Back to Pottery

I've spent a little while blogging about things other than pots.  Maybe I lost a few readers with the boring website stuff.  That kind of took over all of my computer time when I wasn't in the studio.  Anyways, here are a few pictures of some of last week's work.  I've been altering just about everything.  I was trying some squared vases and after I had made a few I cam across the comments in one of Ron Philbeck's blog about him making some squared vases with a technique learned from Bob Briscoe.  After I made them with my self-discovered method I tried the other method of pulling a board across the bat to shape the piece.  I'll have to play around with it a little bit more but I definitely like the idea as well as trimming and cutting the feet away.  I've always thrown my altered forms without a bottom and have then spent the next few days finishing them up.  I like the quickness of altering the form when wet but I definitely notice that I don't have the same control over the form....and this might be an okay thing.

Anyways here are some oval jars that were thrown without a bottom and then assembled:

here are a few tall oval vases that were thrown with out a bottom

Here is a squared vase with my method of running my fingers up the wall when wet and then using my finger to create the foot and finish squaring the bottom after it sets up for a bit.

and here is a squared vase thrown and altered with the Bob Briscoe techinique via Ron's blog.