- Throwing a lid for a tagine
Further to my last, Jon the Potter at Eastnor Pottery has put up on his blog some photos of last Sunday’s workshop, including some of me throwing a tagine lid. I deliberately don’t take my camera with me, as I get absolutely filthy when I’m throwing, and clay and lenses don’t mix. So I have shamelessly plagiarized one of Jon’s pictures to show you what I got up to. I was concentrating very hard, as I really did not want to introduce a wobble into the pot at this late stage in the process!
The base of the pot, which will eventually form the conical top of the tagine lid, is far too thick-walled at the moment. But if I tried to make it much thinner, the wet clay did not have enough structural strength to support the splaying rim, and I had several trial lids slump on me. So I had to throw them with quite thick bases. I’ve asked Jon to dry the pots out to a leather-hard consistency, and next time I go to the pottery I’ll trim away the excess clay to make the outer diameter of the lid more accurately follow the inner diameter, which is much closer to the pointy cone that I want.
