Terri Potter

Yesterday, I got my first five pottery pieces back from the kiln. This is my third pottery (wheel) class in about 7 years, my last in 2003. After a rather rusty and frustrating start (like forgetting how to ride a bike), the skills required to throw a half-decent shape on the wheel slowly began to seep back into my mossy brain.

In this class, I worried less about making a lot of stuff (who needs more sake cups?) and more about individual skills - how to center (an art in itself), how to start into the piece and stay centered, how to form a flat, compressed bottom, how to make corners in the bottom, and finally, how to pull the clay up with the right pressure. I am by no means accomplished, but by the end of the class, my skills improved, and I could see progress. I'm now able to handle a 2lb. chunk of clay and can make simple cylinders and bowls that don't weigh a ton. A lot of my work went into the recycle clay bin.

I have about a dozen pieces to glaze in my final class, Saturday. Several are handle-less mugs, since I forgot that I need to attach handles before bisque-firing. Silly me - I knew that. The first few pieces were mostly glaze experiments, to see what the new colours look like, colours I haven't seen before. I wasn't very adventurous, since I like to stick with earth tones, but was decidedly disappointed with the celadon (the "brown" bowls). In a previous class, celadon glaze fired to a wonderful, peaceful sage green colour. Now it's a muddy, poo brown. Oh well. That's why you don't glaze all your pots in one fell swoop.

Note on the blue mug. This was supposed to be an uber-blue colour, with blue slip under blue gaze. However, it turned out a wild teal colour with the metal oxide showing through in spots from the slip underneath. Wild results from the kiln.