five

it seems that this pitcher took twice as long as the rest have, not because of difficulty of design or surface design, but because I hurt my arms and had had several bad working days in a row and then just had difficult motivating myself to sit down and finish it.
The inspiration for this pitcher belongs to my friend Marion.  Marion lives in a wonderful old house filled with antiques.  Her husband is Irish, and many of their dishes are English and Irish.  This milk pitcher is an old hand-painted English one and I was entranced by the birds flying up and down its sides.  I borrowed it in early December, knowing it would inspire something, but not sure what.

I spent a day or two working on the birds- drawing and watercolor and imagining how I'd use them in my work.  I thew a stout cylinder and cut and shaped a slab to attach for a spout.  I've never made a squared spout of this sort before and I'm still not sure how I feel about it.  The handle was also cut out of a thick chunk of clay rather than pulling, which is how I generally make my handles.  After I attached the handle and spout, I cut them both down to fit and put the pitcher away for several days.  I used mishima inlay to decorate the pitcher and then used the underglaze watercolors to add some color to the birds, the rim, and the handle.  I also used the watercolors on a piece that had already been bisqued, and I think I prefer painting on bisque more than on greenware, but we'll wait and see how it turns out.

Later this week I plan to bisque and glaze pitchers 2-4.  #5 is still too damp to fire this week, so it will go in February's batch of pitchers.