Your favorite Bowls

I introduced these bowls last year and have gotten a great response from customers. Handbuilt and slip decorated with different washes and color accents, each lands up being distinctive and unique. A very similar process goes for my mugs too. On doing shows last year, I noticed that there were some people who liked the intricate patterns, some liked more negative spaces in the pattern, some liked the color accents, some just preferred the wash etc. I just got super curious to get all this data and see what I would find.

That is when I decoded to get this data from my fans on facebook. I posted the following picture and asked everyone to vote for their favorite in each row. So, there were three votes from everyone, a favorite from the honey gold glaze, a favorite from the Soft Green Glaze and a favorite from the Blue glaze.

I had an overwhelming response. Approx 180 votes. It was great to get this input and I thank you all for voting. And here are the results. Pretty much even across the board, except for one of the blue bowls that got significantly low votes. And looking closely you can see that the bowls with the color accents and the wash combination and negative spaces did get more votes in each case. (HG3, S2, B1) Thank you all for your input. This gives me a good idea to what to send to galleries that carry my workas well. Do you agree with the favorites? Do you have your own favorite? Do tell.

     

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. :)

Testing to get a Color

As many of you know my pottery does have a lot of color. But getting those bright colors at mid fire range is not always easy. I struggled for the longest time to get red and after getting that 2 years back, I started on my mission to get maroon. I don't know why I do this to myself. :)

My inspiration was again from Indian fabrics. And the color maroon (a very deep red) was stuck in my head since my wedding actually (almost 8 years back). It was the color of my wife's dress she wore on the engagement night. You can see the clipping below. At that time I didn't know I wanted it on my pots but I knew I liked the color.

So after 20 -30 tests and failing at every one of them, I finally get my maroon. Most of the time the color just faded when I fired and lost its deep look. But now I finally like what I have. Check out these pots with the maroon accent.

In a way, it was time that my testing came to a conclusion. The color feature maroon was done this week on my blog and my mom sent me this beautiful bed spread in raw silk which is again rich dark maroon with gold, yellow and orange embroidery done all over.

Secret Santa..... Shhhhhh

This time of the year it is the time of gift giving. It sure is very thrilling to receive a gift... isn't it?
I see so many of my customers purchasing gifts for their loved ones these days from my shop and from other places. What fills my heart is that sometimes they are willing to spend that money for a gift someone rather than purchase something for themselves. It is the season for gift giving.

So I have decided to gift something to my customers too. All my customers shopping till the end of this year (Dec31st 2009) will recieve a Secret Santa number in their packages. On New Years Day (Jan 1st 2010), you will receive an email with instructions to redeem your gift. What is it? Well.... it is a secret. And the gifts are different... OK here is a hint, it ranges from a discount all the way to a free piece of my pottery. I have said enough. :)

Just hold on to your Seceret Santa number when you receive your packages and wait for my email on January 1st 2010.

On a different note, here are some pictures of my new Dancing Divas I have listed in my etsy shop.