I teach my students that basic ceramic hand building starts with learning to make three forms: a ball (for pinch pots), a snake (for oil pots), and a pancake (for building with flat slabs). This garden mushroom project, not only helps students use two of these techniques, but is serving as a fundraiser to coincide with a school plant sale. They start with a pinch pot to make the top of a mushroom, and then they make a coil for the stem. These are attached using a score and slip technique, and so a lot of basic skills are being practiced with one simple project.
When the clay was still wet, we nestled the mushroom tops upside-down in a newspaper cradled in a cup, sometimes wrapping paper towels around the stem to keep it from slumping over. Students could press objects into the mushroom tops to make dots or lines to add texture to the surface.
The stem made for a perfect handle to glaze the mushroom top. This student is totally blind but was able to get a few coats of glaze on each of their mushrooms without any problem. It was a little tricky getting glaze from the top of the mushrooms from touching the kiln shelves, but I sponged off the edges and balanced the tops on little stilts. A couple of the tops came off in the bisque firing, but I managed to stand the stems up in kiln posts, put a blob of glaze at the top of each stem, and balanced the mushroom tops until the two parts fused together. Everyone was so happy to see all the colors after the glaze firing. Here's to a successful fundraiser!
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