home | gallery | workshops & shows | about | apprenticeship | articles | technical | 16hands | contact
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Silvie Granatelli & David Crane
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: Clay Times, Volume 5, No.2, March/April 1999. pages 32-36
by J. D. Riggs & Orlene Riggs
Photos by J. D. Riggs
More than 70 amateur and professional potters recently gathered at Dan Finch Studio in Bailey, North Carolina to witness two days of inspiring demonstrations by Virginia based potters Silvie Granatelli and David Crane. Both of whom are active potters and educators with impressive credentials, Granatelli and Crane shared their techniques for creating altered forms of utilitarian pots throughout the weekend.
Silvie Granatelli is a functional ware potter and educator now living in Floyd, Virginia. She is especially interested in making utilitarian pottery with porcelain clays. Granatelli holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kansas State Art Institute and a Master of Fine Arts from Montana State University. She has presented numerous workshops and participated in numerous exhibits throughout her career, and is presently a studio potter and part-time instructor at VPI&SU, Blacksburg, Virginia.
Granatelli says her pottery is about food presentation. It is made to bring foods to light. While function is a primary consideration, mood is also of great importance. She likes to create atmosphere with her tableware.
Condiment Dish & Tray.
Considerations about mood contribute to the overall look and feel of her pieces, she says, and while ideas come easily, meaning seems to come in layers over decades of time. It is meaning which gives strength to food ideas, she adds.
Granatelli is concerned with ritual as well. She believes that rituals uncover the basic values, aims, and attitudes of a people. She is half Sicilian and half Cajun, and both cultures are wrought with superstitions.
Pitcher.
Add the importance of food to these groups and Catholic upbringing, and Granatelli has rituals dancing all about her. She began to cook when she was a teenager, and it has been a strong, sustaining interest in her life. Cooking has given her an avenue to explore and create her own personal rituals.
Currently she is exploring the idea that hospitality means to give and to receive. She views pottery as a vehicle of hospitality because it gives and receives simultaneously. It is both the host and the guest. Granatelli likes to think about things such as which foods are chosen from those available, how they are prepared and eaten, with whom, when, and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating. She believes that this is one of the means by which society creates itself, and acts out its aims and functions.
Serving Tray
Forming Techniques
Sometimes it is easy to create altered forms by the addition of something as simple as slip. This photo shows a small pitcher that Granatelli has altered by applying a pattern of porcelain slip to the leather hard surface of the pot. This is done with a squeeze applicator bottle and fairly fluid slip. When the slip trailing becomes leather hard, she flattens it with a small roller. This gives the slip trailing an effect similar to embossed paper or brocade fabric.
Smoothing Slip Trails
Granatelli also alters the outside of a bowl by using just her fingers, immediately after throwing the pot. The thumb and index finger of one hand are used on the exterior; the index and middle finger of the other hand push outward into the "V" formed by the fingers of the other hand. Using lots of water on the fingers lets the clay slip through better. Pictured at the upper right of this page is a pitcher thrown using the technique described here.
Granatelli facilitates the exterior grooves on a pot using a sharp trim knife after the pot is leather hard. It is placed upside down on a wheel to make it easier to work on.
Another technique demonstrated at the workshop was to throw small, thin spouts that can then be used on tea pots, small pitchers, etc. Granatelli likes to pull spouts off of a hump of clay. She uses the plastic handle of a needle tool to throw against. Because the needle tool handle is made of smooth plastic, the clay slides easily against it. After cutting the spout off the hump, the spout is arced with the handle of the needle tool by pushing it into the pouring end of the spout and curving and pulling at the same time.
Because Granatelli uses porcelain clays, she needs to make thinner, more delicate handles than with stoneware clay. She pulls the handles from small plugs of clay to the desired thickness, ribbon like and thin. Then she lets them stiffen slightly by hanging each handle off of the edge of a table until they are somewhat dry. Next, she cuts the handle from the plug of clay using a beveled cut. She then attaches the handle low on the cup. Because the handle has stiffened somewhat, she is able to set the arch and have it maintain its form as she attaches the lower part of the handle to the cup.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Using Multiple Layers of Underglaze With Glazes
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From Handbuilt Tableware, by Kathy Triplett. Lark Books, 2000. pages. 106-107
Handbuilt Serving Dishes
Change comes easily to Granatelli (in fact, she says the temptation is to change to much). Her shapes evolve continuously to reflect contemporary cooking trends and eating habits. Her concentration on a particular surface treatment runs in five to eight year cycles. Sometimes she returns to old textures and patterns using different techniques. The fruit forms shown here resulted as a way of establishing a contrast between the voluptuousness of the fruit versus the containment of the pottery form. She enjoys making pots for specific functions, and when she sets her own table for a feast, she combines tableware by many potters as well as industrial ceramics, mixing it all up.
Granatelli begins her glazing technique on several greenware platters that have been hump-molded over plaster forms. She prefers to work on several pieces at one sitting, for efficiency. The platters have extruded feet and rims and pulled handles. She has sprayed a thin layer of underglaze on each.
1. She starts by lightly sketching pencil designs on the stain (photo 1).
2. Next, she fills in the sketched shapes by brushing on underglazes of yellow, chartreuse, orange, red, tan-taupe, and different shades of green (photos 2 and 3). She handles the brushes with a light, gestural touch, overlapping colors and applying them loosely, so that the brush strokes are visible.
3. Using s black underglaze and a small, pointed brush, she outlines the shapes (photo 4).
4. With a cutting nail, which is a thick, wedge-shaped nail, she scratches through the designs (photo
5. The action creates a powdery residue of underglazes and clay body, which she leaves on the surface.
how to 5. After waiting an hour (or overnight), she uses a finger to smudge and blend the residue, which softens the design (photo 6), then she blows off any excess residue.
She bisque fires the pieces to cone 04. After firing, she pours a clear glaze on the insides of the pieces to coat the interiors, then pours it out and wipes off the rims, to remove the glaze from those areas. Using a commercial liquid latex resist, she paints over the clear glaze; she also paints the feet of each piece with a liquid wax resist. She then submerges the pieces in a mate glaze to coat the outsides. The mate will form a nice contrast with the clear glaze on the insides. Finally, she peels off the protective latex and fires the pieces in reduction to cone 9 or cone 10. Silvie Granatelli makes functional tableware and seeks to create a special mood or atmosphere, highlighting food with her beautiful serving pieces. Her Sicilian and Cajun roots contribute to her strong affinity for cooking, hospitality and the ritual of eating. While at the Kansas City Art Institute, she fell in love with Japanese ceramics and English folk pots. Her style has also been influenced by her love of the sensuality of porcelain -- the way light gathers in the clay, the way the colors stay bright, and the way it can look liquid, even after it is fired.