Post 2 - Early pots

 Out of the mould in Nov 2010 came the first pot. For the experiment I used a terracotta clay and here it is after drying somewhat to not quite bone dry. I made the original template out of clay, upside down and now that the first 'positive' is produced it's clear that the aesthetics are not quite right. Those sharp corners might be a problem in firing too? Not having potted I had a lot to learn.

By December the pot and one other of the same design had been fired and put into service. These pots were fired all the way to marutity in the one firing, to use them unglazed.

Here's one with a nice old root over rock ficus.

The terracotta has a nice colour and nice surface but over our wet season summer while the fig flourished so did the algae and slime which found a beautiful home on that porus terracotta surface. Not hard to age terracotta at my place! This reinforced an observation of many of the commercial pots in my collection. Some collected this verdigris and some did not. Clearly the glazed surfaces were the most grunge repellant but even with the unglazed there was still some differences. Terracotta is not the 'sustainable' answer - stoneware it has to be.
Its not a factor on the Australian eastern seaboard but this water porosity characteristic also swings in favour of stoneware in climates where freezing temperatures are encountered.