I have officially started on my locking box and have officially made a lot of progress on it! The construction has gone super smoothly for the box and the lid, most likely because of all the preplanning and continually taking measurements while the clay is still wet.
I feel like I’m revisiting a lot of techniques I have admired, but didn’t get to thoroughly explore before. I haven’t made a dimensional slab piece since my first warm up vessel in Ceramice 1. I also haven’t used colored slip since my face jug (except for clayground), which was my first big ceramics project. This project is heavily using both.
I finished all of the actual building of the box on Wednesday. The box was was smooth, it was wonderful, it felt so good to hold. I loved it.
And then on Thursday I tried to add colored slip and do the sgraffito. Then I suddenly hated it. Looking back I realized I made a few mistakes, but there were also some things out of my control. I needed to have more patience with waiting for the slip to dry a bit more. I also think I would have benefitted from practicing sgraffito on a scrap piece before the actual box. Out of my control was the fact that my new medicine makes my hands go tingly and numb. But, basically, I was freaking out because I felt like I had ruined the box.
So after patching up the weird side and saying “good night, moon,” I went home and came up with a plan. I created a really basic stencil for each side to negate many of the issues I was having.
And it worked! I’m very happy with where my box is at and the direction it is going. In the coming week I plan to complete making the odd bits and pieces to make the locking mechanisms.
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