Pottery Time: Platform Bird Feeders

I am super excited with how these turned out. This is actually a rare moment where I made something for myself (to start out with for the first one). I had been looking up information about bird, feeders and houses (I admit I am lost when it comes to birds in many respects) and really liked the idea of a platform feeder and thought it could easily be made with pottery.

 Here is the picture of mine hanging from our crabapple tree. Since it is kind of heavy I made sure to use a thick enough chain and put it close enough in to the tree that my husband wouldn't crack his head on it when mowing.

To make these, I had slab rolled out my clay. On the top one I had made an imprint of a conifer branch from our yard and I slab rolled that in to the clay and pulled out the branch. You don't need to worry about any little pieces left as it will burn off in the kiln. I then made a template of the size I wanted the bird feeder to be and cut it out using a needle. Next I had shaped the sides doing hand building and punched holes through the clay to that I could insert my chain. I had done a combination glaze over the entire piece.

This is the second one I made. It may or may not be gifted by time this posts. I had liked my own bird feeders so much that I wanted to make another and largely used the same techniques with a few exceptions. To make the branch and own I had used a mold and then scratched the clay and used slip to adhere the branch and owl to the bird feeder. Then I added texture by carving in to the bird feeder, over the entire piece. I wanted to give it the feel/look of bark. I them handpainted on underglaze on this piece before the first firing and then poured clear glaze over it for the final firing.

 Here you can see it without the seed in it.

And here is the finished gift one. I thought I had the same size punch for this one to make the holes, but I made mistaken and the chain would not go through the holes, so I added aluminum wire wrapped around to attach my chain through. I think it looks better than it does in the photograph and I like it better than with the chain alone. I thought it added even more of an artistic element to it.