Bowl from Clay mold

The bowl from the clay mold

I treated the clay mold with graphite and blew the mold. Nothing stuck to the mold but the mold was harder to blow than was expected.  The mold was more oval than round which resulted from doing a free hand mold not basing it on a already carved positive of the mold.

The mold opening was smaller than the blow pipe since it shrunk in the firing process.  The mold was more squat that I thought. So the set up was a onion bottle and small. I blew the mold with a 1.5 gather and it was too thin on the bottom, a one gather was also too thin. I finally got a bowl by doing a small starter bubble and a strip gather.

Opening the oval was harder than I thought since it was not round the bottom and the tip got out of synch with each other normally when doing oval you start round and then smush it to be oval here the mold was oval so trying not to get the bowl too hot to lose the size or the impression but also trying to open the bowl was harder than I thought.

The seam can be seen but is not as big as I thought it was going to be it was not a sticking point in the mold.

The lip is off from where I trimmed it to make it easier to open the mold is lending itself to be more of a bottle mold than a bowl mold but I wanted to make a bowl from it.

The ribs on the bottom came out better than I expected but the ribs on the top where lost in the neck and the re heats to open.

The next blow of this mold with be to make a bottle or vase and will be done in colored glass to be able to see the patterning better.