The Process of Handmade Crafts

Our love of nature has inspired our pottery work.  Each piece is lovingly hand build using slab building technique.  Slab building is basically using a raw clay body and rolling or pounding into a slab about .25 inches thick.  From there, templates can be used to cut and build each piece.  Leaves, blocks, forms and molds can be used to create impressions and organic shapes.  

Clay Anvil by PateWoodWorks is perfect for forming bowl or in this case leaf shaped trays.

 Tulip Tree shape using Tulip Tree leaf shape and texture on both sides of clay slab

 Molding clay slab with leaf impression on both sides.  Allowing to dry to leather hard.

 Leather hard leaf shape removed from wooden anvil prior to bisque firing.  Also showing glaze fired leaf tray.

We especially enjoy working with natural foliage shapes.  Ferns from our farm make a lovely reverse stencil.  We have used leaves from trees on our farm as well as some special trees in other locations.  

 Fronds are positioned on wet clay and underglaze is applied over the fronds and allowed to dry.

When underglaze is dry fronds are removed and tray is bisque fired. 

 Finished fired piece using transparent Celadon Fog.