All about the tropical pottery

My pottery pieces are made from a low fired white earthenware clay.  They are made by hand starting with a wet piece of clay.  Some pieces are thrown on the potters wheel.  Some are made from slabs of clay placed in forms.  A slab roller helps me roll out large sheets of clay so I make multiple pieces of the same thing at one time.  Some of my pieces, like the jelly fish and the palm trees are cut from slabs of clay and formed by hand.  Large scale pieces are made using the coil technique.

After the greenware decoration has dried the pieces are ready to be fired.  The first firing is called the bisque fire.  The bisque fire takes 6 to 8 hours, depending on the size of the load, and another 12 hours to cool.  The instruction manuals tell you not to unload the kiln until the ware can be picked up by hand, but no production potter can wait that long.  So I have a lot of pot holders with burn marks on them.  After the bisque fire I apply a coat of unleaded clear glaze to the ware and fire again.  This fire takes 4 to 6 hours to fire, but I fire fast.  Once again the kiln has to cool.  I fire the kiln while I am in the studio and then let it cool over night.

The white earthenware, underglaze pigments and glaze that I use are lead free and food safe.  The pieces can be put in an oven, but not from the refrigerator to the oven.  They can go in the microwave.  They don't do very well in the dishwasher.  The dishwashing process doesn't hurt them, but if they bang up against other pieces they will chip.

After a piece has been formed and is dry it is called greenware.  I hand paint decoration onto the greenware using underglaze pigments.  These pigments need to be applied in multiple coats for opaque coverage.  I always try to use an accent color on top of the decoration.  That keeps the decoration from looking flat and boring.  I also use a squeeze bottle to make line decoration for the accent line, dots and stars.

I have recently introduced black into my palette.  It really makes some of the other colors "sing".

These pieces also used the wax resist technique.  The flowers and leaves were painted on first.  After they were dry they were covered with wax.  After the wax hardens the other colors were added.  The wax burns off during the bisgue firing.