Making a Nautilus Bowl from start to finish

Making a Large Nautilus Fruit Bowl.

The bowl is thrown with 2kg of white stoneware clay, then left to firm up overnight.

I then mix up a slip (liquid clay) made of the same clay bit with added colourants (iron, cobalt, manganese, chrome) to produce a black slip. This is applied to the inside of the bowl with a large syringe, then the wheel speed is slowed right down and the pattern is stamped using a soft rubber rib.

The bowl is left for another day for the slip to dry and fuse with the clay of the bowl. It is now one solid piece of clay. Before wiring off the batt (the wooden disc it was thrown on), I trim the rim back to remove any splashes of the black slip. I then wire off and set aside to dry for a further day or two before it can be trimmed. I trim a foot and burnish the clay smooth, then stamp my logo into the semi-soft clay.

After a few more days drying the piece is ready for its first firing to 1000c, which converts the clay into ceramic. Up until this point it could have been turned back into soft clay with the addition of water, but the bisque firing fuses it into a solid porous structure.

It can then be glazed. I use a white glaze on the outside and over the rim, and a Floating Blue on the inside. This combination is very fluid in the cone 6 (approx 1200c) glaze firing and mixes as it flows over the surface when it becomes fluid at the peak of the firing. As the glaze cools it 'freezes' solid at around 1100c and the motion is captured permanently in the glossy glass of the glaze. It also fills in a lot of the texture of the pattern, giving a smoother surface and making it easy to clean (someone always comments about this whenever I post a video of the technique).

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