This project was very fun but also surprisingly challenging. It started out by rolling a slab of clay and cutting it to the size of a plate. Once we let it dry for a few days we glazed it with the desired colors. After the glaze dried we put a stencil on the plate and scraped out the outline of the design. Once we were done scraping out the outline we began to carve the inside of the outline to create a pattern without glaze. Once that was finished we used a clear coat of glaze to seal the scratched out part, put it in the kiln, and were finished. i really liked the outcome of my plate i feel like it turned out better then i thought it would. i do wish i centered my stencle better because it came out overlapped on some parts.
raku tea bowl
For this clay project, we got some really high quality clay and made a sort of pinch pot out of it. We were able to creatively design it however we wanted to. I chose to add a rim along the edges because I thought it looked cool. Once we had the desired shape of our bowls we decided what metallic glaze we wanted, we were able to choose two so I chose a base coat and then a color to drip along the rim of the bowl. We let them sit a few days and dry out, then we brought them to the kiln and did a special firing where while the bowl was glowing hot we put it in a trash can full of sawdust and closed the lid so it ate up all the oxygen. Once it was cool enough we moved them from the cans to a water bucket where they finished cooling down. My favorite part of the project was watching them get fired and seeing what cool designs they came out with. I feel like I could have chosen my colors better because I feel like the outcome of the bowl would look cleaner.