Two Plates

From my last firing I got these two plates. They are very different in style.

The first plate:

I am still interested in portraying birds on my ceramics. This time rather than underglazes, I have done a brown pelican using the champleve technique. Champleve is like scraffito only it is carved deeper and showing more of the clay under the slip. I particularly like the negative space formed by the head and left wing of this bird.

This plate was based on a bowl from the Umayyads of A;-Andalus from around 936 AD. I like it very much, this may be my favotite Medieval design ever. My design is done in underglazes as was the original. Mine, of course, is fired hotter and does not use lead in the glazes.