Christmas ornaments
Handmade glazed ceramic Christmas ornaments
Cast in plaster moulds made in this studio, trimmed by hand, glazed in small batches, and fired twice. Made in Staunton, Illinois.
Our ceramic Christmas ornaments begin as liquid slip poured into plaster moulds. The ornament designs come from Old Forge Creations, who publish the 3D files; the moulds themselves took more than two months of studio time to make. Every ornament is trimmed, cleaned, and glazed by hand before its two firings.
Jesse's work
Marked and made by hand
Jesse makes the ornaments and marks the year into them by hand. The numerals are cut from a rolled sheet of clay and fixed to the body, so each one sits a little differently.
Because every stage of the process, the casting, the trimming, the cleaning, the glazing, is done by hand in a small batch, no two ornaments from the same mould come out quite the same.
From the bench
How a batch comes together
The mould drinks the water out of the slip and a solid wall of clay forms against it. The piece is turned out, the seam trimmed, the sprue cut away, and then it waits: dry, first firing, glaze, second firing.
Between the trimming and the glaze is where most of the character arrives. The same shape comes out of the mould every time, and the same shape never leaves the studio twice.
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- Ceramic planters What we are developing next
- All the work The full portfolio