Gallery 8

The Making of Pots

Click on the photo to see the steps behind making that pot.

The decision to have a pot semi-custom made requires choosing a "body", a theme, colors and images that you wish to have on a pot. Making one that is fully custom requires more decisions. Below are 6 examples of the photos that would be sent to your email account, to show how a pot evolves as Carol Helen Beule works on it.

Photo of Furan Pot #11. Depicts a simple pot that is small with few colors. This original was designed to allow for piercing and changing many areas of this body. This evolved into Pot #2 original - Small pedestal.

Photo of Furan Pot #22. Shows the evolution of a pot that has both carved and painted images on it. The goldfish is 1st carved and placed onto the body of the pot, and then the surrounding colored images are added. Finally the gold is added. This is a Medium Cymbidium pot. #16-2.

Photo of Furan Pot #33. This frog pot was started before the Hummingbird Cymbidium pot, the most ambitious at that time. Carol needed to be sure she could manage images in this fashion. It was an experiment for Carol's own use. This body is #14 - Lg. quatrefoil.

Photo of Furan Pot #44. Carol had often wanted to use a darker clay and this gave her the chance to try one that allowed for better carving. Eventually she decided to color glaze it. It could have been simply glazed with a clear matte glaze, and allowed the dark clay to show through. This is also body #14 - Lg. quatrefoil.

Photo of Furan Pot #55. The chrysanthemum pot was a chance for Ms. Beule to play with underglazes that are both matte and shiny, without needing a 2nd firing. The was her 1st try at this technique. #12 body - with decorative feet.

Photo of Furan Pot #66. The very large Cymbidium pot was a most ambitious project before trying to paint a Geisha on a similar sized pot. This was time consuming, detailed and complicated. Carol made it twice, because the 1st time the underglaze became "pebbly" and the pot was unusable. #16-1 body. These are very expensive.

Drawing of Stork in the Oriental style7. This gallery contains the drawing and patterns used in the making of the pots.

Drawing bird in tree that inspired the painting of a pot8. This gallery shows how the design of a comissioned pot was inspired and details of the stages of painting and firing.

Photo of carved clay pot9. This gallery describes the process of carving clay pots and their finished form.