Christmas gifts for the family last year usually came from my pottery studio. I love giving (and receiving) things that are handcrafted. As a culture, we tend to forget that purchases represent the exchange of a person's time to an employer for money. Often a gift is purchased or received without much thought of the time spent in earning that particular amount of money. The connection between a handcrafted gift and a person's precious time is, for me, more apparent.
In December, coffee mugs, bowls and ring holders in greens, reds and blues were created for family members. For my mom, I wanted to make something extra special so I decided to make a tea set. Teapots are a challenge because of the many steps of adding spouts, handles, and feet at just the right time and at the right dryness of the different pieces. Then, of course, a lid must be created...one that fits! Lids are one of my 2012 challenges that I hope to spend more time developing.
While creating this one, I decided to check into some alternative closures. I've seen olive oil bottles with cork stoppers and that looked interesting to me. Knowing that Mark was coming home for Christmas I asked him to stop at my pottery supply store and pick some bottle stoppers up for me. As a dutiful son, he checked it out and let me know they didn't have any cork bottle stoppers available. Hmmm, well, in the busyness of Christmas I decided to look into it later.
I loved giving and everyone said they loved receiving their ceramic Christmas gifts. It was a great season in my pottery and overall, sales from my pieces exceeded my goals. A very good December! For my birthday, a week later, Mark surprised me with these gorgeous 6 natural bark cork pieces.
The large ones are five and a half inches across. They are absolutely gorgeous in their primitive bark state with so much texture. They are lightweight and you can even see the tree rings in their edge. I just love them. I was already considering a prayer jar and knew right away that I wanted to incorporate some of these. Mark explained that my supply company does not have these in stock, but when he asked for a cork stopper someone remembered that they had something in the warehouse. A search was on and they sold these to Mark but had to make up some stock numbers because they weren't in the computer's inventory.
I spoke with the owner of the store in January. He explained that because of the natural character of these cork pieces, the Agricultural Department no longer allows them to be imported. These particular ones were brought from Spain over thirty years ago. (Cork is harvested every ten to fifteen years from cork oak trees that live around 200 years.) The store hasn't sold them in many, many years and they were just pushed to the side in the warehouse. I was welcome to make a one more purchase of them, but that was all they had. So, being so in love with them, I ordered fifteen more.
The process to making these fit is to put the caliper on the outside of the lid, then it lets me know the inside diameter of the pot I am making. The art and challenge is that at the clay dries, it shrinks. So, I still have a learning curve! Of the seven prayer jars I have created, four of them have cork tops that fit...and two of those are going to St. Edward's.
I love learning new things and am so thankful for my home studio that challenges me to investigate and learn as well as to take time to soak in beauty in unexpected places.
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