I've been making different dinnerware pieces on and off since March. Lots of different permutations are possible using my GR Pottery Forms hump molds with rolled out clay slabs, and experimenting with textures and colors. I'm adding to the GR ones other infrastructural forms I've made myself. Potters are hands on by nature (or we would not be potters), and we make or adapt tools so that we can give expression to our own work. I don't want my pottery to look like the next potter's, but the next potter might use these GR forms for shape continuity through a set. So I use my own additions and subtractions and changes to express my ideas as the next potter would probably not.
Here were the first items made, with medium and small plates done using GR Forms, and bowls made using my own paper template. It was a sweet set, a bit on the smallish side, with extremely simple color- just an inlaid black line and a few strokes of pale rainbow here and there.
(8.5" plate, 7" plate, 5" square bowl, side dish shallow bowl 7". Mimi Stadler 2015)
Tried a few colors. Added a thrown and squared 8 oz mug.
Next, lace texture. A good try, but on the larger (8.5") plate, where you might want to use a knife and fork, less detailed texture would be better. Kind of nice looking though:
I wanted a bigger version of the dinner plate, so I broadened the rim of the next one I made using the basic GR plate hump plus a larger wooden square under it that added 2" to the diameter, to 10.5". Here it is below in red, with stamped decoration. Surface and color possibilities are only limited by my materials, firing methods and expertise.
Adding more set components, I made a rectangular serving platter using a GR Form, which fired out to 12" x 7.5". I added a pickle dish, too, using a hump form I made myself from plaster a few years back, to lay the clay over. Not as good as the GR Forms because plaster chips, but a useful shape and size:
Then I made the platter again, and this time the lace impression was shallower, which works well- kind of elegant, I think! I can add handles for another, different look and feel. That's on the "to try" list.
Thinking of the table service, I wheel-threw and altered my own salt shakers. Next time I'll do some in coordinating colors!
(salt and pepper birds, wheel thrown and altered, underglazes and glaze, 2015. Mimi Stadler Pottery)
When I take GR's basic hump forms and build over them with slabs, I can repeat sizes and shapes of wares. Everything I add beyond the basic form is what makes the work mine.