This spring I’ve been making porcelain pieces coated with black slip (liquid colored clay) to carve surface decoration on. I knew that I couldn’t make enough pots to fill my big kiln before the Cape Ann Artisans spring studio tour, so I decided to spend some time with a series of sgraffito (scratching) animal designs on some mugs, platters and serving bowls. With tools, I scratch through the black slip to reveal the white porcelain.
When I was in high school and UMass, I did a fair amount of printmaking: etching, but especially loving linoleum block printing. And then how could I not be influenced by my Folly Cove designer friends Lee Natti and Mary Maletkos? Or the potato prints of my friend Sigrid Olsen? Over the years I have made pieces with patterns of animals in wax resist, stamps and sgraffito carvings.
This round of carved pots started in 2016 with the need to make a black and white dog bowl for our new pup Mavis. My dogs’ custom bowls were previously all multi colored Majolica ware, painted designs of their favorite toys on low fire terra cotta. Mavis is well, so graphically black and white, that I had to make hers differently. One of my students had just got her first dog, and she made her Fable bowl while I made Mavis’. Other students got interested in the process at both studios where I teach, and then I was in a nice work cycle of carving both stoneware and porcelain.
I think about my favorite animals and associations I have with them. Here’s a trotting horse with a laurel leaf border; a fox with both crows and grapes (and a hidden mouse), a reminder of Aesop sure, but more of my field walks with my maternal Papa, showing me the concord grapes at the edge of the cow pasture, surrounded by the Saturday muster of crows.
The more the carving marks show on my pots, the happier I am.
I threw and trimmed these pieces on the wheel, then damp, they were coated with a thin black slip I make from porcelain, Albany slip and 6600 Mason stain. I create some kind of border in the design, because I like some kind of frame.
Fun, but nerve wracking. Yikes, one slip of a tool, or picking up the pot the wrong way, and it’s gone. Fox, heron, horse, bunny, crow. I photograph them now, leather hard, as there is no knowing if they will survive the ceramic process; also because in the raw state they’re easy to photograph, even if it’s on my studio floor. Once fired, the surfaces are too reflective with the clear or celadon glazes in my photo booth lighting. If there is surface texture, the reflection fights the form or the surface. This week I’m testing some cone 10 glaze recipes for matte and satin clear glazes. A glaze oxymoron, as microscopic crystalline growth creates the matte textures, which counteracts any clearness. We’ll see. We hope.
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