S E D E R - P L A T E

this is a story. and it starts with someone named mike. mike is a friend who bought this casserole dish from me for his girlfriend, emily. emily likes to cook, you see. (no, that is not emily in the photo.) emily decided that she liked it. (phew!) and emily asked if I would make a special commission for her good friend, sarah, who was getting married. what did I say? OF COURSE. emily told me sarah's favorite holiday is passover, so emily asked for a seder plate. for sarah. for a wedding gift. in time for passover.

the lovely and trusting emily told me I could do whatever I wanted. so I did.

since the timing was tight, this was kind of a figure it out as you go sort of deal. (not that I really do anything but...) anyway, I decided early on that I would prefer to do separate bowls and a platter set rather than one plate with indentations in it. knowing that throwing a platter large enough to hold 6 bowls on the wheel would be somewhat problematic, I decided to hand-build. so I found some small bowl molds so the whole thing would be consistent in its hand-built-iness. the platter was a different story; the mold I initially used turned out to be just too small, so I found one in the studio which would work.

I toyed with ideas of how to decorate it for quite some time until it hit me that my scribbles and/or lines motif would be perfect. I decided that a hand-drawn looking line which connected all the bowls would be pleasing to well, me, so I went with it. when I started drawing, I realized that the line would be a lot more wavy when viewed from the top than the perfect circle which was in my head. so I drew multiple lines, which you can line up any which way you please. I liked the connectedness of it and how everyone can have their own interpretation. I love how they turned out. my only disappointment was that the platter warped in the glaze fire, so the bowls sit a little more askance than I intended. dang platter. if I had to do it all over again, I would choose to make the platter part differently.

I forgot to measure the plate before I sent it out, but the bowls are about 4.25 inches in diameter x 2 inches tall.
I drew the lines with a black underglaze pencil and then put perfect white glaze over the top. when you do that, the lines turn kind of ball-point pen blue. the backs of the plate and outsides of the bowls I glazed pure white matte, which matches nicely with the perfect white in tone, and gives them all a nice shiny/not shiny contrast. told you I was going to experiment with that a bit. (more to come!)

anyway, here she is. and yes, I had a meltdown trying to get the photos to turn out right. and yes, despite my photoshopping, the color is still all screwy, blown-out and jumps around from photo to photo. and yes, I will try a less complicated camera next time. (since I can't make this one turn out the same every time, let alone between one photo to the next...)

and yes, I think I will make another seder plate.
hand-built and dated february, 2011

S O L D (04.18.11)





see? warp-age.


this is the closest to showing the real color of the dishes, though they are significantly less creamy in real life: