Lidded Forms
Last project we focused on throwing decent cylinders on the wheel. Working for height, even walls, even lips, and flat bottoms. For this project, not only were we still striving for these things, but we also began to learn how to add galleries to our forms, and create lids for them.
A gallery is a ledge carved into the inner top side of a form for the lid to rest on. This helps secure the lid more so then if it just sat on the lip of the form.
I ended up with seven lidded forms total, four of which were themed. Two of my seven are not quite as strong as the rest, but I kept them to be fired because I can use them as testers when we move to glazing.
A new technique shown to us was something called throwing off the hump, where you start out with a large amount of clay on your wheel and you throw several pieces from it. I did not enjoy this technique and really only used it when making lids.
Since I’ve been striving for larger forms and even walls, I’m in such a habit to pull everything from the bottom up into my form. To the point that I rarely have to take a rib to trim the bottom of my piece anymore. So throwing from the hump and leaving so much clay behind felt so unnatural.
The downside of this is I find I end up putting holes in the bottoms of my pieces, this is mostly something I’m able to fix on the wheel, but there were a couple of pieces that I had to add a new bottom too.
As I began to experiment with the clay, I found myself drawn to fatter forms. My first two forms were more cylinder-like, and what I believe to be my two weakest pieces.
Something I was really happy about is that my thrown lids all seemed to fit really well. There were some I switched around and I threw more lids then forms, but I only ended up needing to trim one lid to fit a form.
As you can see a couple of my early forms and lids don’t fit perfectly, but as time went on and I practiced more, there was a clear improvement in how my lids fit.
I also still struggle with even lips. Some of this was from throwing, some were warped from moving and carving into the pieces while they were too wet. It’s something I strive for with every piece, but it also becomes harder for me as I try to make bigger pieces. I plan to continue to strive for more even lips, even on my bigger forms, as time goes on.
After all my forms were thrown, I separated out the ones I knew I wanted to make themed. If you’ve read my previous post on my cylinders project, you’ll know I mentioned that this project’s themes were built off some of the experimental textures I used in that project.
Particularly a mug I made for that project that I found to be very unsuccessful.
I’m still glad I made this mug, even if the texture did not come out very dynamic, because it ultimately was developed into this design:
You may notice that I also took one of the linear textures from my last project and combined it with my constellation design.
I used both a smaller form with a traditional lid (shown above) and a larger form with a less traditional lid for this design.
For this theme, as well as my other theme, I kept in mind that I wanted to put a light source on the inside of my forms. I knew I wanted to experiment with different types of light, including natural and man-made, so this was one of the main reasons I created different lids. The closed lids for LEDS and manmade light, and the open lids for candles and other natural lights. I think the open forms would be cool to experiment with incense too. I plan to experiment with these after the forms are fired and talk about how well it worked during my glazed posts.
My second theme was also built off of a mug I made during my cylinder project.
Originally I had only added holes in the cracks to change the design, but after a critique with my class it was suggested I add different levels of depth to the cracks to make them more interesting.
I also created a larger open lid form for this Theme as well.
I’m really happy with how my forms came out overall. I believe I was successful in continuing to push myself to create larger forms, as well as experimenting with different shapes. I also built off my old textures and I’m much more satisfied with how these ones came out. I believe in a way they make the original not as successful more worthwhile, as I can easily see now how I am growing in the media
