Journal

News from Dowd House Studios: places to find our pottery, exhibitions, classes & workshops, new forms and exciting projects.

Filtering by Tag: drawing on pottery

Ghosts & Pumpkins

October 30, 2022Jenny Dowd

OOOooooOOOOOOOOOooOOOOOOooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Well, here it is, Happy Halloween Weekend!

I’m always a bit late on this, but really, ghosts are for all year. I made a small series of ghost tea cups last year, after Halloween, oops, and sold all of them last month during September sales. So, I made some more… but again a little too late. Oh well, they are some of my favorites…

It was a spooky day in the studio when I was decorating the cups, Sam was working on something with the lights, so I was working with the moody natural light through the window. (Yup, our studio is still very much a work in progress, more on that in a few weeks.)

I draw on the bisque fired porcelain using an underglaze pencil, and then brush on a watered down underglaze, a lot like ink drawing. This batch turned out etherial and definitely more spooky than my last batch!

Sam, on the other hand, starts making pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns in August! This year he used the Raku kiln he built to add a spooky finish to his pumpkins.

Our porch is covered with pumpkins and of course we lit them up one night to see how they glow! Many of the pumpkins that we took to September markets found new porches to live on, and the rest will fill up our porch for Halloween and into November.

We really like the idea of a pumpkin on the porch that does not rot! Plus, it can hang out inside and add a spooky element wherever you like.

Pumpkins and ghost cups are still available on our webshop, and will stay there past Halloween… because spooky can be anytime!

Ghosts and Pumpkins

categories New Ideas, Process
tags ceramic jack-o-lantern, ghost cups, ghost drawing, halloween wine cup, halloween decorations, spooky jack o lantern, pumpkin luminary, drawing on pottery, raku pumpkins

Storytelling

January 22, 2022Jenny Dowd

Sometimes custom orders and funny stories turn into illustrated pottery. These are a few projects from recent months:

These mugs were custom ordered from an Aunt who wanted to celebrate and surprise her twin nieces, they grew up in Idaho and had just moved to New York to attend college on a hockey scholarship. Something to remind them of home but also where they were headed!

For these porcelain mugs I used an inlay technique to create the drawing in the damp clay. Each of the tiny black lines were drawn with an x-acto blade, filled in with black underglaze, and then wiped clean. The crisp black lines look like an ink drawing on the white porcelain clay. Two mugs, similar but different, just like the sisters.

Chainsaw mugs! A friend recently became certified to assist in disaster related tree removal as well as fire mitigation. WOW! To celebrate she commissioned mugs for her instructors.

This time I drew the chainsaws on bisque-fired clay with an underglaze pencil, this makes these awkward chainsaws just a little more comical. I filled in the drawing with red glaze and grey underglaze.

This one was unsolicited… I had an idea to turn a scary story into a sweet comforting gift. And it’s a long story, so let’s just hit the main points: house sitting + bomb cyclones & closed highways, mix in some tick infested dogs during a peak in lyme disease season and suddenly a tent pitched in the middle of the living room to sleep in at night doesn’t seem so weird.

This design was also drawn on the clay with underglaze pencils and filled in with layers of watered down underglaze. This time I used a clear glaze that I had not applied to this type of surface before and didn’t realize that some of the underglaze pencil lines would run. After waves of initial disappointment, I realized that the soft lines fit in more with my vision of a dark sky around the edge of the bowl, and perhaps the bunting on the outside is just wet from all that rain.

These are a few projects currently in progress, or in the case of the little 5-legged octopus (quintopus?) just starting to percolate. The octopus was my example made during the surface design class I am teaching at the Community Creative Center. While demonstrating sgraffito I started to draw a ghost and then mid-draw thought that might be boring and started adding legs. Of course there was not enough room! But this cute little mollusc came to life and now I’m considering adding it to my cast of characters.

The porcelain cups are in preparation for that quickly approaching February day. These lamps might be some of my favorite characters, especially when one finally leans in to admit a secret to the other. (Psst. I really like you.)

categories Custom Design, Illustration, New Ideas, Process
tags illustrated pottery, drawing on clay, drawing on pottery, arkansas potter, made in arkansas, jenny dowd pottery, dowd house studios, sgraffito, underglaze inlay, chainsaw mugs

A Kiln Full of New

June 01, 2019Jenny Dowd

In between orders and catching up on inventory for local shops, I’ve been dreaming up some new designs. It seems I’ve been a fan of black and white for a long time, and while I’m still a fan, it’s time for a little color.

