Pottery Lab

Some people may know I actually have a long history in working with ceramics.  My Mom had her own kiln for her work, and I remember as a kid making ceramic figurines of frogs playing guitar.  I wonder if my Mom still has them somewhere... In high school, and college, I learned to throw and made numerous projects.  For years, during and after college, I worked at Square One, a production slip cast ceramics company. We made dinnerware and tabletop accessories for high end gift and museum shops  My job was to hand paint colorful patterns with underglazes on the ceramics designed by the late Kevin Goehring. One of our accounts was with the Salvador Dali Museum, in St. Petersburg, FL.  I reproduced several Dali paintings like the "Disappearing Bust of Voltaire" on to platters, and painted Dali's face with his famous mustache on hundreds of mugs. At Square One, I even designed a pattern for ceramics that made it on the what's hot page of the New York Times! It was one of my most favorite jobs.  We sold to a store in Boulder, Colorado called Peppercorn.  Little did I know then, that I would eventually move to Boulder and shop that store that seemed so far from Florida.

Now, I live around the corner from the city of Boulder's Pottery Lab.  I've been wanting to go there for a few years now to make some dishes, but I've never had, or made the time to go.  This fall, I finally signed up for a class.  Time is now running short on my class, but I've managed to start on a set of six press molded scrafitto plates.  I pressed clay slabs into a piece of plastic tupperware as a mold, and coated the plates with slip.  Next I will scraffito, or scratch, through the slip to show the clay underneath.  The lines created with this technique look very similar to woodcut, but are much easier to carve!  My Mom bought me a tablecloth for Thanksgiving with a paisley pattern on it that I am using as inspiration for my designs.  Next week is the last week to work in the lab, so I'm trying to get as much done as I can.  I'll post more pictures as I finish up the pieces.