Tuesday, July 22, 2014

New Set of Tumblers

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the best of photos but these are some of my latest tumblers I'm working on.
Was reading some jokes in Playboy magazine and was inspired to put my version of LeRoy Neiman's "Femlins" on some cups.
I used a white clay body that has a firing range of cone 06 to cone 10 made by Continental Clay. I used black underglaze to paint the  femlins. It took me all day yesterday to paint the tumblers and this is as far as I've gotten. Will have to start on the final details today.
I think once the femlins are finished I am going to pick a solid bright colored glaze for the interior and a clear glaze on the outside. I'm hoping this clay body fires to a bright white. We'll see.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Pulled Handles

I like the fluidity of handles that are pulled directly from the mug. For those of you that do not know what pulled handles are, here is a quick description.
First I roll out coil of clay about 2-inches wide and a foot long. Then I dip that coil in in a 5-gallon bucket of water. With my right hand I lightly grip the coil and pull downward till I get to the bottom of the coil. I then dip the coil again and make another pull. I repeat this process till I get a nice long smooth coil.
Next I place the coil on my wedging board and cut it into pieces that fit the size mugs I made. The remnant of the pulled coil can be seen in the lower left corner of this photo.
Next step is to slip and score the mugs and the handle pieces and attach them to the mugs, as seen above. Once I have all the handles attached to the mugs I repeat the "pulling" process right off the mug pulling the handle in a downward motion and attach the bottom of the handle to the mug with my thumb. I cut the excess off and use my personalized stamp for the final touch.

Finished Pulled Handles

Finished pulled handles. After pressing the bottom of the handle to the mugs with my thumb I cut the excess clay from the bottom of the handle with a felting knife even with the bottom of the mug. To finish them off I use a stamp with my initials and stamp the area of the thumb indentation.