Basket Case

In Pat Horsley's workshop he showed many slides of what he called baskets. These oval shaped pots had extruded handles spanning the their tops and resembled baskets in form only with no woven character. In his slides the remarkable thing was that even early on his glazes were good. He seemed to almost perfect the formation of color and surface quality very rapidly. The only thing that had some lacking in his early work were his forms themselves were somewhat bleak or spartan. He quickly remedied this as well soon producing pots that were dynamic in both glaze color and surface quality as well as intriguing forms.

Here is a greenware pot inspired by Pat Horsley, but the form itself is influenced by Don Sprague, Wally Schwab and a little of my own ideals thrown in to complete the functionality of this pot. This pot is entirely wheel thrown from top to bottom. The main body is constructed of a bottomless cylinder wider at the bottom, pressed into an oval. The bottom is a wheel thrown slab cut off the wheel and immediately slumped into a bisque form to start the concave form and to more rapidly dry it for attachment. About 20 minutes later I attached the bottom slab to the upside down oval cylinder. The foot and handles are thrown and taken from the same ring of clay.

The handles are my only real complaint on this pot. They need to be longer and attached at the sides for increased strength. Ethically I cannot sell this pot because the handles may fail the user with hot liquids causing someone to get burned. I will end up using it as a fruit bowl since mine was given away as a gift recently.