Bank account
Mar. 1st, 2017 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrThis week's project: making banks. I started doing these at the very beginning of Off Center Ceramics, with pigs, elephants, and cats. Like everything else I do, the varieties burgeoned. Eventually, I found myself doing two dozen different varieties, including dogs, chickens, walrus, whales (blue and killer), rhinoceros, hippopotamus, I shudder to remember what all else.
I originally sold them for $20, which even back then was a ridiculously low price; they're a huge amount of work. Now days I charge $40, and only make the best-selling patterns: pig, elephant, cat, hen, frog, and three varieties of dinosaur. And I put off making them until this time of year, because they're still way too much work.
This week, I made eight each of pig, cat, brontosaur and stegosaur banks. That's 32 bodies to throw, but also 16 head-and-necks (the dinosaurs start as two separate thrown pieces). I extrude the legs as coil and then shape them: 96 legs. Twenty-four cat paws, plus eight fore-legs and tails. 32 ears, between the cat and the pigs. Twenty-four eyebrows (cat eyes are sketched in with a fingernail, squinted closed). Stegosaurs average 18-20 back plates each, so that's around 160 of those. Porcelain eyes, 48, colored porcelain pupils, also 48. Pink porcelain tongues (for the cats, natch), eight. Plus I have to cut coin slots and punch withdrawal-stopper holes and put everything together and… you see why I try to only do this once or twice a year.
I originally sold them for $20, which even back then was a ridiculously low price; they're a huge amount of work. Now days I charge $40, and only make the best-selling patterns: pig, elephant, cat, hen, frog, and three varieties of dinosaur. And I put off making them until this time of year, because they're still way too much work.
This week, I made eight each of pig, cat, brontosaur and stegosaur banks. That's 32 bodies to throw, but also 16 head-and-necks (the dinosaurs start as two separate thrown pieces). I extrude the legs as coil and then shape them: 96 legs. Twenty-four cat paws, plus eight fore-legs and tails. 32 ears, between the cat and the pigs. Twenty-four eyebrows (cat eyes are sketched in with a fingernail, squinted closed). Stegosaurs average 18-20 back plates each, so that's around 160 of those. Porcelain eyes, 48, colored porcelain pupils, also 48. Pink porcelain tongues (for the cats, natch), eight. Plus I have to cut coin slots and punch withdrawal-stopper holes and put everything together and… you see why I try to only do this once or twice a year.