Memory vessels- turning, painting and carving clay

 After throwing, my pots had some extra weight on the base, which interrupted their shapes and which would cause problems when hanging the pots, so it needed to be removed by the process of 'turning'. This is done when the clay is 'leather hard', a day or so after they were thrown. Turning is done by attaching the pot to a pottery wheel and carving parts off while it is spinning, in the same way that you would carve wood by wood-turning. 

The difficulty comes in properly centering your pot on the wheel so that it is turned evenly, however, as I was working I discovered a way to find the center of the pot by dragging a tool over the base forming a spiral that reached the outside of the pot. The spiral indicates the centre of the wheel so if it is not central on the pot, it will indicate which direction the pot would need to be nudged.

Once turned, the bases of the pots curve inward, creating a more pleasing shape and reducing the overall weight of the pot.

 

 

After turning, I painted the pots with a black slip and then used a pointed tool to carve in the snippets of the memories that would be contained in the pots. In some cases, I carved the words on before painting on the slip, which caused some of them to disappear, and I needed to re-carve the words, which was difficult to do. For the later batches of pots, I ensured that I painted the slip on first before carving. 

At this point, the vessels are then ready to be bisque fired in the kiln before firing a second time.