Friday, November 7, 2008

pottery is always experimental


matryoshka experiment
Originally uploaded by Bridgman Pottery
Good morning! We're headed out of town this morning for a mini-vacation after a busy, crazy, joyful, exhausting week. A long weekend in the mountains of east Tennessee- fall color should be at its peak, temps in the 60s- all about 4 hours from home.

I'm leaving you with these little matryoshkas that I experimented with. I was so disappointed when I pulled them out of the kiln. The yellow and blue glazes were so gloppy- the yellow because I didn't mix enough, and the blue because I used a new dry formula and it was simply too thick- that I lost the faces. I love the red and white one, and the green one is acceptable, but I'll be making another small test batch of these ladies. I think I've figured out a fix, though. I love the color pooling in the stamped design in the bellies, so those will stay. I'm planning to leave the rest white with colored accents for the faces and dots, just like the red one. I was so inspired by Maya (of Mayamade.blogspot.com- my internet connection is doing bizarre things this morning, so I'm having a hard time posting, much less linking, so my apologies if you have to google to find Maya), who did these wonderful matryoshka stencils on linen. I couldn't get her little seasonally-decorated ladies out of my head until I sat down to make my own version. I hope to have a batch of these to go on packages and Christmas trees soon.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I'll see you back next week.

1 comment:

April said...

I love them all, but the white/red one is my favorite. I think they turned out nicely!