Pottery

This weekend I attended a hand building pottery class with some new girls, and hopefully future friends! We had our choice of working with coils, or slabs of clay and a pretty wide range of vessels we could create. I decided to create a bowl, with coils. Below is the progression of my bowl.

First step, choose a mold and wrap it in plastic. (That was pretty easy!)

Second step, create the first layer of your bowl while remembering that this will be the inside of your bowl. I have to admit, it was a bit challenging to work not only upside down, but from the inside out!

After my first layer was completed, I started working on my second layer of coils. This will now be the outside/bottom of my basket.

Here, layer two is complete and I LOVE my bowl.

That was, until I had to rivet it together in order for the two layers to "stick". I really think the rivets take away from the fluidity of the coils and I am only hoping that a dark glaze will help hide some of the "dents". In this last picture, you can see I added a foot for the bowl to rest on as well. I figure, if I don't like the final product (as it now reminds me of a bicycle chain! Eww!), I might just take the class again and compress (flatten) the two layers to get them to stick together!

I won't get to glaze and fire the piece for another few weeks, but I'll be sure to post the final product then! Fingers crossed that I can live with the rivets!