Slip Slop Oops

The poets say into every life some rain must fall. In mine you can add to that a whole shirtload of snow, and now a bucket of porcelain slip. Everything happens to me.

What I was trying to do, before I was so rudely interrupted by the great slip tsunami of 2015, was make a platter with a slip spiral. I'd just made some porcelain slip so I had plenty (no not more!!) and I can get seduced by the lusciousness of slip, and want to do something more than delicate ladylike dots and curliques.

I start by pouring a puddle of slip into a leather hard plate.

Then I rotate and turn the plate (still on its bat) to spread the slip round. There will be extra; to prevent a layer so thick that it cracks, I then pour the excess back into the pitcher. I have to shake the pretty hard to get all the excess; that is the point where I bumped the full pitcher and tipped it all over my table and tools.

I just left the puddle there while I made the spiral, though; it seems to work best if you work fast. Using the short end of a kidney rib and starting in the center of the plate, I spin the plate (on a banding wheel, in this case, but a potter's wheel would work as well) and bounce or tap the end of the rib into the slip. It removes a bit of slip wherever it touches. If you move the tool out from the center with each bounce, you get a spiral pattern.You can cover the surface or be selective where the marks land.

So! that was fun. Now where's my sponge? I've got a mess to clean up.

Here's another one.