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Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Making A Covered Butter Dish...

One of my most popular kitchen products is my covered butter dish!


Covered Butter Dish with Dot Design in Aqua Mist


First I roll a block of clay through my slab roller...

Block of Stoneware Clay



Adjusting the thickness on my slab roller. 

Rolling the clay through the slab roller
Next I use a pin tool to cut each dish out of the clay.

Cutting out the butter dish 
 After each dish is cut out of the clay from my handmade template they are folded and formed.







Each one is stamped on the bottom with a handmade stamp


Soon to be decorated!

Now it's time to decorate the dish...

decorating a butter dish
I use liquid clay called slip to draw on the clay. This technique is called sliptrailing

sliptrailing 






After the dishes dry for 7 to 10 days they go into the kiln for the first firing called "Bisque". The kiln reaches over 1900 degrees fahrenheit. When they cool they are ready for glaze.  

Glazing 

Covered Butter Dish in Vintage Plum

Covered Butter Dish with Handle








13 comments:

  1. Thanks for such a lovely post! It's not very often you get to see such a clear and beautifully imaged step by step blog post for a Potters piece - I love seeing how other people work!

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  2. Hi Christine, I've tried butter dishes In the pasy, but with shrinkage, are always a bit too small. :(
    If you wouldn't mind, what are the basic dimensions of your butter dishes and lids?

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    1. Your dimensions would be clay specific. What clay and how you fire it. Cone 10 clay/firing or low fire. Shrinkage is greater with high fire. I know the manufacturer says 15% but it seems like 25%!

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  3. I love the photo where you puzzeled several complete sets of pieces onto a slab. I was mostly amazed how clean your studio was. Nice job and very informative. Thank you from Atlanta.

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  4. I love your butter dishes!!! I'm in the process of teaching myself pottery and your pictures are a great help! I would like to know what exactly you put in your slip for the sliptrailing technique. Is it just the same clay with added water? Thank you all the way from Argentina!!
    Robbie Booth

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  6. Do you have a printable template that can be used ?


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  7. These are beautiful. I'm curious as to how you glaze these. Is the bottom rim of the lid bare of glaze and set directly on the kiln shelf during the final firing?

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  8. Love this. What weight butter would this hold please? Is there a printout of the template available.
    Thank you. Great, clear instructions.

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  9. Amazing art form,art work looks lovely.Similar pottery art ,decorative and gift articles are available at

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  10. Lovely article,you butter dish looks absolutely stunning.Love to see more from your side.You can have look at http://www.potterymarket.co.uk/,for varieties of pottery,decorative and gifting items.

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  11. Your designs are lovely, and your work is so clean. I am just a beginner, and this was such a helpful post. Thank you.

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  12. Disappointing that there's no templates. This is a lovely article but not an instruction article due to that.

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