This kiln load is just the start, I’ll be adding new forms soon. For now I’m continuing with a star catching theme with little cups. The prototype plates and bowls have potential. The kiln shelf cracked during this firing and I was lucky it didn’t cause any damage. It’s a bummer to lose a shelf, but I don’t feel the loss quite as much right now since this was such a happy load!

Most of this work features drawings with underglaze pencil, I like how the line fuzzes in the firing. The plate and bowl have more crisp lines- from an inlay technique. I’m excited to play with these processes and combine them.

Also some new extra-cute tooth fairy bowls! I asked my dentist about this once, after a thoughtful look she said that they would “reduce bedside fumbling.”

I’m looking forward to the next batch, it’s nice to have something new and to finally see it happening!

categories New Ideas, Studio
tags starry pottery, drawing on pottery, tooth fairy bowls

New Work for Market

March 02, 2019Jenny Dowd

Lately these quiet snowy days have been helpful in the studio, where I’ve been working to design a new line of pottery to be sold exclusively at Market. This shop is inside Vertical Harvest, the amazing greenhouse that grows beautiful greens and tomatoes all year in Jackson, Wyoming.

This project has taken since last spring, working through sketches, testing glazes, and mostly just thinking about how to make colorful garden themed designs - while working on all the projects that kept me busy last year. My goal was to make garden themed pots for dining: cups & pitchers, serving & salad bowls, as well as helpful items for the kitchen: garlic keepers & salt cellars. It’s been nice thinking about garden parties during this ultra-snowy winter!

In January I finally made some actual pieces. New ideas don’t usually take this long, but this time the process is such a departure from my usual, and I was a little stumped. Usually I decorate the surfaces while the pots are still wet, using inlay and sgraffito techniques. But what was bugging me was that I wanted these images to have a gestural line feel, more like drawing. So I bisque fired the test pieces and ordered a few underglaze pencils.

A neat trick when working on bisque fired pottery is that a design can be worked out with a graphite pencil - any unwanted graphite can be washed off with a sponge but it will also burn away in the kiln. So I worked out some of my drawings with a pencil first. Then went over them with the underglaze pencil. (Which is a very cool decorating tool - it looks sketchy like a pencil and yet will fire to a permanent line!)

I drew Swiss Chard on the cups & pitchers, tomatoes on the bowls, micro-greens on the salt cellars, and garlic on the garlic keepers. Then started in with glaze - only using copper green and red right now; colorful, but not too colorful. Similar to the first colors of spring. The glazing is a bit tedious - starting with the greens, once the leaves are brushed on I went over them with wax resist. This way I can glaze with the second color right up next to the first color. Red goes on next, then wax over that, finally clear over everything.

This is how the prototypes turned out and I’ve got a whole kiln load right now that I can’t wait to see. So stay tuned for an update!

categories Custom Design, Shops with Pottery
tags Market Jackson Hole, garden pots, drawing on pottery, garlic keeper, swiss chard, tomatoes, custom design, vertical harvest

Special, Special Orders

December 09, 2018Jenny Dowd

Just about every time I think that I’ve got too much to do and shouldn’t take on any more special orders - I get the most amazing requests. These are the things that, although they take me off my path, they make me realize that my path can (and should be) be wider than originally thought.

Just this past week I finished and delivered two of the most special orders. Each were commissioned by someone as a gift for another person or family, each very personal.

The pitcher and cups are for someone who has just moved into a new home that she has named “The Sunny Spot.” This inspired me to made a few little wall tiles with whimsical little hills, and a path to the sun and stars. Luckily, Sam and I had planned a soda firing and I was able to make these pieces and get them into the kiln in time. (This is a laborious process that we love but only do a few times each year. For the whole story on how these pieces happen check out my past journal entry here.)

This teapot and cup set is also extremely whimsical, full of special meaning, and commissioned as a gift. While working on these pieces I fell in love with the clouds - I’ve put these on succulent planters in the past, but this time it was if I saw them differently…. and they will be showing up in the future.

Every order, every piece of pottery that finds a new home, each one is a gift. When I stop to think about my work out there in the wild making people happy, it floors me and energizes me at the same time.

categories Custom Design, New Ideas
tags special order, custom design, soda firing, drawing on pottery

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