Vessel

   To make these pieces I had to learn to throw on the wheel, which was a challenge all in itself.  Originally, I wanted to make longer, skinnier cups, but every time I got the piece to the height and the width I wanted, inevitably something would happen, so I gave up on the specificity of that design for shorter, wider cups.  I almost think that that worked out better, in the long run. Another challenge was the forshortening of the faces.  I don't know if you would call it foreshortening in this term, but I was trying to take the flat fronts of the cups and give them dog/canine faces.  So, I slipped-scored clay noses to the front to try to make it look like the noses were coming out, but I don't know how well I accomplished that.
   All in all, I think it was really successful and I am so happy!  Some of the old glazed I used disn't work out so well … I sort of expected that to happen, though.  So, I'm going over it with clear glaze. But it looks much better than I thought it would, and I'm so happy to see everything that I worked on as a viable product.  I honestly thought they were going to explode in the kiln or somehow break before I ever got to see them finished.
     I hope that they're going to be functional.  I hope I can fix up the glaze enough to be able to drink out of them.  That would be the coolest thing ever.
     All characters are owned by Tom Siddell.