I have a plan to make a number plaque, and I wanted it to be more than just functional, I want it to be beautiful. I decided upon poppies as an appropriate botanical motif. I sketched it out, and my design will fit about five poppy flowers on it. These are the tiles I made. The finished work won’t be done for at least a couple of months.
To make the tiles, I cut a slice of cone 06 clay and then pounded it flat with a special mallet. I found some cloth that has a similar crepe-like texture to the poppy petals and rolled it into the clay. I traced the lines and cut around by using some photographs I took from my garden last year. For the center, I used a clay gun to extrude small, thin strings, which I cut short.
This glaze has lead in it, but it’s an intense, opaque red. It’s not as solid as I had hoped, but I don’t know if that’s due to firing or if I didn’t get the glaze on thick enough around the edges. I can live with it.
