Silversmithing and Ceramics: Throwing and Glazing

For our last day of Project Week, we returned to the Community Clay Center to learn how to throw on the wheel and to glaze the work that we had done earlier in the week. 

We spent our morning learning the fine points of how to throw. Tamara talked us through the process and then demonstrated twice. After we each wedged 2 two-pound lumps of clay, we were very ready to try it ourselves! We partnered up, one person at the wheel, the other acting as "coach" each step of the way. As a result we each created a small bowl or two. Tamara will fire and glaze these bowls for us after they dry.

centering the clay

While we were working in metal over the last two days, the wonderful ladies at the CCC, Tamara and Penny, speed dried our wares and bisque fired them for us. Our work was ready to come out of the kiln at noon today. Everything survived, there were no explosions or breakage!  

We spent three hours this afternoon learning how to glaze.  This included cleaning the wares, waxing the bottoms of everything so that the glaze doesn't fuse the clay to the kiln shelves in the final firing, and preparing the glaze and then applying it to the interior and exterior of the works.  We each had a lidded box, a mug with sgraffito, a tile, and at least one wet slab piece, if not two or three. (We will also have the two bowls that we threw on the wheel this morning.)

The people at the CCC will fire this glaze ware one last time.  Ms. Wilson will get it and have it ready for us when we return from spring break.

First view of our fired art work!

Some of our bisque ware before glazing

Thank you Tamara and Penny and The Community Clay Center for teaching us and also for all of your behind-the-scenes work for us!

Silversmithing and Ceramics - Making Rings

Today we spent our second day in the metals studio at CraftStudies in Hanover, NH. We worked with Kerstin Nichols, a metals artist, jeweler, and very patient teacher of metalsmithing and of creativity.  

Having taught us the basic skills yesterday, Kerstin let us loose to play today. She worked with each of us, asking us about our plans and our visions, and tried her best to help us realize them. She helped us step by step, talking about design and variation and process, and every person created several rings they are proud of.

I literally couldn't get the kids out of the studio on time. They wanted to keep playing oops I mean working...  Come see on our rings during the symposium on Saturday!

Ringmaking with Silversmithing and Ceramics

So very happy to work with fire!

Checking against the light

Soldering

Using a hand saw to clean the joint

Practing stamping on copper

Buffing the rings

First two practice rings!

On Wednesday, 3/11/15, the Silversmithing and Ceramics group drove from NHS to Hanover. At Hanover, we were greeted by a jeweler who let us into her shop and taught us how to craft rings. After minutes of explanation and demonstration, the group was allowed to go to work and create our own rings. The initial rings were brass without any additional gemstones or defining features other than the simple band and carvings of the creators name. After we got the hang of this, we began to add other features to new rings such as carvings, symbols, and letters. We even began to work with silver. Unfortunately, time would restrict us from going any further and we would have to leave the shop and our rings until the next day.

-Eric

Silversmithing and Ceramics - Day 2

Today we spent another 6 hours at the Community Clay Center in Plymouth, NH.

This morning we worked on finishing the lidded puzzle boxes we started yesterday. We were taught techniques for adding animals, designs, and any other thing imaginable. We will also finish our cups and bring some of them Saturday to the symposium for you all to see. 
- Austin C.

This afternoon we worked on creating forms with soft slab construction. This technique, unlike the former ones, required that we give up control of fine detail and respond to the organic form. We threw slabs, textured them, played with the three dimensional forms, slipped and scored the joints, and then began again. Some of us created several variations. Others prepared items for our display on Saturday.

Slabs and Sgraffito

We spent our first day of Project Week at the Community Clay Center in Plymouth, NH under the professional tutelage of clay experts Tamara Mann and Penny Huynen.

Today we learned how to wedge clay, throw slabs, and construct from slab forms both a mug and a hollow cube (soon to be a lidded box, tomorrow).

We painted slip onto the exterior of our mugs, and then spent an hour and a half on sgrafitto, the process of carving intricate designs into the black background of the slip. Every person has a unique design. The more varied the line quality the more interesting the final result. I can’t wait to see these projects finished!

Silversmithing and Ceramics 2015!

What is this?! 

THIS is a few pounds of wet, raw CLAY.

This is raw POTENTIAL!

This clay, sitting on the wheel in front of you, could become the bowl you eat your noodles out of in you house, a mug you give to your mother for Mother's Day, a platter to be cherished and passed down for generations, or a sculpture. It can be smooth or rough, blue or orange or purple.

Oh the POTENTIAL!

We will be spending three of our five days together at the Community Clay Center in Plymouth, NH, where we will receive private instruction as we learn to hand-build, throw, sculpt, glaze, and create sgrafitto.