Making a Leaf Platter
My good friend Janet has made several leaf platters over the years in the ceramics classes we’ve taken together at the Art Students League of Denver. I’ve always admired her platters, the most recent one taking its form from a Horseradish leaf. With its’ long narrow shape both the leaf and the platter were quite beautiful. I’ve watched her make them but have never attempted one of my own, until now!
While touring my mom’s garden during a recent visit, I notice the wide leaves of her rhubarb plant. I’ve never been a fan of rhubarb, but its leaves inspired me to try my hand at making a leaf platter. Mom kindly gave me a couple and the creative adventure began. Not really having a clue as to what I was doing, my first attempt was a total failure. The veins of the leaf were too thick and when I placed the leaf, vein side down on the clay so I would get a good impression, the vein indentations were so deep and the clay in that area so thin, it weakened the structure of the platter. As the dish dried it cracked to the point that when I picked it up to try and repair the damage, it crumbed in my hands!
Lesson learned and after consulting with a few folks at the League, I gathered some more leaves from mom and gave it another go. This time, I thinned the veins with razer blade and ran it through the slab roller again. Once through the roller, I cut the clay around the edge of the leaf. From there, I pinched the edges so they were a little thinner that the base of the platter and smoothed them out so there would be no rough edges. Before setting it up to dry, I added clay to any areas I thought might be too thin. This time I also set the platter right side up and on a soft surface, supporting the outer edges so that as it dried gravity wouldn’t add stress to the form and bring about cracking. I also filled the center of the platter with plastic and wrapped the whole thing so that it could dry more slowly. I still ended up with a few cracks which I was able to repair before it went into bisque firing.
Sadly, I forgot to put a note on it asking to support the sides in the firing and I still ended up with cracks. However, rather than get discouraged and or chalk it up as another loss, I decided to use it as another learning opportunity and experimented with something called bisque fix. As with many of my other pieces I’ve made recently, this too will be a prototype for future serving pieces. Like the maquettes I made for many of my sculptures, I will use these prototypes to problem solve. This is the beauty of and benefit of embracing the creative process! My goal is to work out the kinks now so that when I start the “Garden Party” series, I should (in theory) have a more successful time of making the set. These second iterations (the Garden Party Series) will be better made and more visually attractive than the prototypes.
I learned a lot about the bisque fix, how to apply it, and how to make ‘bisque dust’ to mix with it so that when the repaired piece goes through the bisque firing process a second time the added fix and the piece will fire evenly as both are of the same clay body. That seemed to work and then all that was left to do was sand down the uneven areas and glaze it. An important note here is to make sure you grind your bisque clay dust down to a fine power, doing this will make sanding it a lot easier and provide you with a smooth surface in the end.
I glazed the platter so that it coordinated with the white and the Chun Celadon (a translucent green glaze) serving pieces like the cheese tray and the baked brie dish. To highlight the veins of the leaf I applied a French green stain, then wipe the stain off so what stain was left was only in the veins, then I dipped or rather poured the Chun Celadon on over it. The glaze/stain concept was solid, as I used a similar strategy when I was making my corset sculptures, however this time it did not come out as I had envisioned.
Soooo…. Now I needed to solve this glaze disaster. My first thought was to reglaze it with an opaque white glaze but then thought better of it because the dark green stain might still show through the white. After realizing this possible outcome, I decided to go with my Lapis Blue glaze and have the Leaf Platter be a part of my blue series, which is also a prototype for the future Garden party series. The blue is darker so in theory it should mask the darker green stain and if it doesn’t, then at least the values will be closer together and perhaps it won’t be as noticeable, the green veins could potentially blend with the blue so that those areas have a blue green hue to them. Honestly glazing is a total crapshoot in my humble opinion, you never know for sure how it will turn out! That truth spoken, what I do know is I’ve learned a lot from this leaf adventure and I’m excited to take more inspiration from nature and our future farm!
