Octopus Bowls

 With school starting up again, I have more time to work with pottery. Unfortunately, thrown and handbuilt pottery takes me months to go from wet clay to finished bowl.

 When I was asked to donate some pottery to our local food pantry for a benefit, I knew I wouldn't have the time to throw something for it, so I decided to use a restaurant ware porcelain bowl and do something with decals.

Of course I used my favorite images, the ones of octopuses.

I used an image from Karen at the Graphics Fairy along with an old etching of an octopus verrucosus. 

 First, I measured the bowl around at the rim and then a little lower, above the foot. I used these numbers to divide the bowl, and drew lines down with an erasable marker to guide the placement of the images.  I did the same on the inside rim.

I printed the images out with my iron oxide printer, printing them onto waterslide paper.

 After soaking the decals, I used my guide lines to apply the images to the bowl.  Then I shrunk the verrucosus image and made a bunch of little decals and put these around the interior rim.

I had a few images left over, so I also decorated a smaller porcelain bowl with them.

I put them both in the kiln on Monday night, fired them to cone 4, (over 2000 degrees F) and this morning unloaded them while they were still piping hot.

I couldn't be more pleased!

The larger bowl is pretty huge, about 6 inches tall and more than 11 inches wide at the rim. I am guessing it would hold more than a gallon of liquid.

The smaller bowl is what I consider cereal bowl sized, or a largish rice bowl,  about 3 inches tall, and 6 inches wide.

Because the decals are fired into the glaze, both bowls will be dishwasher  microwave safe.
I am thinking I will donate them both as a set, and hopefully they will get a good price at the charity auction.

Update: The person who coordinates the charity auction chose to auction off one of my older wheel thrown pieces instead of these. So this set will be going into my shop.