A Hand Drawn and Glazed Porcelain Dahlia Bowl and Matching Plate

This Dahlia Bowl with Matching Plate Measures:

Bowl: 5-1/8” wide x 2-7/8” high. 
Plate: 6-3/8” wide x 3/8” high. 

Dahlias on Dishes for breakfast, lunch or dinner?
This matching bowl and plate can be used for any meal of the day, providing you really like a lot of fruit, cereal or oatmeal.
The plate can also be placed under the bowl, as a saucer, to catch any drips.

BOWL OUTSIDE:
If you include the dark, glossy rim, this bowl has five (5) distinct bands of patterns  and colors.
Let's start at the bottom, right at the foot ring.
I am starting something new to our handmade porcelain pottery - a narrow footring.
Sometimes I feel that handmade pottery has clunky footings; the pottery that HAS footings. Some potters keep flat pot bottoms, but for some reason, I am partial to a footring.
There are many technical reasons why footings are important, however, I am drawn to the aesthetic of the footring. It adds a visual element, defining the base of the pot and creating a more finished look. I also like how the footring raises the pot up off the surface, and allows a smaller area to touch the surface on which the pot sits.
Less scratches, perhaps? I think the pottery is better protected from scratches, as well as the "table" the pottery sits on.
Also, I sand all of our pottery on a potter's wheel, mounted diamond disk. As the wheel whirls around, it sands the footring very smooth, hopefully avoiding scratches.

Now that we have our footring explained, let's move up a ring:

The clay we used for this series of pots is manufactured by Sio-2.
Since we are colored porcelain clay ceramicists, we color our own porcelain clay.
However, this 33 pound, or 15 kg (three - 5 kg packages) of porcelain has been colored by Sio-2. 
This series utilizes Sio-2's Lagoon; a turquoise blue porcelain clay body. We HAD to give this beautiful color a go, especially when I kept thinking about the turquoise blue color - so beautiful!
All of the pieces in this series have this turquoise colored porcelain as our base color.
Here is a more detailed look at Sio-2 Turquoise Blue Porcelain Clay.

The first band up from the footring is, stripes.
After the first firing (Cone 04; 1932 degrees Fahrenheit), a lot of very narrow tape was strategically adhered to the bisque pot . Each stripe points to the center of the bowl's bottom.
A white satin matte glaze applied in between the taped lines. Turquoise blue porcelain can be seen where the tape was.

The second band up from the footring, is also a taped design; a little more detailed design, utilizing stripes on the diagonal. This design is a glossy black with turquoise porcelain visible where the tape was.

The third band up from the footring consists of polka dots. I use an adhesive polka dot to glaze these festive circles. I chose yellow polka dots on a gray backdrop, as the unexpected colors set the decoration a little off balance. Not too matchy, matchy.

The fourth band up, is the star of the show, and what most of my pots are about - 
the FLOWERS!
This bowl celebrates the dahlia. 
With thousands of dahlia cultivars, this bowl encompasses seven of them, plus a few buds. Red is the color of choice for these dahlias - light red, dark red, orange red.
Dahlias are hand drawn on bisqueware, and rubber latex applied over my drawing. Underglaze is applied, as if coloring in between the lines. Three coats of underglaze is required for the opaque aesthetic I prefer. After the underglaze is applied, the rubber latex is peeled off. This is the most fun, as it is like peeling off a rubber band. Three thin coats of a lead free, dinnerware safe CLEAR is brushed on, giving the piece a glossy sheen, and smoothing the edges of the underglaze as it melts in the hot kiln.

The fifth band up, is the rim, described below.

BOWL INSIDE:
The inside of this dahlia bowl is a very pale yellow green, with Lagoon Porcelain swirls clearly visible on the inside bottom of the bowl.
At the inside rim, where the green glaze overlaps the dark red Cordovan rim, a band of amber speckles was created, just below the Cordovan rim.

RIM:
Glossy dark red Cordovan 

PLATE:
The plate is a flat version of its matching bowl, incorporating just one dahlia from the bowl.
Instead of the stripes steering towards the center, as the bowl does, they are parallel to one another running horizontal/vertical.
There's those yellow polka dots on the gray backdrop, to set your senses off kilter.
The underside is Lagoon Turquoise Blue porcelain with a 1/4" rim of dark red, glossy  Cordovan. The Cordovan also winds around the side of the plate.

So what dahlia form did I choose to decorate the plate with?
I chose a formal decorative dahlia form on the plate.

Wheel-thrown Sio-2 Lagoon Turquoise Blue Porcelain Clay.
Glazed with lead-free, dinnerware safe glazes.
Fired to Cone 6 (2232º Fahrenheit).
I recommend washing these hand crafted pieces by hand.
My signature is engraved on the bottom of the bowl.

All of our handmade pottery is either wheel-thrown or handbuilt in our North Carolina home studio.