Some months after Bub #2 arrived, my friend Lyn invited me to a pinch-pot class. It was my first experience with clay and I loved the visceral nature of moulding something soft and damp. I was desperate for a creative outlet (being attached to an infant day-and-night will do that to you) so when I got home, I bought some basic tools, a small bag of porcelain and a book called New Ceramic Surface Design.
If you know ceramics, then you know that porcelain should not be a starting point for beginners. But ignorance is bliss and I merrily played with this clay while Bub had her day naps. I was using slab and pinch methods to build things, then using my food-grade clay colours to do techniques like mishima and sponging-through-stencils that I’d cut out of contact paper with a stencil knife. I took my items to the kiln at Milton, where some of them cracked during firing because I’d rolled them too thin. In particular, anything I made that tried to mimic thin cardboard always broke. Sometimes the inside of a vessel had ‘crawling’, which is where fine clay dust has settled and bubbled during firing (usually after sanding). You can see this in some of the photos below.
Four years later, I’m still happy with that short stint of creativity. I didn’t keep up the hobby, mainly because clay is very time-specific. There is a magic window between wet and dry, when the clay is malleable yet strong – and on many occasions, this just didn’t work with Bub waking up. Plus it’s messy, so you need a dedicated space that you’re happy to get clay-slop and paint on. I did return to it once (an external space) to make a large slab bowl. I gave that to my parents and will add the photo below when I get round to it. Here are some of the other items….
