Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Just a taste







WARNING: THIS IS NOT THE CONTEST.

But it may help get you thinking in the right frame of mind.

Here's a quick glimpse at two of our new colors.
The first two planters demonstrate our newest additions to our palette.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice palette... like the middle one

Alex Solla said...

You mean the butter yellow planter? Do you like it because it is different from the others, or because you like yellow glazes? What makes it stand out for you?

Tobi said...

Love the new green!!

Newfoundout Potter said...

I have trouble with colours for planters - being an avid gardener I like to have a planter that coordinates with the plant and that usually means a colour to go with green leaves. So white, yellows, browns and rust tones, black. With our new gas kiln I made some copper red planters - they really do not compliment the plants very well even though they are the Xmas cactus type, so sort of grayish green leaves.
I really like the way you do handles - both the top attachment and the bottom - very classy.

Alex Solla said...

@Tobi- Which grean? the mossier green? or the Turquoise green?

Naming contest is postponed till sometime tomorrow.

@NewfoundoutPotter-
Color and planters can be a real pain in the neck. Like you say, you dont want the planter to compete with the foliage or the flowers. One of the other concerns we've dealt with is that the forms I love making, arent the easiest to get the rootball out of at the end of the season. BUT the standard, simple flaring planters do so little for my aesthetic needs.... so we compromise.

I think in general, most potters underestimate how big planters really need to be. I always find mine to be just too darned small.

As for those handles...thank you. I have started thinking that just about everything needs a good handle. To that end, we are putting them on about 2x more forms than we did last year. As a result, my handle-pulling has improved, and it has helped me to see more aspects of the forms that I seem not to have noticed before.

Anonymous said...

alex... i like the hue and i'm assuming it breaks around details like the others but even on the blown up pic it's difficult to tell. the way my pots are now, i'm big into semimatte translucent that clearly show what's underneath.

Alex Solla said...

@Jim-

It's funny, the butter yellow doesn't really break as well as all of our other glazes. Part of why we didnt use it at all last year. Just totally shut it out. It is also completely opaque. Which, over our texture, is a big waste. Folks love it on our mixing bowls and diner mugs, but if I apply it to any of our richer, more textured forms, all is lost.

To that end, we are re-working the glaze this fall. My hope is to get two other glazes into production before summer hits.

Contest for naming our two newest glazes begins this week! Watch for it!