Saturday 10 March 2012

Making lidded jars

Last week I made several of these lidded jars or urns. I was inspired by images of ancient megaliths and I wanted to create some vessels which communicate a similar kind of heft and gravitas. I don't know how far I've succeeded..it's difficult to achieve that with small pieces, so at some point, I'd like to make these on a much larger scale. Making the lids is challenging to say the least, and I'm still trying to work out the best way of doing that from a closed form.

Lidded jars drying, approx. 6 inches tall.

At the moment, I'm adding the inner lid flange by hand, as a coil, then pinching it out, letting it dry a little, and then trimming and scraping it down to fit. It's quite a fiddly and time-consuming process.

I'm already thinking about how I should glaze these jars..I will probably fire them with the lids in place, so I need to use a glaze which definitely won't run. Traditional shino is one possiblility or perhaps some black slip decoration covered with the matt ochre-ash, which I might try pouring over one or two of them. The two pieces below have this matt ochre-ash glaze:

Beer cup, six inches tall

Bowl, approx 3.5 inches tall

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