My objective in making this piece was to re-create a jewelry box I had as a young girl, to hold a flower barrette (my object of importance). It wasn't an exact replica, some details and colors were changed to get my message across. I used very basic colors: red (crimson stain), yellow (straw stain), blue (vargas purple), black (Katrina's Excellent Black), and white (white majolica). Unfortunately, a lot of my test tiles produced results I wasn't entirely pleased with, so I have no test tiles for the vargas purple.
Here are my test tiles for Katrina's Excellent Black, straw stain, sudee blue, and crimson stain.
For the flower detailing, I used white and blue majolica, yellow stain, pink stain, and black stain.
Here are my test tiles for blue majolica and sudee blue (not used in final piece).
A detail I would like to bring attention to is the woodgrain texture. It's probably my favorite part about the piece, but I'm a bit biased, as I try to include this texture in a lot of my work simply because I enjoy creating it, I've worked a lot at making my marks look convincing.
This look was achieved by carving into the clay at its leather-hard stage, then after bisque-firing, coating the surface in black stain; once the stain dried, a wet sponge was applied in light strokes until most of the stain had been removed from the smooth surface and remained only in the recesses in the clay, then a thick layer of straw stain was applied on top.
As for building this piece, it was rather simple (I wish I took more pictures of the in-progress stages! This would be very helpful for future documentation). Use some MC109 clay body (available for cut-throat rate at Co-Op, available for the cheap from the LSU Ceramics Dept in the form of reclaim [I highly recommend this]).
1. The slab roller is your best friend for this piece. Get to know her well. Watch a few movies with her. Share some late night conversation. Have dinner.
2. FOR THE BODY: Roll out 6 slabs, about a quarter-inch thick. Let them achieve leather-hardness before constructing.
-one 10' x 20'
-two 5' x 10'
-two 5' x 20'
-one 5' x 4'
3. Obviously the largest one is your back panel, the small ones are your base/shelf, the teeny baby is your mini-top-shelf, and the long-n-skinnies are your side panels. Slip and score the crap out of them (There is no such thing as too much slipping/scoring, which I learned the hard way when my middle shelf slumped during glaze firing). Put them together the way you would a box; attach the side panels, then the base panel, then the middle shelf and baby shelf (the baby shelf can go anywhere your heart desires. I put mine in the top left corner of the interior). Then get to carvin' that woodgrain!
Look at that itty bitty shelf. How sweet.
4. I had made a box for the shelf and a drawer for the bottom slot, but
a. neither of them fit after that shelf slumped
b. silly me completely blanked on photographing them BECAUSE they didn't fit
5. So although I don't have pictures, I'll still tell you how to put those bad boys together, just because I like you guys, and it's pretty easy.
1) Slabs! Leather hard!
-three 5' x 9' (two bases and a lid for the box)
-four 5' x 3' (sides)
-four 3' x 9' (fronts/backs)
2) Just like with the body of the armoire, slip and score the crap out of these. Put them together like so: lie the base flat on the table, attach both side panels standing up, let them set, attach both front/back panels standing up, and let THEM set.
3) once you have two of these made, the only slab remaining is the lid for the shelf-box. Make it pretty. I added a decorative handle to the top of mine for easier removal.
4) carve in your texture!
6. So once you have all this done, it's time for the final building step. The flowers! It may be easier to use a stencil for petals than to do what I did, but I hand-cut each petal from a slab and pieced them together as so
-first layer of 2"-long petals, 5 attached at the center
-add on top a second layer of 1"-long petals, attached the same way
-and finally, a third layer of 1/2"-long petals
7. Now for bisque firing! Cone 04, don't forget. We loaded ours as a class in the Blaauw gas kiln.
8. -jeopardy theme song-
9.-repeat for a very long time-
10. Okay! They're fired! Time to glaze!
11. As I said before, I used pretty basic colors for a child-like color scheme. My first step was to coat all the woodgrain surfaces in black stain. Then I wiped away the majority of it until only stain remained in the indentions of the woodgrain texture. Then I coated those surfaces with a gratuitous layer of straw stain. It was only one layer, but it was very thick. That stuff... it's thick.
12. I painted the interior of the side panels and the top of the shelves with crimson stain, about 3 layers.
13. The top surface of the base was treated with 3 layers of vargas purple.
14. The back panel was treated with 3 layers of white majolica (I made this surface completely white to represent the turning point in my life when I took hold of my femininity and changed the way I viewed myself, a clean slate, if you will).
15. The boxes, you can have fun with the interior, whatever you think looks best. I treated my shelf box with white majolica on the inside, and my drawer with white majolica (3 layers) and vargas blue (1 layer) on the inside.
16. Flowers! Again, you can have fun with them. I used a lot of white/blue majolica, some yellow stain/pink stain for accenting. My favorite flower (which sadly chipped) was painted with 2 layers of white majolica, 2 layers of pink stain, and accented with black stain. It looked kind of real... Almost...
17. GLAZE FIRE! Cone 04! Make sure you fire your flowers seperately from everything else, so that glaze doesn't run and stick to your piece before you've even decided where you wanna put your flowers! Also, a mistake I DID make, don't fire the lid to your box ON your box... its glazes will run and it will become one with your box.
18. I recommend finding a new gameshow song, you'll be sick of the Jeopardy one by now
19. DONE! All that's left to do now is use some 2-part epoxy (I bought some of the clear stuff at Wal-Mart for like 4 bucks, made sure it was both ceramic and glass safe, worked like a charm) to attach your flowers onto your piece. Wherever you think looks best. I placed mine at different points around the piece to draw the viewer's eye in circles, seeing the piece as a whole involuntarily.
20. Photograph that bad boy.
Lookin' good.
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