7. Make a Full Dinner Set

So a running joke is that whenever someone starts pottery they immediately want to make an entire dinner set. However, plates are one of the most unforgiving pieces of pottery to make since learning how to keep something flat and preventing it from cracking or warping is really hard.

The full list of what I am going to make is:

6 Iced Tea glasses

1 Set of Salt and Pepper Shakers

1 Butter Dish

6 Saucers

6 Soup Bowls

6 Pasta Bowls/Blates

6 Dipping Bowls

1 Iced Tea Pitcher

6 Whisky Glasses

My plan is to make everything in a white stoneware, which has a lower shrinkage rate and tends to be easier to work with in larger and wider sizes, which will be helpful for the iced tea pitcher and the pasta bowls/blates. I've sketched out some designs, but this will be (unlike most dinner sets) a custom collection of dinnerware the way I prefer to cook. So the bowls will be deep for soups, there will be whisky glasses because I enjoy drinking whisky with friends, and an iced tea pitcher instead of a water pitcher, because when I cook I like serving iced tea. I'm not planning on making serving dishes as of yet, just the dinnerware, but we'll see how this project goes!

Iced Tea Pitcher

Rather than start on any of the sets, my first piece will be a different sort of challenging. Due to the shrinkage rate when fired, all pots have to be thrown far larger than you intend them to be when they are finished. The clay I will be using has a shrinkage rate of around 12%, so the iced tea pitcher, which is already a large piece, has to be made even bigger. I sketched out a design that has more of a Victorian silhouette, with a curving lip and a rim that drops down in the back into the handle. I decided on the shape in the hopes that it would be more likely to hold the ice in the belly of the pot, while allowing the tea to be poured off the top (because I actually don't like my iced tea with...ice).

I threw the body of the pitcher in one piece, but cut the rim and added the cut piece onto the lip to create a longer, more curved shape. The handle was pulled and added later.

Salt and Pepper Shakers

Any potter will tell you that the most difficult thing to make is a set. And these salt and pepper shakers are the first of many sets in this project. But there just needs to be two, unlike the rest of them. Salt cellars are a very popular ceramic project, and they are really great for cooking but not really helpful at table, so I am going to be making closed form salt and pepper shakers and carving a port at the bottom, which will be plugged with a small stopper to keep the salt and pepper in.

To start off with I had drawn a shape that looked similar to a metal shaker set I had seen the past, and I started off by throwing two of them, which seemed to go pretty well. I followed up by throwing a second set, in a slightly different design, so that I had options. The shape of the pitcher is going to be governing the overall shapes of the set, and it's very curved so I wanted the salt and pepper shakers to have the same feel. We'll see which set I like when we get to the end.