Lemon Squeezy

I finally got into the studio this week. I guess I haven't thrown since early March (before classes moved online for finals) and I haven't really worked with wet clay since spring break. I was hoping to be done with school stuff this week. I'm not quite there yet, but I did sneak in some time to throw at least.

Lemon Squeezers, Sean saw these on my shelf and said he thought they looked like tools.

My getting-back project was to make some lemon or lime squeezers for our kitchen. Earlier this year my husband bought a metal lemon squeezer, but the metal quickly started pitting and looking ugly. Around this time I saw some hand held citrus squeezers by Lorna Meaden on her Instagram and realized that ceramic would be more durable and easy to clean for regular use--and possibly easier to fit in the drawer.

Sculpture from a couple years ago

As I was throwing the pieces, I realized that the basic form I was imagining is pretty similar to the essentially form of many of my sculptures. I kept the squeezer part thick so that I could carve channels into the surface for maximum lemon squeezing efficiency, and I made a variety of parts so I could see what worked best. 

More Lemon Squeezers with simplified tops.

I carved the channels differently in different pieces and I'm not sure which will work best. I was thinking about also trying a version where I add coils onto the surface. I also played around with the handle shape and size and I think the result is that some of these look nicer than others. I'd say these were prototypes, but I'm not sure there's going to be much need for more of these. Once I fire them we'll try them out and see which work best.

A lime squeezer (because it is smaller)

I also threw some plates and dabbled a bit with a couple of mug and sculpture ideas today. My clay had gotten fairly dry since last summer, so it took a bit of work to get back in shape and it really wasn't as nice to throw with, but the studio time was refreshing anyway. 

my clean floor after mopping

After I threw and trimmed today, I was able to easily mop up the floor so my studio still looks nice and clean. It was also nice to easily put my bats directly onto the shelf next to my wheel. Unfortunately, I discovered one drawback of the new studio floor: my stool has wheels which roll more now than they did on the carpet and rugs of the old studio. I might have to replace them or add some kind of block to keep them from rolling while I throw.