Musings of a Potter

The inspiration for this plate came from a trip to Maui last summer. I fell in love with the sea turtles there and was so surprised when one casually swam past me in chest deep water!

I decided to recreate that encounter by making my sea turtle using nerikomi. This is a process where different colors of clay are layered and compressed into a shape, in this case, a triangle. Then very thin pieces are sliced off and incorporated into the plate bottom.

To achieve the sea green colors, I dipped the plate in two different glazes. The interaction of the two glazes produced the wonderful sea green/blue of the water and sandy bottom of the Maui ocean.

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