Nopales (Prickly pear cactus) and Agaves are among my favorite botanical subjects. Oaks and blackberry brambles are the others, but those are harder to find. The design was made freehand with slip trailed from a jacquard bottle, like the others. After the fact, I found that it’s much easier to get the look I wanted simply by using …
Category: Tiles
Oct 19
Blackberry Tile
This is one of the tiles I have up at my etsy shop. I did it about two years ago, along with most of my other tiles. It took a long time to make these tiles, because I had to pound the clay flat by hand, using a special mallet. I got pretty good at …
Oct 08
King of Pentacles
I had planned to do a whole series of these tiles, based on the tarot. I love tarot symbolism and imagery. I spent a lot of time pounding out the clay into flat slabs, cutting it to size, and then (hardest of all) trailing stained slip freehand from a bottle. I tried to fire them …
Jun 17
Agave Tile
Here’s another tile from my low-fire 2007 collection. Another fact: Instead of rolling out the slabs, I pounded them with a wooden mallet, flattened on one side, that I got at a workshop by Junya Shao and Xiaoping Luo at the Vihel center in Tempe. I find that if you pound the clay flat rather …
Mar 15
Fox Tile
I don’t have anything finished right now, so I thought I would post some tiles that I made last year. These are hand made tiles, slip trailed with neutral colored slip from a jacquard bottle. After I bisque fired them, I used the slip trails as a border for the glazes. If I were to do …