A Hand Drawn and Glazed Turquoise Porcelain Quartered Roses Lidded Bowl

This Quartered Roses Bowl with Matching Lid Measures:

Bowl: 4-7/8” wide x 2-7/8” high.
Holds approximately 2 cups of liquid (16 ounces).
Lid: 5-1/8" wide x 1-3/8" high.

This Quartered Roses Bowl with Matching Lid was wheel-thrown with Sio-2 Lagoon Turquoise Porcelain Clay. Click on the link to find out more about this beautiful turquoise porcelain.
We did not color this porcelain ourselves; it is colored by the manufacturer.

BOWL OUTSIDE:
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 our potter's wheel, mounted diamond disk.
As the wheel whirls around, it sands the footring very smooth, hopefully avoiding scratches.
Sometimes we sand the bottom, manually with a fine grit sandpaper, depending on the  depth of the footring, and how narrow it is.

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.
Pale, glossy turquoise blue stripes.
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 horizontal and vertical stripes. This design is a satin dark umber  with turquoise porcelain visible where the tape was.

The third band up from the footring consists of Quartered Roses.
Quartered Roses, in my opinion are the most beautiful roses. They acquired their name from the distinctive appearance where the petals' arrangement gives the illusion of the flower being divided into four sections. The petals are tightly packed and form a cup-like shape with a scalloped edge.
These quartered roses were etched out of red underglaze utilizing the sgraffito technique. 
Please see "How It's Made" Section for sgraffito technique.

The fourth band up is the rim, described below.

BOWL INSIDE:
The inside of this Quartered Roses bowl is a very pale blue, with swirls clearly visible on the inside bottom of the bowl.

BOWL RIM:
Naked Sio-2 Lagoon Turquoise Blue Porcelain. (not glazed)
I fire the jar with the lid on, to lessen the incidence of a warped lid. 
If the rim is glazed, the lid would fuse to the bowl.

LID OUTSIDE:
This is my favorite type of lid.
All the work is in the lid.

WHY?

This is so the bowl remains a bowl, WITHOUT a gallery.
A gallery is the ledge that the lid sits on when making a jar. (the bowl portion of the jar that the lid sits on).
The gallery interferes with the bowls function, so I prefer to make a SPLIT rimmed lid.
The bowl remains a bowl.
This is why I call this piece a lidded bowl.

The first band is the knob.
Turquoise Blue Porcelain glazed with clear.

The second band from the knob is stripes.
The stripes have been taped with a very narrow detailing tape, and are converging towards the knob. (the center)

The third band from the knob is a band of sgraffito roses.
These are not quartered roses.

The fourth band from the knob is a taped geometric design.
Taped with a very narrow detailing tape and glazed with a satin black walnut glaze.

LID RIM:
The rim if the lid is a glossy Cordovan. (very dark red)

LID INSIDE:
The inside of the lid is glazed with glossy clear.

Wheel-thrown Sio-2 Lagoon Turquoise 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.

"How It's Made"

This bowl with matching lid was created on the potter's wheel using Sio-2 Lagoon Turquoise Porcelain and a carving technique called sgraffito.

Sgraffito is an Italian word meaning - "to scratch".
A layer of slip (wet clay) is applied to the surface of the pottery, while the vessel is leather hard. (not wet and not yet bone dry).
A design is carved into the wet slip using a metal ball tool. This etching reveals the colored porcelain clay underneath the colored slip, that the pottery is wheel-thrown or hand built with. 
When creating a sgraffito piece of pottery, the design is not flush to the surface.
The colored slip is slightly raised, and the etched design does not get filled in.
The lead free, dinnerware safe clear glaze on top of the etched design, creates a smooth, shiny surface.

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