Finding MY way with clay

Cleaning the shelves this Saturday morning, I found myself looking nostalgically at some ceramics that I made many years ago. Got out a wet rag and wiped the dust from the surfaces. Oh those were good times when I had my apron on and dig my hands into the wet clay, moulding, kneading it and turning them into whatever forms I desired. Sometimes I used my fingers pinching the clay to form bowls. At other times I would use the pottery wheel to produce cylinders, jars and the like. You see, I was teaching at this Teachers' Training Institute. Thus I need to do a lot of demonstrations to my students. They were very good students indeed, producing towards the end of the course more than expected!

Firing the hardened clay for the first part and then glazing the ports and firing them again was exciting, we anticipating the results. Sometimes they didn't turn out, got broken in the process. Nevertheless, the experience was a lesson in itself.

Unfortunately I didn't keep many of my pots, many given away to friends when I was moving house. Below are some of my 'precious masterpieces' to remind me that once I was a potter.

This is a RAKU pot. Raku is a special technique of firing, developed and used by Japanese potters for making tea ceemony wares. While the pot is still hot and the glaze (colour decorations on surface) is melting, it is removed from the kiln using tongs and buried in saw dust in garbage cans and left to smoke. Later it is removed and washed in cold water. This cylinder is 17 cm in height.

Another one of my Raku pot, height 18 cm.

This cylinder is fired in the normal way, height 17 cm. I love the colours of the iron oxide!

Yet another pot with a cover, also the glaze is iron oxide.

For this one I used cobalt oxide in the glaze, thus the blue colour.