Mushroom mugs

            You may remember the mushroom serving bowl from a few weeks ago. Mushroom mugs were the precursor to that piece. The first three mushroom mugs were an experiment, and I liked them so much I made the serving bowl as well. Now I am making more mugs!

            But there is a new aspect to this adventure now that I found out how to make this wonderful texture. The original mugs and serving dish were dipped in black slip, resulting in a smooth surface that needed little refining. At the studio I am currently using, the black slip is in a small container, so dipping is not an option. "No worries!" I thought, "I'll just brush it on and then smooth it with a rib to get rid of all the brush marks!" Well, that took a lot more fuss than I thought it would, and didn't look as good anyway. I find that it is usually better to touch the clay as little as possible when you want a smooth surface, and removing brush strokes with a rib is about the opposite of "touching as little as possible."
            So instead I decided to scrape the slip with the rib and see what kind of texture it made. It looks like the picture above, and I think that looks really cool! So now I have a new surface texture to use with the mushroom mugs.