New Camera, New Rims on an Old Shape
My first picture with my new camera seems to lack some detail, but it could be the lighting or my lack of familiarity with the new camera, a Canon SX30 IS. My old Canon S3 IS finally bit the dust after falling off the roof of our car several months ago.
Anyways, the picture above shows four six-pound preserve jars for the winners of the this year's Uwharrie Mountain Run in February. Levi and I made 210 3/4-pound jars, 195 1 1/4-pound jars and now I'm finishing up 95 1 3/4-pound jars while Levi is away on a trip up north. I'm also throwing 18 jars like the ones in the picture.
The shape of these is a traditional preserve jar that I used to make for Humble Mill Pottery (Jerry and Charlotte Fenberg) back in 1985. I'm adding lugs onto the larger pieces. I think I like the third one from the left best.
I can't remember where Jerry found the shape, whether it was a photo or a pot he had. I think it was a photo. I've searched online and in many books that we have here, and didn't find a piece that was similar. I'll have to ask Charlotte Fenberg if she remembers the shape. Maybe my rendition has changed over the years.
While searching books and online, I saw a lot of jars that were either ovoid in shape or straight up and down. It's a difficult shape for me to get it just right. I also worked on getting the rim a bit thicker than I usually do. The pot on the left in the photo above is how I usually do the rim (just fold the clay over). The other rims are compressed to create the perpendicular lip, which would traditionally serve to tie off a covering of some sort. Brenda Hornsby Heindl of Liberty Stoneware sent me a link to a YouTube video showing how to cover a similar preserve jar with the bladder of a pig.
I'm planning to fire all these jars in my wood kiln, stacking some of them rim to rim. I am thinking the larger pieces need a more substantial rim to survive firing them rim to rim, so that has lead me to alter the way I am making the rims. I actually like the thicker rim. I'm still working out the technique to make the new thicker rim. I'm sure there's a trick to it. It's just not something I learned to do.
Hopefully, I'll be blogging with more pictures once I get this new camera figured out. There's so many options to choose from when taking a picture with these new digital cameras. Sometimes, I miss my old Pentax 35mm.
Here's a picture of "Red," our Old English rooster, taken with the new camera, and tweaked in Photoshop:
