Coil Vase pt 3 and Happy Birthday

Last night we had a small belated birthday party for me at the pottery studio. We all brought a little snack and one of the ladies made me a delicious cake! It was so sweet! Thanks everyone!!






After a nice tea time I got to work on a few cups the were finished being bisque fired.

These are the bizen cups I made before new years that I put a slip on. It is my first time trying a slip on anything so I thought I'd go all out and do three.








The white is the slip, which won't change color much. The red is the iron color I love to use on bizen since it gets a nice metallic color. The other students who use slips a lot said they usually use a clear glaze but I thought that was a little too boring so I decided to do glaze X with an RF firing. It will turn out similar to this piece, but I don't know how the slip will look. Can't wait to see the end product!




Last but not least, the coil vase!
Now that the base has had some time to dry it was easier to build on top

Here is the vase before I started working on it last night, it's at about 32cm


















It's the same from last time, build coils on top and repeat repeat repeat....This is my progress so far


One


















Two


















Three....at about 50cm. It is uneven, lumpy and slightly off balance
















Smoothing out and centering such a big piece is pretty difficult and it will never be perfect but it turned out pretty well after some tweaking.

Smoothing the inside and pushing/pulling here and there do the trick.

I used the same wooden tool from before and good old fashion eyeballing it to try to make it symmetrical all around.


It was wrapped up again and is waiting for more height. Now that I'm at the narrow part building is much faster and easier than before, but it is more difficult to keep the neck straight and even. I can only build so much every day since the clay is soft and building too much will cause it to sway while drying, about 15cm to 20cm a time is a good pace to ensure it will dry correctly.

So far I'm up to nine hours of work and 6.5 kilos of clay. Much less clay than I predicted :D

But I got my bill for this month...37 kilos of clay, which is about $170 (16000yen) eeek! BUT it will last for at least 4-5 months and the cheap 450 yen price per kilo just cant be beat!

Until next time!