Makers Mark Stamp

For this assignment, we were able to create a design of our choice, but we must somehow make it simple enough to carve into a stamp, and small enough that it would fit properly on our stamp slabs. I started out with a page full of sketches to choose from but decided I liked the bubble design the best and figured it would imprint the strongest on the clay. This piece was really inspired by the many unique ways you can write letters, and at first, I wanted to do a cursive L but as it became too difficult on such a small piece, I decided the bubble letters fit with my idea just as well.

The creation of this project was very simple. We started out with a chunk of clay and wedged it until it was ready to be used. Then we made the different shapes we wanted out of the wedge and left that out to dry. I started to make the little bubbles for my lettering but waited until my clay was at its leather stage before I attached it. Finally, it was fired for the first and last time. There was no glazing for this piece.

Overall I'm not super happy with how this piece turned out. I feel the bubbles could have been more even and I didn't attach them properly because one of the bubbles fell off in the kiln. There are some weird fingerprint textures that I don't like, and overall I'm not super proud of the finished result. If I were to do this again I would roll out the bubbles more evenly and use some slip to smooth out all the fingerprint marks on them. Also if given more time I would have added some design to the handle of the stamp so it would look more intricate.