Clay Designs

Decorations I am particularly pleased with from work . :D

The plain clay pics show the designs in their "raw" state, just after I've engraved them into the damp clay. The others are finished pieces, with the glaze having been hand-painted on by one of our very talented glazing ladies (in the above cases, mostly Glynis, and the bee-eater was done by Irene) before firing. My job is to provide the underlying linework and texturing; the lines I cut actually form a barrier so that the glaze won't overflow the design when it melts in the kiln. (We hope;)) Generally speaking the glazing is much more time-consuming than my design work, with the one constant exception being scales, such as those seen on the dragon figures above. Picture 1, a large vessel about three feet tall, literally took me all day to decorate largely because of the blasted scales. Picture 4 shows you the scales in a raw design - each scale is pressed into the damp clay, one by one. But they really can look nice when they're finished so I just can't help myself. :D