Clay Results with Roshi Roy

My ashtray looks great on the side table outside the dining room window. Neither Shari nor I smoke, but the shiny clear glaze over the porcelain slip and the outline of an African sumac leaf blend perfectly with the outdoor setting and add a distinct touch of class.

My other sumac leaf design also came out nicely.

To make the form, my Clay Guru and I rolled out a piece of flat clay, like flour dough with a roling pin, then I impressed the leaf shapes. A plastic bowl, used for mixing slips and glazes, served as the form. We picked up the piece of flat clay, carefully placed it over the edges of the top of the bowl, then Clay Master Roy picked up both and dropped them together. The clay sank into the bowl. I trimmed the edge and the clay was allowed to dry for the week. ("Like leather," Master Roy kept repeating.)

My first piece was a stick-made vase. Clay Swami Roy showed me how to roll a cylinder of clay on the table with the fingers of my flat hand, then push a pointed stick through its middle. More rolling with the stick, place the clay on end, pull out the stick, and insert a thicker stick. Repeat with increasing thickness until the desired shape is realized.

The bottom is easy. Roll some flat clay, mark the approximate shape of the clay cylinder, rough up and moisten where they will join, then join and trim.

Incising designs on the outside proved challenging because I had no ideas. Clay studios have all sorts of funny specialized tools augmented with an assortment of kitchen gadgets and other bits and stuff commandered to shape clay. I gravitated to a tool that looked like it was made to cut small balls out of a watermelon. I used it to press a circle of rounds.

Then I ran out of ideas. I just scratched the bottom portion, inscribed parallel lines on the top portion and flayed out the rim. I was anxious to get to the glazing, wondering about how to fit brush strokes inside a pretty small pot.

Glazing, as my Clay Swami proved, can be quite simple if you have five-gallon buckets of mixed glaze lying around. We went for plum color. "You haven't done this before, so let me show you." Good advice from Adept Roy.

He grabbed a plastic scoop, actually, a former yogurt container, and ladled gobs of the smooth, dark goop inside my bisqued pot and swirled it around so the insides were evenly coated. Then Clay Rabbi Roy made me hold the pot upside down and dip its top into the bucket of dark goop. Like coating strawberries with chocolate. So much for brushwork.

The following week we saw the fired results. There is a high probability of unpredictability to firing glazed clay. My plum-glazed pot has green blotches. Clay Effendi Roy explained something about minerals in the glaze separating in the firing process. Cobalt oxide? didn't fully understand, except that Clay Sheikh Roy seemed very pleased with the result.

My first ceramic has been pressed into kitchen service. Our copper basket was getting full of whisks, spoons, tongs, spatulas and ladles. Wooden spoons look great in my ceramic pot.

For my next project, I'm thinking of a rectangular casket for holding pens, or an open lantern made with strips of clay. I will defer to the guidance of my Clay Rinpoche Roy, and I still have a leather-dry form of a platter to shape, bisque and glaze. Roshi Roy is inspiring.

Clay

One of Shari's pieces, naturally formed.
It's bisqued and ready
to be glazed and fired.

It's good to have hobbies in one's dotage, to be creative in the gnarly years of old age retirement. Why not pottery?

It helps that our very good friend Roy Lizama is not only a master potter who helps run a studio, but also has the patience to instruct a complete wonker — your author.

The author, carefully brushing
a porcelain slip onto his
ashtray masterpiece.

I come to clay with only the childhood experience of playing with small tubes of colored plasticine.

Shari immediately went to the top of the class with a couple of stunning vases that copy a style we admire so much in Roy's work:  make a cylinder in dark clay, roll it in dry, powdered white porcelain, then stretch it so cracks appear. Simple? Try it.

My goal is more humble. I am working on an ash tray.

We've had four classes so far. Our works have been bisqued (the preliminary firing) and last week we played with glaze. Perhaps next Tuesday we will see the final results.

Stay tuned.