Pottery - making mugs for my wedding

This was one from a few weeks ago but it took a while before I could pick out a glaze for it and just got it back from the kiln. All of the brown clay mugs from 3 days ago survived and now I just need to get them all prepped to glaze! Next Saturday is the wedding so I have realistically about a week to finish. It’s going to cut it close but look back over the last few weeks and even if they don’t turn out well I’m pretty happy with the pieces I do have and the progress I’ve made.

I really liked the Cthulhu jar I made earlier and wanted to make a new one that was a bit bigger. This one has runes on the front which spell “Coffee” and I plan to use it to store my espresso beans.

P.S. Day9 dreams of being a giant curious tentacle monster kaiju

Was able to make up for the mugs that got destroyed in the kiln last week. As an apology for making a mistake in the kiln firing times the owner of the studio gave me 50lbs of brown clay which was unexpected and super nice! I couldn’t have made so many in a week before and the experience from the past few weeks working on mugs helped out quite a bit in making this possible. I really like the wolf one which is for a friend who plays a werewolf/shapeshifter in DnD.

Good and bad news. The bad news is that the place I was firing my pots at accidentally let it run too long which destroyed most of the mugs. This means I’ve had to rush remaking them this last week to make it in time and haven’t had time to post regularly. This means that I need to extend my project by a bit so that I have enough for the wedding. The good news is that the ones that survived had some interesting colors and the experience of making mugs over the last few weeks made it much easier accomplish remaking so many. Below are some cool glazes that worked/survived

Starting off the last week with a second go at applying my sketches to clay. This mug is for a D&D fan so she has something to drink with during her weekly sessions. I think a red would be a good glaze choice for this one but the studio I’m using for firing doesn’t have a red that will show texture well. Might do a first layer of red in the cracks and then a clear glaze over it (the white in the cat mug is a clear glaze over this clay body). If i wanted something other than white for the background I could also try mixing glazes by putting another color over the red but I’m not sure how it would turn out

I have some experience sketching and wanted to try and apply it to clay carving. This is for a friend who is a fan of eevee

this is a new handle I’ve been thinking of for a small espresso cup

Posting the evolution of the cat mug through each iteration:

This is a rice bowel for a friend who studies viruses and bacteria. The caption is “Why B. cereus”. B. cereus is a bacteria that likes to infect refried rice. The perfect pun for someone to think about whenever they reheat their take out.

Was watching the Loki series and got inspired to make some Viking style mugs. Lettering on the front are viking runes which spell out Loki on the first one. I used a bark texture to try and make it look like there’s a band of metal wrapped around a wooden tankard. The second mug has a bunch of much smaller runes and Celtic symbols. I need to figure out a good way to make these runes pop out when I glaze it.

I really liked the cat on the last mug so I wanted to make a cat themed one especially since so many of my friends are cat lovers. Here’s my take on it:

I’m going to try throwing it again later but so that the mug has cat ears too. To make that happen I think I’ll need to pull the mug up even taller and then carve out the ears by removing clay from the top. If I carve this one it will be way too short.

I think I finally have a mug that might work. Handle didn’t crack, and it’s 4 inches tall even after making it into a cauldron shape. This is for a friend that’s very into harry potter. Her cat’s name is hedwig after the harry potter owl. She’s right handed so when holding it everyone else will see “Muggle” and a cat while she sees “Wizard” and an owl. I’m thinking if it survives the kiln to pick the glazes so that the owl/cat is white and the body black to keep it looking more like a cauldron. I’ve only glazed once before so maybe someone at the studio can give me advice.

Front:

Back:

P.S. with this I have made 12 pieces for week one - 4 ended up cracking but 5 of them are 4" or taller. I made an extra ~10 off screen during this week that fell apart on the wheel and never made it to the drying stage so I’m hovering at a good ~25% success rate for making a mug and attaching a handle. Aesthetically the only mug I like so far is this one and will probably break up and re-use the clay from the rest. I’ll also keep the flower pot and tea cups that dried too fast for me to put a handle on.

Having some problems making the bottom of my mug too thin and cut another hole in the bottom on accident. But this time instead of smashing it (very satisfying to physically punch your failures) I tried salvaging it into a flower pot.

Link to images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nD9rMFUl4PVWnaGbFVw2lFJlGzjtlQYe?usp=sharing

First few mugs 1 & 2 were pretty small (basically teacups <3.5 inches). Trimmed a bit too much and punched a hole through the bottom of #3. Handle on 4 cracked (looked it up and it was probably too dry). Handle on 5 was massive but was able to get 4.5 inches in height! 6 & 7 are uneven and lumpy but I think there’s something there with the bark-like texture. Happy with the handle on 8 but it’s a little small. 9 & 10 are the others with cracked handles. Take away from this week is that I still need to work on consistently getting a good height and to watch the drying times of the mug/handle so they attach well.

Even though it was smaller than the goal and doesn’t have a handle I really like the shape of how this one turned out: