Studio practice

 Ceramic and plaster discs

Last week we went down to the ceramic and plaster rooms to create delicate plaster discs. We rolled out slabs of clay and imprinted onto them with various pieces of foliage and lace materials. That morning I had collected leaves of my house plants that I believed were relevant, choosing a few different types of fern leaves and a long strand from my string of hearts plant. The fern leaves were an obvious choice as I’m focusing on Newstead abbeys fernery and the Victorian fern craze but I also chose the string of hearts as it’s delicate heart shaped leaves could give a beautiful lace like effect. 

We imprinted these leaves into the clay slab and built walls around them using cardboard cylinders, this created a sort of clay mold ready to pour plaster into. We moved on to the plaster room, mixed up the plaster and quickly poured it into the molds and left it to set. Later when de molding the discs we found that the clay had left a slight darkness to the plaster that creates a lace like effect and gives real definition to the small details. I decided to try and save my clay molds, one of the six clay pieces didn’t survive the de molding process. The remaining five clay pieces were cut into discs and put on the shelf for the kiln. Once out the kiln, I used a “dove” glaze on them and I’m really pleased with how they turned out although next time i would definitely make the edges neater.

The clay process:

 

My finished plaster discs:

   

The classes group work:

My finished ceramic discs: