Soft Slab construction

artist statement:

For this project we were asked to make a collection of mugs. At least 2 of them had to have handles and they were supposed to be made out of slabs. We could make slab handles or pulls handles, while I did learn how to make a pulled handle I decided that I liked the slab handle look a lot more with the size of the mug that I had created. This project was right around the holiday season so I decided to make them as gifts. I Made them each 4" tall and about 2" in diameter. I made two of them as a set for my parents and 1 as another gift for one of my friends.

I made my first mug by just creating my own slab with my handles and a ruler, making sure to smooth it out with a scraper tool before putting it all together, but this was very time consuming. I decided for the next two mugs I would use the slab roller and I used the .5" board. I still smoothed them out, but this was much more time efficient and I knew that the height of the slab was even across the whole piece of clay. I made sure to scratch and attach the two sides of the slab and then smooth out the seam. I used newspaper and tennis ball container to made sure that it was as uniform a shape as possible. I added all the mug shapes to slab bases making sure that they were completely sealed so they don't leak.

In the end I was happy with the construction of the mugs but not the overall look. They didn't leak and they were. good shape but there were so many imperfections. Normally, I would think that imperfections help make a piece unique but in this case I think that it needed some refining. Especially on the striped set, not all the excess from the stripes was pushed down so it was sort of sharp. That was not exactly what I wanted for the final project but I do think it would be really fun to do again and learn from my prior mistakes!