Good Day Steemians!
Today I spent the majority of the day in my PJs and catching up on some of my glazing (pictured above). This can be a time consuming process especially when you aren't dipping your pieces in glaze but painting the glaze layers on by hand. A lot of these glazed pieces that you see pictured above are experiments so they could be totally wonderful or end up dismally terrible! To get a piece to this point takes a lot of work and it's sometimes hard to let go and try new things because so much has already gone into your pottery. That being said, how do we ever discover something wonderful if we don't take some chances along the way?? As Forest Gump sagely said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get." This is the truth with a capital "T". :)
I am going to break down the process of creating some of my lanterns so you can see why sometimes it is hard to let go. These are great for tea lights and make the best shadows on the walls.
The lanterns pictured above were thrown on a pottery wheel, left to get leather hard (a process that takes about two days) and then trimmed on the wheel. After they are trimmed they were then individually tooled to get the patterned holes on them with a borer (see image below of the tool used for that). Also, these have been bisque fired to turn the pottery from greenware to stoneware. So, as you can see there is multiple steps and the pieces have already been fired once before glazing begins.
These three lanterns have had a total of 20 layers of glaze applied with 6 different colours of glazes. At this time they will just need to go back into the kiln for the final firing and wham.....you have a finished piece of pottery. Fingers crossed they turn out well and my glaziments were a success.
Have a great day!
Kobie (AKA Existential Hippy)
Nice lanterns
Thank you! Hopefully the glaze results continue to make them so! :)
Hey @kobiespriggs,
All things are so nice and awesome. Your post are inspiring me.
Thank you!
Lovely to see these @kobiespriggs thanks for sharing your "works in progress" 😊
I have a little experience of throwing and glazing pots so I really do know how many processes and work went into getting to this point! Working in clay is both senusous (that Ghost clip comes to mind!!) satisfying and paradoxically pretty frustrating as well.
My first time on the wheel...I just glided along, whoosh, up came my little pot and I was like...wow I so got this!!!
BUT Pride comes before a fall...I was never able to replicate my 'beginners luck' again...must have been a complete fluke! All the attempts that followed were wonky wobbly disasters...
VERY proud though of my cobalt blue glazed pot and your post has reminded to write about this experience from a spiritual perspective (my little niche) soon, so thanks for the nudge.
And...Happy PJ potting! ❤️💚⭐️
Pottery certainly keeps you humble and it's a game of determined persistence. You can never get too attached to any piece and I often joke doing pottery is a Buddhist exercise in letting go. Thanks for reading and commenting. :) @lilygolightly
It most certainly is @kobiespriggs
Like so much in life we can only flow with it when we let it go! 💚