Coil-and-Carve Pot

For my Coil-and-Carve pot, I attempted to design the pot look like a brick wall. I built the pot by rolling long coils of clay, and layering them on top of one another. Once I made the pot about 8 inches high, I smoothed the outside, and inside of the pot with a metal smoothing tool, and a wooden tool. Then, to make the brick design, I took a tool with a metal u-shape and carved away lines about 1 cm wide, making a wide grid pattern. I glazed the 'bricks' with a reddish-brown potter's choice glaze, and I glazed the parts in between the bricks with a light blue semi-matte glaze. I glazed the inside of the pot with a lime green semi-matte glaze. Unfortunately, the pot was fired before the glazing was completely finished, so I applied more glaze, and re-fired the pot. The glaze didn't fire as well as I had hoped, but it was definitely an improvement from the first firing.

While making this pot, I discovered how using different kinds of glazes creates a different effect, and can be used to draw attention to certain parts of the finished work. I wanted to make the 'bricks' stand out from the rest of the pot, so I used a potter's choice glaze for the parts I wanted to emphasize, and I used a semi-matte glaze for the rest of the pot. I think this worked really well to create an interesting finished product.