Following on from Salad Days in May, the next date on the food calender which goes hand in hand with a pot made regularly here at Waun Hir Pottery is National Lasagne Day. Celebrated in the USA tomorrow July 29th. I love lasagne and cooked it for dinner tonight. I first made rectangular baking dishes while at college. I have always enjoyed making pots that are thrown on the potters’ wheel and then altered in shape. The lasagne dishes available in three sizes from the Ovenware section in the Kitchen Pottery shop employ this technique. The thrown wall is made without a base and altered into a rectangle which is then joined to a rolled slab base.
It Only Takes a Couple of Minutes
I often get asked, “how long does it take to make a pot?” My usual perhaps somewhat flippant reply is a “couple of minutes.” This of course isn’t really true and is somewhat misleading.
Annually at this time of year I make Commemorative Mugs for the year six pupils leaving Teilo Sant, the primary school in my home town Llandeilo. Unlike my standard mugs though this particular batch are personalised with names and a date, they also have an additional transfer firing. I regularly throw a board of mugs at a rate of about twenty an hour – not excessively fast for a repetition thrower but never the less quick enough. It is this throwing twenty in an hour that I am referring to when I casually remark “a couple of minutes.” Here I will explain in more depth what the whole process actually entails.
How long does it take to make one of these special mugs?