Custom Dinner set

I have done a few dinner sets and the main reason I avoid making dinner plates is because they take up so much room in my kiln. I have a small 7 cub foot kiln and I can't fit two of these square dinner plates on a single shelf. My wife had to wait for 5 years to get her dinner set! I did get a request early this year from a customer purchasing a new home. It was for a dinner set with additional pieces and since there was no strict time contraints I took it on. The pictures you see above are the dinner plates. All different colors and patterns. Along with this there are bowls, tumblers and small dishes too. It was a lot of fun creating this colorful place setting. I would love to be dined with such an array of colors. In addition to this there were oil bottles for the kitchen, soap pumps and soap dishes for the bathroom. I want to visit that home now. :)

For the main dinner serving pieces, I chose to match those and make them distinct from the place settings. The platter, casserole and salt pepper shakers compliment the rest of the set very well. Now I am just waiting for a dinner invitation. :)

New Form and New Item

As an artist, I always find it challenging and fun to create new forms. I had been thinking of some sort of wall art decoration with tiles for a long time. In my head I had thought of countless ways of making them. Square, round, paisley shapes etc... I wanted a three dimensions look and every process I went through was very tedious and not really getting to the look I wanted. Handbuilding with slabs required a lot of scoring/slipping and making sure the slabs didn't loose form and split. Thought of working with molds, but then I didn't want everything to look exactly the same.
Then just sitting on the couch one day (day dreaming my clay ideas), I made the connection between pillows and the beautiful farbics they are covered in. Aha! I will make them like pillows and decorate them as though they were covered in embroidered fabric.
Then of course started the process of how to make the pillow shapes. Thought of slabs of clay first, but then went back to one of my favorite eqiupment in the studio, my extruder. I made a die shaped in the form of a leaf and there I had my form. Of course there was a struggle with closing up the ends and cleaning them up, but I think I have the process down.
As a functional potter, I sometimes crave for everything to have a function. I know that even wall art has a function, i.e. to decorate a wall. So I decided to turn these into wall clocks. I absolutely love the way they turn out. I also like the fact that the hardware all gets hidden inside the pillow shape.




Interesting thing was when I posted the picture below on facebook, I asked people to guess what they were. I was amazed by the creative ideas everyone had like salt pepper shakers, vases, pencil holder, bread warmer, etc.. Someone finaly did guess them to be wall clocks. But this got me thinking that I could really make so many different items from this same basic shape and different sizes. So keep looking out for some new work coming to my shop as pillow shapes.



The original idea for wall decor is still something I am working on. For starters, I made several smaller size pillows as seen in the picture below. Can't wait till they are fired and installed on a wall.

New Tealight Candle Holders

I have made tealight candle holders before and they have been great sellers. I wanted to experiment my new decoration technique and change the design slightly.

The bright colors and the delicate slip decoration really enhance their look further. They would great as a grouping or even by themselves. And what a wonderful way to light up your house during the holidays.