Pottery Dinner Plates Inspired by Mountains

My attempt at a second set of pottery dinner plates started with a hike in the Rocky Mountains – the famous Rockwall Hike! While Billy and I were exploring the backcountry, I would stop and take pictures of rock patterns and colours feeling that it would inspire some pottery work in the future. Fast forward 6 months and I found myself in a “Matching Sets” pottery class with John Borrowman. I learned so much with that first set of dinner plates.

I was lucky enough to create them in my friend Danielle’s garage where she has a little pottery studio. We try to get together on a regular basis to work on pottery and I am so grateful for her kindness and friendship. It’s so fun to watch and learn from her pottery practice; she is wonderful to collaborate and brainstorm with.

Back to the dinner plates, I decided to throw a different shape this time and it was much simpler without a flange. However, it wasn’t all easy. I learned a big lesson in the fragility of greenware plates while moving them on the drying shelves. I must have broken 2 or 3 over the course of a few weeks and had to rethrow them. But, I think that practice did me a lot of good in form and throwing technique. In the end, I only have 5 dinner plates instead of 6 in this set, but that works for me.

I thought that the gritty feel of this clay body would also be a design addition for a grippy surface for the outside and bottom of the plates. I tend to design pottery dishes for easy transport from kitchen to table. Aesthetically, I also wanted to highlight the granite clay by leaving the plate lip bare to meet the turquoise glaze I choose for the plate well. I kept the glazing simple with one colour – Mayco Norse Blue -to mimic where water meets the granite stone of the mountain.

These dinner plates were thrown 10″ in diameter and they shrunk to be about 9.5″ after glaze firing. I feel 9 to 9.5″ is an elegant size for a dinner plate. And by some miracle, they all stack despite being created over several weeks and trimmed slightly differently.

If you are experiencing some challenges with your pottery dinner plates, all I can say is keep going! It was worth all the planning, throwing, trimming, and plate breakage to get this set.