Red Eye Pot

This is a tall slab pot with 29 molded eyes of various colors and 29 black spikes. It's 10.5 inches tall and 4 inches in diameter.

  

 

Ophanim Pot #2 WIP

Finished Ophanim Pot #2

This is my second attempt at the Ophanim Pot. The main difference between this one and the first one is that the first one was constructed as two overlapping circles and this one is constructed as a lemniscate (infinity symbol: ∞).

The Remains of Ophanim Pot 1

Unfortunately, some anomaly of heat convection caused the glazes in this kiln to run and this piece was badly damaged.  It's two intertwined slab pots with a pattern of eyes and wings resembling the mythic angelic beings known as Thrones or Ophanim.

The lid was placed on a higher shelf and was the only part that didn't run.

The glaze ran down the side of the pot and stuck to the kiln shelf, so that when I tried to remove it, one chunk of the pot remained stuck to the shelf.

Eye Cup #1

This is #1 in a series of five coffee cups with patterns of molded eyes.  The glazes ran on many of the pots in this kiln.  I don't know if this was an error on the part of the person who loaded the kiln or some anomaly of heat convection.  This cup was mildly affected.  Another one of my pieces, the Ophanim Pot, was destroyed by the phenomenon.

In 2000, I visited the Insectarium, an insect museum in Philadelphia.  I bought a mug in the gift shop that had a crudely painted cockroach at the bottom of the cup, so as you finish your coffee, it becomes apparent that it has been steeped in roach.  I've shown it to several people (and never used it as the cruel practical joke it was meant to be) and all seemed horrified.  This eye cup has an eye at the bottom, hopefully a few orders of magnitude less horrifying than a ceramic lump painted brown.

This is the cockroach mug:

Tiny Eye Cups, Part 1

These are the smallest version of the eye pot.  They were inspired by some tiny Santa Claus mugs that someone left at the pottery studio.  Only one of them actually has eyes on it.

Eye Cup #5

This is number five in a series of five coffee cups with a pattern of eyes.  It has 6 molded eyes and a mold of a fang-filled mouth which I recently made.  The handle is made from a slab of clay, as is the whole pot.  It's glazed with a reddish glaze called Plum.

Eye Cup #3

This number 3 in a series of five coffee cups with patterns of molded eyes, and among the first to be glazed.  It has five eyes traced with a pattern of carved curves.  The eyes are colored with cobalt oxide (or cobalt carbonate, I'm not sure which).  It could theoretically be used as a coffee cup, although it's a little heavy.

Primitive Owl Pot

The illustration from Treasury of Fantastic and Mythological Creatures by Richard Huber.  It is identified as an owl mask made of cane and bark cloth.

Bust of Ogrémoch

This is an interpretation of Ogrémoch, the Prince of Evil Earth Creatures from the AD&D Fiend Folio, one of my favorite sources for ideas. The Fiend Folio is a compilation of monster submissions to a British gaming magazine White Dwarf, credited to Lewis Pulcifer.

It originally had a lower body, but it collapsed.

I have always had an interest/obsession with diacritical marks.  This is the first time I've admitted that publicly.  I'm intrigued by the acute accent on the e in Ogrémach.  Is it like an umlaut in the name of a heavy metal band (e.g.  Deathtöngue) intended to create an aura of badassery?  I think it's more likely a reminder to pronounce the e and not to treat it as a silent letter as in the word ogre.

There is an opening on the back so that a (very small) candle could be placed inside.  I'm intending to use it as a jack-o-lantern at Halloween.

The door to the opening looks like a nipple, doesn't it?

Ogrémoch as illustrated in the Fiend Folio:

Rocky Horror Lips Mouth Mold #1

As a part of my project to create mouth molds for use as decoration on pots, I've been trying to reproduce the image of Patricia Quinn's iconic lips from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  In the image I was using as a source, the teeth are biting the upper lip and I'm finding that hard to reproduce in the mold.  Also, the reddish glaze ("Plum") came out a little too opaque and obscured the details of the lips, and the glaze ran into the off-white glaze ("Queens") of the teeth.

Eye Post

Not only can spare eyes be arranged in a circle, they can also be affixed to sign posts.

September Bisque Firing

This week I fired my accumulated work from July and August.  I'm looking forward to a few solid weeks of glazing.

Larger Eye Clusters

I'm starting to get tired of making eye pots, but I have a lot of them on my shelf waiting to be fired.  I'm hoping to fire next week, but there are hierarchies of bureaucrats (or rather one person who seems like hierarchies of bureaucrats) complicating the process of reserving a kiln.

These are the leftover eyes from some of the new eye pots.