A Very Tempting Craft

You may (or may not) remember that Mr. M and I went to Michigan for Thanksgiving, to be with my brother and his family. My brother's wife, P, is a true Craft Queen who can turn her hand to anything. Having graduated from a fashion institute, she is able to draft patterns and design clothing; she creates costumes for the local theatre company and banners for local churches. She can knit and crochet; refinish and reupholster furniture. She's also a skilled decorator, amateur picture framer, and artist. In short, no craft mountain is too high for her to scale, and she excels at whatever she attempts.

P's latest crafting passion is for painting and firing ceramics. She has a kiln in her basement, and enough greenware (unfired clay pieces) to open her own store. Luckily for me, she's also very generous. While we were there, she took me downstairs and said, "Pick out anything you like to paint, and I'll fire it before you go home."

Her basement was full of fun and temptation: all kinds of plain greenware, with many gorgeous samples of her own work to provide inspiration. A table held pieces (painted by local home-school groups) waiting to be fired.

There were shelves of little boxes, and figurines galore....

All kinds of tempting plates and bowls....

Mugs of every shape and style....

And this, my favourite section, filled with lovely curvy pitchers and pots.

So many beautiful things. (So many things I didn't need.) Finally I settled on a little pitcher which would be perfect for holding my crochet hooks. Then I fell in love with a little square plate and carried that upstairs as well.

The little pitcher had a charming design of molded leaves at either end of the handle - it only remained to add some sprigged flowers or other small motifs around the body. The plate was another story. How do artists, faced with a blank canvas, ever get started? I had the hardest time thinking of something to put on that blank plate. Finally I sketched out some tulip-ish shapes and proceeded to agonize over choose paint colours. (You can draw on the greenware with a pencil, and the marks will burn off when the piece is fired.)

My sister-in-law has several paint colour sample boards (sorry, I didn't take pictures of them), which feature small glazed circles of available shades, identified by numbers which can be matched to the paint bottles. The liquid paints are paler than their finished, fired selves, and dry to a matte and chalky finish on the clay. It is recommended that the painter apply three coats of every colour being used. This can become complicated if one is layering colours; the paints must be applied in a certain order or they will not show up correctly.

If the painter makes a mistake, or is unhappy with how a piece looks, the dry paint can be scraped or sanded off to allow a fresh start. This worked out well for me, because my tulips, when the three coats of paint had been applied, looked less like flowers and more like eggs on a stem. So my sister-in-law sanded them down and I painted some daisy-like shapes instead.

After the tulip fiasco, I felt less than confident about painting flowers on the little pitcher. So I settled for trios of dots, with green handle, leaves and trim.

The pieces dried overnight, and the next morning P put them in the kiln for firing. The process would take about 24 hours, and they'd be ready for me to take home the next day. Unfortunately, the kiln chose that day to misfire, so my pieces had to be left behind in Michigan. (P promised to mail them to me once the kiln was repaired and the firing completed.)

And here they are, having arrived a few days ago.

My cheerful little square plate, about 5" across:

And the little pitcher, already sitting on the lamp table and keeping my crochet hooks handy:

(I think the dots came out rather well.)

I dearly love my brother and his family, but perhaps it's just as well we live some hours apart. Any closer, and I'd be in their basement every chance I could get, painting more ceramics than I could ever use or give away. A very tempting craft indeed.

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