Pottery Throw Down Challenge Week 2

Here’s the first of my Great Pottery Throw Down Challenges.

Week 2 saw the contestants immerse themselves in hand building during Brick Week; with their main make to construct a 3D building that could be lit from the inside.

So to ease myself in I decided to keep it close to home by using the geometric block-like concrete structures of the mid century as my main inspiration. Trying to move away from my usual fin constructed aesthetic I thought I’d have a go at making some kind of tower block or at least the top section.

I knew I wanted to create a minimalist structure, with visible construction, unglazed but using coloured clays and slips. The main clay body is an Industrial Crank which becomes a rich sand colour when fired. Once the slabs are rolled out I start to layer colour slips on top using a paint brush and pallet knife to create different effects. Instead of creating coloured slips from white clay bodies I like to combine clays and textures- the burgundy is a black textured clay slip and the turquoise is a stained pizza oven clay slip.

The slabs are rotated and allowed to dry slowly for up to 30 hours (there’s no fast drying room here!).

Each section is completed separately before putting the whole tower together, the reason for this was to help reduce drying time, stability and to create what looked like a floor in between levels when you looked through the windows. As you know I do like a bit of internal structure!

The surface quality has different levels from very smooth to purposefully coarse so hopefully it will add another layer of detail without the tower being too over complicated and fussy.

I’ll update once its been fired..