheel and you had to stand and kick at the device that powered the wheel.  It was very unnatural to stand and kick sidewise while trying to center clay on the wheel. College clay of course was the best and the firing of you pottery was at a very high heat.  The tall cylinder is one of the first ones that I made. The clay was filled with grog, shattered fine pieces of fired clay to make the clay have a texture when it was fired.  Using the wheel with it also sanded down the skin on you hands.  One can still buy clay like that today.

The two other pots were made probably 25 years later while I was teaching school.  The multicolored one is made from red and white clay mixed together and fired with clear glaze to reveal the colors of clay.


A hand-built pot made during a college class in the later years was done the same way with red and white clay mixed together.  It was suppose to be a hand-built pot to be a replica of native American pottery of this country. It was carved with the point of a nail and burnished with the back of a spoon.

While experimenting with my camera I decided to use the macro for the shots to get detail views of the pottery and to get clearly focused shots.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is very nice. Oh your an art teacher . Awesome!

Retired. My second time for daily posts.

Di I have to join? How does that work?

I will add you.

Karen said...

Nice pottery! I got to use a potter's wheel once, and was jealous of the art students in college. (I was in choir instead)

Jeevan said...

Very interesting work with pottery and I love the multicolored pot! During the childhood days we used make small items with the mud clay that we get from roadside dig up and it was fun to create things in different shapes.

Good to know colleges and schools there put hands on pottery making

Anonymous said...

You know how much I adore pottery. These are great pieces to photograph. I have to make myself stay away from two nearby pottery studios!!!!!

Crowded.....

 The tulip was up first but the peony is now spreading out and shoving the tulip around a bit.