This orange-red glaze, with its 14% iron oxide, seems to love slip-sliding down the uneven slopes of this distorted bowl. This close-up shows the wide range of colours produced as this glaze runs through and over the first, deep black glaze. I love how the red turns to  greenish tan at all points where the red pulls away from the black, even around all the black pools where the black has somehow forced its way through to the surface.

The white was simply poured down the length of the bowl, between the squirts of orange-red, as I held it tilted downwards in my hand.  This glaze also breaks up nicely over the black.

Stoneware, thrown. The bowl is distorted by gently, but forcefully squeezing the sides inwards, once the piece has been trimmed, but is still damp.

Fired in oxidation to Cone 6.

Dimensions: di: 24/23 cm; ht: 5.5 cm/7 cm

Another open, v-shaped bowl, with  the orange-red trails speckling nicely over the iron-rich base glaze. Small,  14 cm diameter. I’ll see how this glaze flows over a rounded-shaped vase next, and then, hopefully, over a large, open dish. The cone 6 firing was a little hotter this time. I’ll have to see whether this result becomes regularly repeatable…

I’ve been making distorted bowls for some years now; what varies is the size, the degree of distortion, and of course the glazes I use. I started making them after my first ikebana teacher, at her home in the outskirts of Brussels, showed me a cupboard where she kept her favourite vases. These Japanese vases she took out were all lovely, but I was particularly struck by a wide bowl with its sides seemingly distorted inwards and upwards, creating a lovely wave-like effect.

What I aim for is a bowl you’d want to hold lightly in the hand, twisting it round and to catch sight inside of the coloured trails of glaze drawing your eye to the wave-like rim.

Making them myself revealed a number of challlenges. Pushing the walls of a bowl inwards after it has been trimmed is tricky: the rims at the two narrower ends are inclined to crack, as is the part near the angle at the foot, if it is trimmed thin. Under the pressure of the hands, the sides of the base may also lift, so the bowl no longer stands flat on its trimmed foot. And the squirts of glaze don’t always create the pleasing line I want.

Those problems I have learned to cope with. But in the case here of the two larger bowls, which I distorted, they show little sign of it after firing. I can only think that my recent efforts at making lighter pieces, with thinner, more carefully worked walls, has meant that the walls give in more easily to clay memory (the tendency of clay to return to its earlier, unfired, shape), and to gravity, during firing.

Dimensions:

dia: 21/22 cm, ht: 5.5 cm;
dia; 18.5/19.5 cm, ht 5 cm;
dia: 11 cm, ht: 5.5 cm
dia: 9.5 cm, ht 4 cm

Porcelaneous stoneware, fired to cone 6, in oxidation.

In creating these two small bowls, my intention was to have the viewer want to not only look at them, but to reach out, hold them, and ponder. Their weight needs to be feel balanced and just right, the texture needs to be glossy and smooth; the trails of colour, with their balance between careful application and chance disposition, should invite the viewer to come up with a pleasing interpretation.

To enhance the smoothness and brightness of the clay surface, I dip the piece in a Frost slip (cone 6 porcelain), which has much finer clay particles than the stoneware. The glazes I choose are ones that break attractively, providing a speckled effect as they run down to the centre over the iron-rich base glaze.

The original stimulus for working in this style came from a Svend Bayer exhibition at the Greenwich Pottery, New York. Though he is particularly well know for large, wood-fired pots, I especially liked the bowls he decorated with trails of glaze of different intensities.

Currents 1: dia: 16.5 cm; width: 4.5 cm. Thrown: stoneware, fired to Cone 6, oxidation