Inside, outside, upside down

Having grown up working with textiles, I still mix my metaphors and borrow techniques. People often ask about the “appliques” I put on many of my pots. They are great fun and can thematize or personalize any stoneware. I make molds out of clay and simply fire them unglazed. For the shapes, I use seashells, small toy plastic animals, real seed pods or corn cobs---just about anything that strikes me as a potentially interesting and transferable shape when reversed. I use a few commercially produced molds as well.

I particularly like the contrast of creating figures from my buff clay and applying them to pumpkin pots (that is, made over pumpkins) that are made of darker clay. The contrast works well with my usual glazing and firing process: bisque firing and then brushing on a black glaze, wiping most of that off, and applying a clear glaze and my signature rim of “Saturation Gold” (which is simply dark with metallic highlights unless applied heavily). The clays are all non-toxic and the glazes all food safe when properly fired.

The appliques can go on anywhere inside or outside a pot. I enjoy watching students learn to handbuild so that the surface they want to use is the one exposed. It becomes automatic over time, but challenges some---and is perhaps most difficult for potters accustomed to throwing on a wheel and having both sides available for embellishment. In my studio, since pots are frequently upside down when they are made (typically by draping and pressing clay down over a pumpkin or other round object) and any inscriptions or additions are applied, I can always tell which students did well in geometry. As much as I love spacial challenges, I have carefully put in place (after scoring and adding slip) more than one figure that would have been permanently up-side down when the pot was flipped right side up!