I was inspired by nostalgebraist (re)posting this image, entitled “A cube and its greebled version”:

Of course, mine is more regular (but, being handmade, is also much more irregular). It’s slab-built: first I carved an annular sector and a circle on a slab. Then I cut and rolled the sector (making a truncated cone), and molded the circle over a dome to make the bottom. I attached the two pieces, and cut a hole for the spout. The spout is a coil with a hole poked through it, hand-molded, with both carving and additions to get the greebling. The handle was a thinner slab, also with both carving and addition. As the piece was drying, the handle cracked, so I had to repair it with paper clay (which, as far as I can tell, is some kind of magic). Then I had to make a lid, and I realized that I had not thought at all about what the handle should be like. So I just whipped up something that would work with the texture.

The glaze is three coats of Coyote’s Really Red (two on the bottom, which turned out to be plenty). I thought that a complicated form should have a simple glaze. Also, having spent like fifteen hours greebling the thing, I wasn’t about to spend another fifteen painting it. And I recently had some bad luck with the studio glazes; I tried to make a mug that was yellow, black, and red-brown, and got greenish-brown, brown, and green (respectively) instead. So I stuck with something I knew would work.

I’ve been messing around with ceramics for nine or so months now, and this is the piece that I’m proudest of.