Pottery Class

 I'm finally around to posting photos from this summer. One of the best times I had at camp was when I took a ceramics class. Besides messing around in a friend's studio years ago, I haven't touched clay since. I fell in love with pottery the first day I took a lump of clay in my hands and began to shape it and feel the coolness in my hands, the endless possibilities of beauty.

This little bird dish was inspired by something I saw at Anthropologie. It was very simple, really - I cut out a circle piece of clay, pulled the edges up to make a shallow bowl, and shaped the bird, attaching it with a roughing method. Next time, I'll make the dish larger and add more detail to the bird. The basic steps of making a ceramics piece are: shape the piece out of clay, let it dry, fire it in the kiln, glaze it, and fire it again. The part where I messed up was with the glazing. I was instructed that two layers of glaze would be enough, but my pieces needed 4 or 5 layers. The black mug in the above image is the only piece that was glazed correctly. The other pieces were underglazed and did not produce the colors I had intended. But that's okay! I enjoyed every bit of it, and can't wait to get my hands on some clay again.