The other day we visited our friend Krystal Speck at her studio and took some photos of her at work. It was really fun and interesting to see all the steps that go into making her ceramics. It was also great to see her light up, while doing what she loves to do. While she was working, she explained the long process that goes it to each of her pieces. Here we are posting an abbreviated version of this process, with a few photos so you can get a general idea of how its done. If you want to know more about Krystal, check out her blog http://krystalspeck.blogspot.com/. You can also visit her from now until December 6th at the One of a Kind show (booth H51).
Here she is pouring clay into her moulds.
She lets the clay settle in the mould for a while, and the clay particles magically gather and stick to the sides. Then when when she pours out the excess clay, those settled clay particles stay back - still stuck to the sides of the mould!
She lets the rest of the clay sit in the mould for a while to dry a bit, and when it's ready she trims off the access clay from the top.
When the clay dries out enough, it pops out of the mould and she trims it up some more.
The clay then gets fired one time before she paints on the design and does the glazing.
Then it goes into the kiln for a second firing, and voila! The beautiful finished product.
Thanks Krystal, it was really great to take photos of you in action, doing what you love to do...
