Ceramics Handbuilding

Here are a few pieces from my Handbuilding Ceramics class in college ~

For this assignment we were supposed to make an incense burner. I made the tortise & the hair racing, with the hare kicking up dirt in the turtle's face (that is where the smoke comes out)

The sides are open to be used as a planter. The (missing) greenery makes it look like they are running down a dirt street with grass growing along the sides. The whole thing is maybe 15 inches long.

The stump comes off to reveal a little drawer that you burn the incense cones in. On the drawer's handle is a tiny painting of the turtle crossing the finish line. On top of the stump is a tiny snail holding a wooden stake with a sign that says "Go" and then a picture of a turtle. The sign is maybe 1/2 inch square.

The front of the road removes to show another drawer that you store matches in. The handle is painted with a scene of the rabbit sleeping. The break where it removes was made to look like a crack running along the road.

The turtle removes to show another storage space used to hold extra cones.



This is a replication of a Greek vase made with coiling. The base is about the size of a quarter.

I was very nervous to have a vase with such a tiny base, it made it much harder to make and I was nervous about someone bumping the table & it shattering on the floor. I found a picture of the same vase online later, and it originally had a donut shaped stand that the vase set inside to keep it from tipping over. Grrr...

All of the other vases people were replicating had bases that were like 3 inches wide, but the teacher gave us the pictures to copy, it was not our choice. I think he might have done it on purpose because he knew I could do it. It still has not broken (wait until I have kids).


For this assignment we were supposed to copy the style of another artist. I don't remember the name of the man I copied, but he made a lot of tiny objects in a stack, unpainted.

This is meant to be a stack of things that keep me distracted. I titled the books with some of my favorite reads. I like everything except for the cat, but the first one broke & I had to quickly make that one to replace it. He is maybe 1.5" tall. The tv is maybe 4 inches.

I really like working with just the texturing and no glazes. I don't trust the glazes to turn out well. Perhaps if I had more time to test them & find ones that worked well I would like them, but not the ones we had for class.


I also took a ceramics class working on the wheel. I gave most of the pieces away & didn't take any pictures. Both classes were insanely tough ~ he recommended that you take the minimum number of class hours when you took his class & very few people got A's. (I had the misfortune of putting it off until my Senior year, when I was also working on my Senior show of paintings) I lived in the art building that year, my friends would call over there to find me. But I did get an A in both classes.