Pictured are my in-progress, Deluxe clover cups and Yunomi
at the leatherhard stage with completed decoration.
December tends to be a quieter time in my studio, a month I try to use for play and development in the midst of ongoing deadlines. For the last six weeks, I’ve focused on color, specifically more.
Around 2012, I began to add hand-brushed color in my stamp patterns, from bits to a bit more. Since this past spring, I’ve been hand-brushing several colors into one or two whole stamps (an image stamp vs. an abstract pattern) creating what I refer to as my Colorized Series. For me, the dazzling color from one completely colored image creates a focal point. The surrounding, uncolored stamps feel wistful and softer, like memories. Hand-coloring every stamp would be prohibitively time-consuming, but more importantly, full color on every image would feel commercial. I want to entice the cup’s owner to turn it ’round in the hand to find, appreciate, and ponder each honey bee (above), for example, colored and uncolored.
The delightful reception to my new Colorized cups encouraged me to delve deeper into cherry reds and cupcake pinks during my December play month. I’m a huge lover of color, but the technical logistics of color in ceramics, in addition to my general glacial aesthetic growth (in no small part because I allow myself to be a precise maker) slowed my figuring of how exactly to bring color to my pots. Suffice it to say, color is happening!
This particular color palette and my ongoing desire for it to be spring year-round (which does not happen here in Massachusetts) lead me to spend my six weeks of play on Valentine-inspired cups, a new series with colorful shapes I’m calling Arabesque Mod (a nod to my love of Islamic art, juiced with contemporary color and mod flair), new flower stamps, and as many polka dots and stripes as I could fit on a cup (above).
The ‘Valentine/Spring in Feb’ or ‘Valenspringtine’ cups, tumblers, and few tableware pieces will be listed in my online shop on Friday, January 30th at noon EST.
Kristen Kieffer 
TheseColorful pots are really amazing! I love that you are diving deeper and deeper into color and ornament! Well done!
For me, December is rarely a time that I work on pots. Almost always I am selling. Part of the issue for me is that my kiln is so big that I can’t fire small batches. January is the time I play and that’s what I will be doing in the coming weeks!
But back to the small batch/iteration thing, I am building a smaller kiln this spring that will help me work through new ideas at a different pace. I’m building a soda kiln, so it will still be in the atmospheric mode, just a different scale! Look out for my kickstarter campaign for that!! ;-)
Thank you, MK! Smaller kiln sounds great!
Love these!
Thank you, Christy!
Wonderful and playful! Can’t wait to see them fired! But I laughed at my first thought when I saw the deluxe clover cup w the cherry dots. It was as if the top circle had been filled w red, but some droplets had escaped or leaked out and run down the side of the cup!
I enjoy seeing and hearing your design development processes. Thanks for sharing them w us.
Thank you, Bonnie!