Featured in the American Craft Council Magazine

I am thrilled to share this news with you. My story and work are featured in the "American Craft Council" magazine in the October issue.

I got a two page spread with lots of pictures accompanied with a well written article.

Now you can read where my design aesthetic comes from and feel free to share with your friends and family.

Browse my online store and get my signature pieces as part of your collection.

Decorative Butter Dishes

I have been making decorative butter dishes for a few years now and I am always thrilled to decorate them with unique patterns. Because of their time consuming nature, I usually made 12 at a time. This time I decided to challenge myself and make 30 of them. Most of these are for wholesale orders, so I have been a busy bee.

I made all different patterns and had to really scratch my head on these.

Few things I realized from making larger quantities at one time...

• You increase your efficiency. For example, you pick up one tool and do the same step on all the butter dishes. Rather than picking up and putting down 10 tools for each piece. This saves a lot of time.
• Develope quicker ways to do the same thing. I made a new tool which helps me score and slip. More on that in another post.
• And because I wanted different designs on all butter dishes, I came up with some really cool new patterns.
• And most of all your hand developes a memory, just like playing the piano which makes things go a lot faster and your work will continue to improve.

Do share your insights on what you have learnt working in your studio.
 

Try Try Try.. till you succeed

So I woke up Christmas eve with this idea in my head... pillow shape bowls. I did make some wall clocks with my pillow shape extruder die and they sold well over the Christmas holidays. Now I wanted to make something else. The basic idea was make a long pillow form, cut out a hole and slump in a slab and attach the edges. Done!

I wish it was as simple as that. :) I spent all of Christmas Eve and Christmas day trying to figure out how to make these bowls. I went through 30+ pounds of clay and made 7 or 8 of these. The difficult part was making a clean piece with the bowl portion having a clean edge.

In the picture below you can see the progression of the last five from left to right. For the first piece, I cut the hole in the pillow shape and took a bigger slab of clay to slump it in. The edges of the pillow collapsed and after a lot of fussing finished it but I wasn't happy. The next one I tried a different shape cut out to make it easier to slump the clay in and that was not as clean as I wanted.
In the third I used the cut out itself, flipped it over and atached it. It attached fairly cleanly but had no volume. It would be a bowl that held nothing. Which made me think that the piece of clay being slumped needs to be a perfect match in dimension.
So that is what I did. I took precise measurement of the cut out. Increased it by 1/2 inch all around and it slumped and fit in a lot better.


Making anything new is a process, but it is a process I enjoy. Never fear to experiment and see what direction it can take you. In the picture below you can see how the edges got cleaner with every piece.

I did toss out the first three pieces too and decorated just the final two with my signature slip decoration. That just gave them the WOW factor!
Here are pictures of another one I completed. Would make a great serving bowl for nuts and candy.

Wish everyone a very Happy New Year! And with the New Year make a lot of New work!

Vases: Old and New

I have seen working with clay as a journey. Here is a glimpse of my journey with vases.

These are pictures of vases that I have made arranged in chonological order starting from 2000 till date.

Temoku glazed with slip decoration. This was my first piece on which I had tried slip decoration back in 2000.

This is a 18 inch vase thrown in sections and gas fired to Cone 10 in deep blue glaze. I gifted this to my mom remembering that she had a similar vase in brass.

This is when I started altering my work. These were ovaled in shape after throwing and are still sitting near my fireplace.

Here is when I started extruding my vases and had switched to an electric kiln. I was amazed at the possibilities of a extruder and couldn't stop experimenting.

My Bollywood designs make an entry to my vases. The extrusions are still altered and then embelished with slip decoration.

And below are pictures of where I am now. Adding more movement, more decoration, introduction of texture.

This is a slab built vase made with textured slabs and multiple firings.

Process of decorating

Since I mentioned the construction of the jars in my last post, I thought I would follow it up with the decoration process. This technique is similar to the previous process of slip decoration, but it is a lot more tedious and time consuming. The textured surface (after being carved/stamped) is hand painted with several colors. This does require a lot of patience and a steady hand. Then it is slip decorated. After this it will dry and get bisque fired. In the next stages you will see more contrasting colors being added in the groves to really highlight the colors.