Thursday, March 5, 2009

the day that was, THURSDAY




(pots by Gary Rith)
So my advanced class at Cornell today was gonna be about glazing and not big pots, but simply bigger pots. I rarely make big pots! I make cute little things. I also wanted to show the class using a stick to push out a form into a spherical bottle, plus I ended up doing that parlor trick of potters, where you take a spherical bottle then BLOW into it like a balloon. These pics are of a warmup bottle I made at home before going up to the uni. Didn't blow this one.
I was in downtown Ithaca earlier and saw these pretty old pots in an antique store window. Now, a potter like me might sniff at 'art pottery' of a hundred years ago. These types of pieces would be designed by some guy in an office, then made into molds and factory produced. That is the opposite of the studio potter, hanging around and making stuff from the clay blob to the original pot to the glazing and firing.
BUT, you have to look at items like this, factory made 100 years ago, and still find them terribly attractive and instructive.

6 comments:

cookingwithgas said...

that is a sweet bottle, very nice!

Farmer*swife a/k/a Glass_Half_Full said...

That's a complicated bottle there. All big and round with a teeny bottle neck and opening....

Gordo said...

I love that bottle, Gary. Why don't you just pack up everything you make and send it to me. I'm good for the bill.

Lynda said...

Love the bigger pot, but that cat cookie jar is exquisite.

Anonymous said...

100-year-old pottery is interesting (and heck, it's lasted 100 years!) but what really caught my attention when I enlarged the picture? I see a CROCODILE!!!

Can you tell that I'm the mom of a reptile lovin' kid?

Glennis said...

What are those, Van Briggle? Or Rookwood?

I love that stuff.