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“Square Box with Peaked Blue Top,” 10 in. (25 cm) in height, slab-built stoneware, with copper blue glaze and flashing slip, wood fired to Cone 10, by Diana Thomas.
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January 16, 2008
Building Boxes
by Scott Ruescher | Read Comments (1)
Somehow the word “box,” with its cardboard connotations, doesn’t do justice to the work of Diana Thomas--but “sculpture” doesn’t work either. Thomas’ containers come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors, from small, crackled, hutlike boxes to long, rectangular boxes, with rocker bottoms or bowed bases, that let their nearly iridescent lids (gray, pale yellow, gold or deep green) rise above their walls.
After rolling out a slab, Thomas smooths the imprints and irregularities. Using a cardboard template and fettling knife, she cuts the shape of the bottom of the box out of the freshly rolled slab. She then decides on the height of the walls--enough to give it some dignity but not so much that the form would lose visual or physical balance--marking off a long rectangular strip of that height from the same slab. She puts the template-cut slab on a banding wheel, scores the edge with a comblike tool, applies a wet slip to the scored edge, and welds the wall strip to it using coils and a rubber rib to reinforce the joint.
 With the base and walls roughly formed, Thomas waits for the clay to stiffen enough to put the top slab on. Depending on the weather, this could take several hours or several days. She drapes a fresh slab across the overturned piece on the bat trapping air inside to create the peaked lift present on many of the boxes. She trims the overlapping clay with a knife and blends a coil of clay into the newly created seam. Then she goes at it again with a metal rib and 2x4-inch chunk of wood, shaping the top to her liking, and she sets it aside to stiffen so that it can be worked again at a later stage in the process.
At last she can turn it upside down to add four feet and give the box some added lift. After turning it right-side-up again, she carefully marks the line where the lid will separate from the box and follows her knife along that line with a steady hand. Finally, she works decorative textural elements such as hash marks and zig-zags into the surface with a spackling edge or a wire loop.
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