Here is another vessel I made in my studio clay class at a local art center. It’s the first thing I worked on back in September.

Originally I wanted to make a coffee mug. It came out a little large, but if you were an enthusiastic hot beverage drinker, the more the better, right? It also had a loopy handle that I liked.

Well, in the bisque firing the handle fell off so it became a vase or something like that. All good, it didn’t really matter to me.

To create the vessel I rolled out a slab and poked it with some wooden dowels I had. Then I made it into a cylinder and added a bottom (and the ill-fated handle).

After the first firing, I dip glazed it to make three color areas. I waxed its bottom so that glaze would not adhere in that area. Then I used a gloss black and an opal glaze. I held the mug at an angle and dipped it, bottom first, into the first glaze, swished it, and then poured it out of the interior, letting it set up for a minute.

Then I rotated the vessel and, this time holding it with tongs, repeated the first step with the second glaze, overwashing an area of black glaze while covering all of the rest of the vessel.

Then the item went back through the kiln and emerged looking like this. I am showing you the three colors that emerged – black, opal, and a beautiful blue that resulted from the interaction of the first two colors. The first picture shows where the seam was made and where the handle was to go.

Here is the inside. You can really see the interaction of the colors here. You can also see that I poked out some indentations on the interior, as it just seemed to me that it might be something interesting.