Post 133 Rock slab pot

In Post 131 I posted the first two of three recent rock slab pots.

Today it's time for the third and today I thought I'd give you a staged view of the decoration process. I've used underglaze colourants. These are just full compounded glaze materials which a fired and then reground. They fire flat and fuse with the clay just like any other glaze.

First we start with the raw bisqued pot, freeform fissured with a shallow depression for the planting, suspended floor.

First layer of colour is black to give depth to the surface texture. Here the underglaze is applied liberally and then wiped off the higher features.

This is followed by the surface midtone highlight grey.

Countered with some slightly darker colour.

And then finally the high highlights with lightest tone.

This is just a detail of the last stage. After this was fired to maturity it was all just a little too light and so I went back with a couple of darker tones and fired again to 1100C.

And so to the finished pictures:

The pot finished up at 560 x 390 x 45 mm.

 In this picture you can see where the drainage hole are that the base is supported off the bench surface.

 This is achieved by having 'feet' structured into the base, as you can see for this underside picture.
To finish off a couple of detail pictures:

Clay is a beautiful flexible maleable material and the possibilities for building containers is limited only by our imaginations.

Meanwhile I've just about got a group of pots dry enough for a bisque firing, 4 big ones, a few little shohins, an interesting new ROR "rock" and about 30 new glaze test tiles; always something in the pipeline.