Did you know I'm a fan of the "Great Pottery Throw Down"? No? (I only mentioned it in this post once, so I'm not surprised.)
Did you know that I always wanted to try pottery throwing, but somehow it never happened? No?
But did you know there was a time when I did a bit of slip casting? Also no? Well, get ready to be surprised.
The story starts with "Kontakt" and "Kontakt" starts with the German-American Friendship Week.
There used to be a US Army base in my town. Once a year they celebrated the Friendship Week in summer which was basically like a giant open house, so people could get to know the base. On the last day there was a big fireworks display.
It was a mix of a small fair with a large beer tent where you got American style food (including tacos and burritos 😉) or could ride a mechanical bull, tours through the buildings on base, but also presentations.
One of those was a make-up demonstration on a stage. My two friends decided that I was the one to go up there. I remember having a veritable Mount Vesuvius on my nose at the time and not feeling up to it, but they insisted (we were all teenagers, you can probably imagine the scene).
While the poor make-up lady did her best to cover my nose and worked with brown mascara and soft rose tones because of my age (why do I still know that and also that I wore a warm jacket I called "The Monk" because of its hood and a loooong hand-knitted scarf despite it being summer?), my friends were addressed by someone from Kontakt. In the end, one of my friends said she'd like to go to a meeting and I went along and we became members (to improve our English, but let me put it that way, we definitely improved our knowledge of cursing in English).
We did all kinds of things, from playing minigolf to outings in the area, Christmas market, barbecues, movies, bake sales, a memorable Halloween that I wish I had pictures of, and more.
And we went to a slip casting course at the rec center which was my favorite.
What is slip casting? In (very) short, you have slip or a clay slurry which is poured into a porous plaster mold. After a layer of clay has formed as the mold absorbs the water, the rest of the slip gets poured out again, and when the clay has firmed up enough, the parts of the mold are removed.
Then of course comes glazing and firing.
I loved it. They had so many molds. Very popular among the Americans were the huge beer steins, but of course we started small. In fact, we never got to the really big pieces which I always regretted although I did not want a stein.
We started with little figurines most of which I gave away and some of which came back to me eventually, such as these little ladies that had been standing in my mother's shelf.
The blonde one must have had a tumble because some glaze came off her hair and she lost half an arm. It really doesn't make sense to keep her around, but for now she still reminds me of the time she stood on my mother's shelf.
The pup and the snail were my very first pieces if I remember right because they were small and the easiest ones. They went to my grandmother.
One club member trained as a porcelain painter back then which you could tell easily as all her pieces looked so much better than those of us others. The snail was my first one and I struggled with painting on the eyes, so after scraping them off more than once, I asked her for help and she gave it that squinty look.
Then there are the Buddhas.
I actually made three of them. One of them went to a friend of the family. I still remember her laughing and saying "At least one man who's smiling at me." I know she kept him on her book shelf for at least a few years.
These two are my own.
The standing one wasn't supposed to be, but as you can see he has a problem.
The workshop had big shelves for storing all the pieces during their different stages because of course people couldn't be there every day to do the painting, glazing or even to pick up their work.
One night someone broke into the workshop. They broke the door open so violently that it crashed into one of the shelves. I don't think they ever found out who it was or why they did it. There was nothing of monetary value there unless someone knew of a black market for clay and used molds. It was probably just vandalism.
Some of the pieces like several huge steins were broken completely, sometimes part of them survived, for example one stein lid. We were quite lucky because we didn't have anything big that a lot of work had already gone into, but my Buddha was one of the victims. The workshop manager told me to glue it, probably because she felt sorry for me. The hand was lost, though.
I wish I could also show you the stein lid. It looked like a wizard and I had admired it before, but the mold was in high demand and there was no way for me to just cast the wizard. The lady wanted to make a new stein and asked me if I would like to have the lid. Just the staff had broken off, so of course I accepted.
That was when our club president went back to the US, though, and the club changed a lot with the new one. Unfortunately, we never made it back to the workshop, so the wizard lived in one of my cabinets unfired. To be honest, I don't know where he is now, maybe he broke when we moved, maybe he's hidden away in a safe spot. If I find him, I'll add a picture.
Then there's the cup. I never used it to drink out of because I didn't trust my glaze, but I had pens in it.
It's the one piece that shows my "signature" best. We got assigned numbers to distinguish who made what and I added my trademark cat and my name.
So that was my "career" as a potter.
It being so short is the only excuse I have for having been lousy at it. No matter how hard I tried or how few or many layers of glaze I put on, there were spots where I just failed miserably to get them even.
My tired little lady doesn't have a real neck because glaze has collected under her chin, my snail has the same problem on her house.
I still see myself sitting at the future porcelain painter's house trying to get an even blue on the Buddhas. I was hopelessly in love with the royal blue and hopelessly bad at using it.
I'm sure I could have learned, but it was not to be although you can tell I had already improved a little from one Buddha to the next.
The best pieces colorwise were the cup - I actually wanted the sky to be like that although it surely could have been done better -, the third Buddha (not blue) and (if I remember that right) a pup and a little lady for my other grandmother which didn't make it back to me, so you'll just have to take my word for that! 😉
