A Few New Forms

Been feeling a little guilty since I hadn't posted in a while, and also resentful about not having enough time to work with clay more often. My gardens take way too much of my time. If I don't water it here, it dies. I can't wait till cooler weather. I actually have been working on a few things, in between taking care of my gardens, that is. Here are a couple of tumblers, what I call thumb print tumblers. Green they are 6.5 inches tall and 3.25 inches wide. I am hoping they will shrink a bit. I made them smooth at first, but for comforts sake I like a tumbler which doesn't feel like it will slip out of my hand. So I had the idea to press in the thumb prints where they could be grasped easily. I'm thinking of a few more ideas of how to texture tumblers, to make holding them comfortable. Perhaps faceting the sides, maybe some square tumblers, and a few heavily textured tumblers. I'll be working on those next.


When I go to art fairs I have my business cards displayed on my table and I thought - why not a ceramic business card holder? So here is my first attempt at a tabletop business card holder. I thought of making the lip on the front come down a bit and I could press letters on the front saying "Please Take One" - might be too cutesy, but maybe not, I'll see. I've always wanted to make a ceramic form with some letters on it and have never done it, so here's my chance. I am not quite happy with this particular form, but I'm going to try and modify it some. I have a few more drawings to work from.


Folks are always asking me for spoon rests, so I thought I would make a few more leaf form spoon rests. The spoon rests range in size from about 3 to 5 inches. I've been working with Nara 5 porcelain the last couple of weeks. It is so buttery and not as fragile in the green state as I would have expected. My cat actually jumped on these green spoon rests and they didn't break - thank goodness.

Last are a couple of side dishes - a shell and a star. Each one is about 7 inches diameter overall and 1.5 inches deep. I was thinking since my last name is Starr, I might as well have a bowl in the shape of a star. I have several contemporary glaze ideas for these and wanted to try the glazing out on some smaller forms.

I've been trying to draw up some signatures to have a stamp made up so I can sign the bottom of my ceramics. At first I was just going to have my signature, then I got to thinking of a trademark or stamp that might be little smaller in size, especially for smaller forms. I thought I might incorporate the shape of a star into my signature or mark with just my initials. Once I can pick one from all the different drawings I have made I will send it off to be made up.