Some things come up pretty as a picture. These things, by contrast, are not exciting to look at. But what they will help me make is pretty great.
About 13.5" x 11", and no, they are not toilet seats... they are slump molds!
These are slump molds*. I am going to use them as supporting forms, to drape clay slabs into, so I can make really nice slab platters. And then I am also going to use them to drape other slabs into, to make... ah, imaginative things, like components of certain sculptural vessels. You may not see it now, but that is my plan. I made them in pairs, in four different sizes.
And because I am going to bisque fire these slump molds, I can use them again and again, to help turn fresh clay slabs into one-of-a-kind vessels.
(*What it is: A slump mold is any object with a supportive depression in it to allow a slab of clay to settle into it and take on the shape of the depression. When the resulting slab dish has firmed up some and will hold its shape, it gets removed from the mold and worked on further. These particular two slump molds are just bottomless rings I made on the potter's wheel, then pulled into ovals with my hands.)
I saw Suze Lindsay use a teeny version of this type of slump mold at the Women Working with Clay symposium I went to in the first week of June in Virginia. A bell rang in my head. Thanks, Suze!
Until now, I've used "found" or purchased objects as my slump molds. But I think this is more interesting. It gives me more freedom to invent because when I make a slump mold, I'm already imagining the final product I'll make using it.
So I'm already thinking of the rim I will make on the platter I build resting on this mold, and the handles that will go on that platter- - and I haven't even bisque-fired the mold or rolled out a slab to lay into it. And even further, I'm already thinking about how to make two matching oval dishes in a pair of these molds, and attach them rim-to-rim to make a hollow form... and what to further create with that hollow form. I like that. These molds are going to be great**.
(**If they don't warp in the kiln when I fire them...)