Thursday, April 16, 2009

Platters

I have been experimenting with making platters for some time now. I have made six platters so far. I started out by throwing with around 8 pounds of clay, but found out that that wasn't enough clay to make the rim thick enough and make a gigantic platter with only 8 pounds of clay. I made three 'platters' they are technically plates now but by doing this i was able to experiment with transforming the pieces. I found influence through Matt Long who came to our school in February to demonstrate how he threw and changed his pieces. After experimenting with these pieces I then decided to throw with more clay because the platters were turning out to be too small for platters. I then later threw two other platters but then decided to take it to the next step and add porcelain slip to the surface of the platters. The picture of the platter is by Matt Long and he was my main influence in making these platters.

These are two platters that Matt Long made. These were my inspiration for my own platters.

I also put slip on my platters so that I could make my platters look more appealing in the glaze aspect. My main ideas on glazing were to use a green celedon... light green celdon?? I can't remember which i had seen that I had likes but then I would like to find a matt brown that I can use for the outside of the platter itself. I also used Penn State shino with the new matt long blue (what's that called??) the blue was used for decoration.
From here I would still like to continue making platters until I can make platters easily and perfect platter making so that I can develop my own design so that I can make the same platters over and over again, just like an artist. I'm very glad to hone my skills on the pottery wheel and I hope that after I am finished with making platters, I can then make my covered dish sets, then move onto bottles so that I can experiment with many different glaze techniques (saggar, naked raku, crystalline, fuming, ect.)