Venturing Out

I’ve wanted to step into making sculptural and functional furniture out of clay. I decided on making a stool, or little side table; it felt like a low stakes project that had the potential to teach me a lot. However, it’s a daunting thing to attempt; the larger you go the more you have to think about how things dry, how well things are attached, the stress of the weight it’s holding, etc. In light of how daunting it could be I created a rough plan, didn’t dwell on it for too long, and executed it chaotically, leaving little time to doubt or talk myself out of it.

Since I’ve been making bigger and bigger closed forms at my 9-5 pottery job, I felt the most obvious approach to the legs would be to throw tapered cylinders out of 5.5 pounds of clay, each; hefty enough to be sturdy while not exceeding weight I’m comfortable throwing and moving upwards. I’ve not thrown many things taller than 10” or so, so I wasn’t entirely sure how this would go but throwing a closed form allowed me to collar in extra inches- I ended up only having to pull to about 12” and collaring to get it to 16”. Because these legs are meant to be hefty, I didn’t have to worry so much about maximizing how much clay I was actually moving with each pull, as long as I got the desired height.

For the seat/top, I compressed 3.5 pounds of clay to 12” wide- it ended up being about an inch thick.

All in all, it turned out well! No cracks, despite letting it dry rapidly. The angle the legs are cut isn’t quite wide enough to be stable enough to sit on; I toppled backwards a bit while taking this photo. But it does hold the weight fine and is making a very nice bedside table.