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A day of carving in clay 2 July 2020

My favorite part of working with pottery is surface design! It’s a good thing I love it, because it also takes the most time. Each piece takes at least an hour to carve.

porcelain mug, ready to carve
Using a design from my sketchbook…penciled onto the pot and ready to carve

All of today’s designs were hand carved, using a technique, called sgraffito.

mug with sgraffito lines carved
Carving the design

Since we are in the middle of the summer season, I have been inspired by one of my favorite summer flowers: the sunflower!

yellow sunflower sgraffito mug
it’s sunflower season in Kentucky!

I have started carving a new porcelain clay, and it feels a little bit different from other clays. I found myself carving it a little bit different too. Because porcelain needs a little bet of extra care, I dry these REALLY slow. They might be ready to fire in a week or two. Stay tuned to see how they turn out!

shelf with sgraffito pottery
Today’s work

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