Marbled Blue Teacup

My pottery studio is finally open again after the holidays! POPULACE, REJOICE!!
The studio is now open for limited hours but at least I can go in a little bit. I went in tonight and it was just like old times. yay!


Back in December I had been looking for pottery videos on YouTube (dont laugh) and found one on making marbled pieces using different colors of clay.

Pretty flippin awesome, so I tried it with a couple pieces... below is one. Success!

Marbled Blue Teacup
Red/black clay and white clay; fleckner's blue glaze; 3.5" diameter and 2.5" tall

I knew I wanted to make a marbling with as much contrast as possible, so I took about half a pound of pure white clay and half a pound of regular red clay, then added a little bit of black-tinted slip (slip is just runny clay) and added it to the red. This made the red a LITTLE bit darker than it would have been.

I put the two chunks side by side and punched them roughly into a ball, then threw the small cup like I normally would have done. At the end, all the water you use on the wheel makes it look just light red overall - but when I was done, I took a metal rib (sort of like a spatula) and scraped all sides while the wheel was turning. This scraped off all the wet slip on the outside and revealed the marbling underneath!! I then took two more small pieces of clay, kneaded them just briefly, and shaped a handle.
I wanted to show the marbling off as much as possible, so I chose a semi-transparent glaze that I know is a brilliant blue on top of white clay but is a dull color over red.

Since this was a very small piece, the throwing took only about 5 minutes - which means the clay wasnt moved around a lot on the wheel. Therefor, the marbling came out very broad... which I love!!! The teacup is too small for me to use for my massive cappucchinos in the morning, but it is nice to look at.

Thank you, YouTube!!!