Ceramics - buttons and beads course

Day 1 - of two. I'll be making some beads and perhaps even a button or two, but mainly I want to get on with foldy dipped shapes (started in "textiles into ceramics" earlier this year). Here are some I prepared before the class -

At the outset, this crudité -

Then the serious work of dipping -

dipping paper into porcelain slip

dipping heat-set, pole-wrapped metallic organza

the dipped fabric curls but keeps its pleats

Before next week I'm aiming to do some pole-wrapping and steaming of other kinds of organza ("metal" in the kiln is a bit of a risk - though I used a fair bit of metal in ceramics during the foundation course) to see what happens to these sorts of pleated fabrics.

By then these laboriously-dipped objects will be out of the kiln -

Note the beads among them! The anticipation is to see what happens - and the challenge is to respond to that on the only other day of this (very) short course. I feel a need to work through this systematically, step by step, rather than striking out blindly with "will this work? what will happen?" and not being able to take it further, either by "making it better" or by doing something different because of previous results. I'll be looking for a weekly class, or place, to be able to develop this, with some time to think in between. But two concentrated days is a booster.

Someone commented that my "foldy-books" were like walls, which isn't something I'd thought of before, but will continue to think about...