Gill and Veils

I had thought perhaps I should provide some info on the mushroom parts... gills and veils. The veil is a covering over the gills that can peel off and become a ring (or collar) around the stem.

"Gills, known as "lamellae", are plate like structures arranged on the underside of a mushroom's cap. The common button mushroom sold in grocery stores is a gilled mushroom."from Mushroom Expert.com

You can see gills, a veil, and the resulting collars or rings in the pictures on both "real" mushrooms and some of my latest "made" ones.

Market Pictures of New Work

I took a few pictures at the market yesterday that I want to share. It was a beautiful day, so I got a couple of good ones! The ones I am posting are of the Clover honey pots, and the new Snail glaze pattern for the serving bowls and a Snail casserole. Both of them are Northern Green Celedon and Coleman Purple (which can look very blue, so the pictures are pretty accurate!). Let me know what you think!

The New Mushrooms Are SOOOO Cute!

The new set of mushrooms turned out just great! Some of them are quite tiny, no bigger than 5"' tall, and I was able to get more detail in the veils and gills this time too! I am really loving playing with glaze combinations on the caps. So far the big winners are: the rusty red and celedon green (the glaze goes yellow around the green parts so it's like a freebie color!), the bright red with the turquoise green, and the purple with that same turquoise. The sun came out nice and bright just *after* I packed away all the photography stuff, but don't worry, I got some good pictures anyway!

Work Plans - Plus Poppies Are Back!

There wasn't a firing this week, so pictures of new stuff. (sorry 'bout that) But I did get a fair amount of work done even with company in town. There will be new larger Pori bowls soon (pancake batter size) and I have decided to bring back the Poppy bowls for fall and winter. I started with some medium and large serving bowls.

I am figuring I need to make (as in throw, trim, decorate and dry) an average of 25 pieces a week. That is what I am working toward in some sort of routine.

The Mushrooms are Growing and Changing

I love making mushrooms. They are the antithisis of my other work. I don't care if the caps are symetrical, if the "bottle" forms that make the bases are off center, if the caps tilt jauntily on their stems...all of those things are what make them interesting. I don't *want* them to be too even, too perfect, etc. They are an exercise in working with serendipity and an exercise in going with the flow. While the process of making them is getting more refined as I make more of them, there is still a generous amount of just seeing how they turn out, which is different every time!

And then I get to glaze them! I am having so much fun experimenting with different glaze combinations for the caps and decorating them with dots, stripes, spirals etc.

The picture is three of the last four larger mushrooms (cuz one sold already) and I just finished assembling a bunch of smaller ones yesterday a couple of which are almost *tiny*. They are going to be soooooo cute! Maybe I will post picture of some of those after they get out of the kiln.