SGA is going through a fish craze phase this summer! Must be the heat.
Here's a look at a few of the hand built pieces before they made it to the kiln. As usual, not everything made it to the catalog. A really pretty catfish tray broke in transit for its first firing. One of the more adventurous trout swam right off the platter (clay separation) before we got him to the glazing stage. But most of the catch made it off the hook and into the catalog.
These were a lot of fun to design, sculpt, and paint.
To make these pieces, the potter rolls out the slab and forms the clay into a plain platter, bowl, or other vessel. Unadorned and smoothed. Then she draws and cuts the fish outline from a thinner clay slab. The plain fish shape is attached to the serving piece using the scoring and slip method. After making sure the clay pieces are well attached, bonded without air pockets, the final step is sculpting the fine details in the fish with potter's tools.
These pieces take about 2 hours each to craft. After setting overnight, if the piece is leather-dry, it's removed from the mold for finishing the underside and touching up imperfections. Then it's off to the drying rack for 2 to 3 weeks before it's ready for the first firing. Custom pottery takes a long time!
All these are made from Buncombe White stoneware from Highwater Clays, our favorite clay for hand building serving ware.
This one is a stylized bream.
A pair of bass bowls waiting to leather dry before they come out of the mold.
