Cayo Tabamos Pelican Pot

My last firing yielded some nice pots, and this one I'm not sure of. I lost some of the detail of the sgraffito to the cloudy glaze. After glazing the piece, I almost brushed some of the glaze away from the pelican, but decided not to. It was one of those moments when I didn't know whether or not to listen to the voice in the back of my head.

This particular glaze (containing 50 percent gerstley borate) will cloud up when thick. While I lost some of the detail of the design, I think the piece as a whole has a surreal quality that supports the state of my mind when I drew the scene, a portrayal of childhood summers on Cayo Tabamos, an island off the coast of the Florida Keys where my father ran Fish Camp.

Click here to read my other blog about that experience.


The mangrove trees and the pelican are enveloped in a cloud of misty aqua, their roots terminating into an earthy green. The piece is 9 1/2 inches tall and wide. It was fired to cone 6 in my electric kiln. The glaze is simply 50% gerstley/50%plastic vitrox clay and Black Copper Oxide. $250