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Holy orders
Sep. 14th, 2017 08:48 pmThe chalice set I made for my sister-in-law's ordination isn't the first I've done; I've been making liturgical ware for years.
It started back in my Craft Center days, when fellow potter Kathy Lee was approached by her church about doing some specialized ware, chalices with a divided reservoir that could hold both wine and grape juice. The communicant would take the grape via intinction, dipping the communion bread into the preferred side. Kathy had done some altar ware in the past--her late husband Clarence was a Lutheran minister--but really didn't want the assignment, so introduced them to me.
I took a lot of interesting projects back in the day, before Off Center Ceramics started selling regularly: KLCC mugs, Saint Vincent de Paul bowls, a table-top fountain basins for Craft Warehouse. This project was more complicated than any of those. The intinction chalices, which were actually attached to a paten (bread plate) in the manner of chip'n'dip servers, were by far the worst, five different pieces--plate, stem, bowl, extra piece of bowl for the divider, and a sprigged disk in the form of a host, with a Jerusalem cross--that needed to be fitted together at the perfect stage of moisture, else they'd crack apart in drying.
I enjoyed the challenge, though, and definitely appreciated the pay: specialized altar ware sells well above the wholesale prices I made for most of the other projects. What I didn't realize was that I'd signed on for a lifetime commitment.
Things break, you see. Congregations grow, and the number of service pieces needed increases. New celebrants have new ideas for the design of a particular item. So I've been making chalices, patens, ciboria and cruets for Central Lutheran Church (and also, via their referral, Springfield Lutheran) for a good twenty years now.
The latest order is big, and complex. I need to make five large chalices, single-chamber, and three saucer-style patens, to match an existing set. Also a large wine cruet with stopper.
I also need to make six smaller, intinction-style chalices--fortunately without the attached paten--and three bowl-style patens, in the same glaze, but on a darker clay body, to match a different original set.
Fortunately, I've got a long timeline; they want them for Christmas. Knowing how busy the holiday season is for me, though, I've made and glazed the entire set to fit into my September firing. That way, if anything goes wrong, I'll have at least two more firings to make the sets good.
It started back in my Craft Center days, when fellow potter Kathy Lee was approached by her church about doing some specialized ware, chalices with a divided reservoir that could hold both wine and grape juice. The communicant would take the grape via intinction, dipping the communion bread into the preferred side. Kathy had done some altar ware in the past--her late husband Clarence was a Lutheran minister--but really didn't want the assignment, so introduced them to me.
I took a lot of interesting projects back in the day, before Off Center Ceramics started selling regularly: KLCC mugs, Saint Vincent de Paul bowls, a table-top fountain basins for Craft Warehouse. This project was more complicated than any of those. The intinction chalices, which were actually attached to a paten (bread plate) in the manner of chip'n'dip servers, were by far the worst, five different pieces--plate, stem, bowl, extra piece of bowl for the divider, and a sprigged disk in the form of a host, with a Jerusalem cross--that needed to be fitted together at the perfect stage of moisture, else they'd crack apart in drying.
I enjoyed the challenge, though, and definitely appreciated the pay: specialized altar ware sells well above the wholesale prices I made for most of the other projects. What I didn't realize was that I'd signed on for a lifetime commitment.
Things break, you see. Congregations grow, and the number of service pieces needed increases. New celebrants have new ideas for the design of a particular item. So I've been making chalices, patens, ciboria and cruets for Central Lutheran Church (and also, via their referral, Springfield Lutheran) for a good twenty years now.
The latest order is big, and complex. I need to make five large chalices, single-chamber, and three saucer-style patens, to match an existing set. Also a large wine cruet with stopper.
I also need to make six smaller, intinction-style chalices--fortunately without the attached paten--and three bowl-style patens, in the same glaze, but on a darker clay body, to match a different original set.
Fortunately, I've got a long timeline; they want them for Christmas. Knowing how busy the holiday season is for me, though, I've made and glazed the entire set to fit into my September firing. That way, if anything goes wrong, I'll have at least two more firings to make the sets good.