Mushroom Cheese Boards

After reading about Kitty Shepherd's latest project, a mushroom pot, and remembering the multitude of mushrooms I photographed in Florida, I decided to make a couple of mushroom cheese boards. These pieces are made from the very last of the white stoneware clay. I decided to make more cheese boards with mushroom sketches. This first is Amanita muscari a colorful and psychoactive mushroom. Often in nature the color red denotes toxicity or a poison.

This cheese board illustrates morel mushrooms, highly favored and prized by cooks and gourmet connoisseurs. I've only seen one morel in the wild when I lived near Mount Lassen in California. Since there was only one, I left it there to reproduce. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.

Three Platters and a Plate

All three platters from the latest firing turned out great.I brushed two coats of satin clear glaze over each of these platter but in opposite directions and I think that works well to make the brush strokes less visible. Behind the finches is a thin coat of white slip reminiscent of cirrus clouds..

The Canada geese platter is a little darker than I wanted and the eyes are less defined but still the features are recognizable.

The rabbit in the tall grass looks better in person than he does in the photo. It's always a real trick to get a clear glaze the right thinness to cover the platter but not fire milky. This time it all came together. Making platters and plates a little thicker and firing them on a bed of silica sand in the bisque and glaze firing really helps prevent them from warping.

Here's a square dinner plate I glazed in a matt lavender. There are few speckles of blue which may not be visible in this photo. A plain plate perfect for staging some of my recipes upon. Stay tuned for the extra large bowl. Oh and I fired one button. Thanks for reading and for all  your comments.

Didn't Take A Photo

I'm really slipping up. I unloaded the bisque, glazed till the wee hours this evening and didn't take a photo. Mrs. Peanut is in the glaze load and I've really become quite fond of her. Hope she makes it.

Even if she doesn't, it's been quite fun walking around the house this week exclaiming, "Mrs. Peanut!" out of the blue. People usually don't know this, but sometimes I'm quite silly. I go off on these crazy tangents. More later.