Antique base with brand new tops. LOOK at the colors! They’ll be brighter with more contrast when fired.
I’ve just added a small handful of new molds to my antique collection. The main additions to my shop repertoire will be coffee mugs and wine goblets. You tell me often that I need more mugs, and I’m really excited to add more slipcasting technique to the process. I’ll have two sizes of mugs, and they’ll definitely be unique!
I also found a fun new vessel shape that I’ll be attaching to an antique base to make wine glasses. It’s the same base I’ve been using on the baby head wine glasses while I was waiting for the goblet tops to ship.
The butterfly is just an antique soap dish. Or ashtray. There are a LOT of old ashtray molds out there. Slip casting was popular during the smoking era. I call them “cat dishes” now.
“Thing” is a new mold, thanks to the popularity of Wednesday, (and officially called a “zombie hand” by the mold maker) and I’ll make most of them into succulent planters, because how fun is that! Interestingly, it’s the worst mold I’ve ever worked with, but totally worth it.
And the antique frog? Well it really has no purpose other than I absolutely love it. It just sits there. I can’t help but pour it any time I’m making other stuff. It’s hard to find bigger molds of, well, most objects. This one will fire about the size of a bullfrog. I also have a couple of box turtles that will be life-sized. Even the mugs are hard to find large enough to be of use. The bigger one I’m doing is one I had to make myself. Making plaster molds is another whole process that I avoid when I can.
It’s hard to see at this stage but I added some blue slip to the black and white marbling. I can’t wait to see the final color when it fires.
New mug bodies
Antique frog mold. It’ll be glazed nice and glossy. And/or blue. The eclipse shadows were just starting to change the afternoon light in this picture.
A one-of-a-kind planter. There’s a doll-head in the back. (I had an extra one and had to attach it to SOMEthing).
You can see the turquoise blue clay in the marbling of the frog. As I worked on these during the light of the eclipse, it got cool and the mourning doves sang.
Slow drying in the kiln room. It’s getting crowded. I’ll start loading tomorrow.
A couple of planters and larger mugs slow drying under plastic.
Extra slip gets drained from the mug molds into home-made tile molds for unique designs.
Slip casting requires a lot of finesse and finishing work. And space. I went through ten gallons of slip on this round. Fortunately I ran out until I make more, which is good because I have no more room.
Antique cherub mold in the back. Not entirely sure when I’ll stick on top of it yet.