Smaller Pots for the November Shows

The San Gabriel Valley Cactus and Succulent Show is November 1 and 2, and the Xiem Clay Center Fall Sale is November 14 and 15.  I'll be at both and have been dividing up pots to decide which pot goes where.  There are about a dozen waiting to be glazed, four drying, but probably missing the San Gabriel Show, and another dozen that need to be finished this week.  I have flats of sale plants ready to go and have more or less picked out the show plants, with three or four to be potted this weekend. I'll photograph these next weekend.

On to recent pots.  Nearly all of these were done in a single working session with 50 pounds of clay turned into 2 1/2 by 5 inch pots.

A Yellow magnesium glaze with brown streaks from iron inclusions.

Same clay with a white glossy glaze spotted without streaks.

This is a first run of something that is bound to be repeated.  A matte green on a dark iron clay.

A different clay body, the darker body does not take stain well.  This is an iron stain on a stoneware body.

A Carbon Trap Shino with great iron spotting, one of my favorites for this clay.

There are other shapes and sizes as well.  There are 4 1/2 by 3 inches, great for conophytum and other miniatures with shallow roots.

Finally a couple of larger pots, the left about 8 inches tall and 4 inches in diameter, light stoneware with iron stain.  The right a mix of light a dark clays.

A few larger pots for the November shows

November is the last shows of the year, with the San Gabriel Valley Cactus and Succulent Show at the  Los Angeles Arboretum on November 1 and 2, and the Xiem Fall sale in Pasadena, two weeks later.  It's a busy month.

Getting the feet right on these bonsai inspired pots has been a problem for a couple of years.  The glaze is almost exactly where I want it, with clay showing through in the center, the lower lip and the feet, and the glaze speckling from green to black everywhere else.  I made another in this series, with a different clay and glaze .

This is potted with a Maihueniopsis subterranea, with the less satisfying feet cropped out of the picture.

Also in this potting exercise were several slightly smaller pots.

These smaller pots are about three and a half inches across and about seven and a half inches tall.

Another from the same series

These have proved to be popular, always selling out, and never the same.

A variegated crested Cleistocactus winterii in the process of reverting from a crest is shown in one of these pots.

The pots shrink considerably during drying and firing, and I often would prefer one the size of the just assembled raw clay rather than the fired version.  with a bigger set of templates, 

A larger version is possible.  I've only made two of these.  One was sold to a friend at the Inter-City Show in August.  This one will be on the sale table in November.  I'll be making more in the winter.

There are a lot of smaller pots being fired, and ready for another post in a week or so.