TURNAROUND

I am not exactly sure where I first saw this type of closed pedestal dish form though I do know it was some Italian majolica and possibly at the Gardiner Museum (in Toronto) though I am not sure. After seeing this piece in the early 1990s I started making these forms in majolica and also in stoneware using temmoku and tessha glazes and in porcelain using a Choy and a Kawai celadon and though not the epitome of storage practicality, they are fun to make and to use.  

The piece illustrated is a prototype for a customer who wants eight of these forms for a dinner party in which they will serve either tempura, shrimp cocktails or sushi as the menu is not set in stone quite yet. The piece was thrown yesterday and tooled and assembled this morning as the initial prototype being about 8" x 4" at the moment, the top of the form is heavily paddled for a nice texture and the sides are impressed with series of four small squares around the piece and in keeping with the overall idea the piece is finished in a pedestal style foot with a single pierced hole to allow air to escape during the bisque and glaze firing.   

The current thought is that these pieces will be glazed in Oribe with the top having a good coating of iron sprayed over to create a mostly black surface but allowing the texture to still be quite visible. I used the lemons to quickly illustrate the size and scale of the piece which can be tweaked to meet the needs of the customer as well as to give a clearer idea of how much this space can hold. All in all this was a rather quick turnaround for a prototype and hopefully if all goes well I can get the platform pieces made, assembled, dried, bisque and glazed in time for their inaugural use.