Make 100GEMS Photobook

MAKE/100 GEMS
A ceramic collaboration to make 100+
bowls for 2021 by Ericka Marti Saracho
and Gabriela Margarita De Jesús
Vol. 1

THANK YOU FOR YOUR
SUPPORT

We're very grateful to have been able to create these
bowls for you and wanted to acknowledge that without your
pledge this project would not have been at all possible.
Pottery is an expensive craft and not easy to break into.
When we first started making bowls we started by taking
workshops at our local art studio and although we loved
pottery, tuition was steep and come the end of every
semester we wondered if we would be able to continue.
When Covid-19 shut down our local pottery studio, we
basically had no way of continuing with pottery. We had our
pottery tools from our intro classes, but no clay, no glaze, no
brushes, no access to a kiln. With the Kickstarter funds we
were able to set up a working pottery space in our tiny living
space and rent space in a local kiln. More than that, having
this creative outlet and the goal of getting you your bowl has
helped us get through the darkest parts of 2021.

And while we thought 2021 would bring some relief from the
pandemic, it turns out Covid-19 complications never really
stopped? Pottery became a much more expensive hobby in
2021 due to shortages and supply chain issues that caused
glaze shortages, clay prices to increase, and long delays in
sourcing necessary materials. So we thank you SO MUCH for
your continued patience and support throughout this project!
We hope you enjoy flipping through this book that attempts to
document our process and the results of our labor. The bowl
you received was a labor of love and just one small part of this
project which started as a Make/ 100 project but turned out to
be a project to create 140+ bowls and some mugs that will end
up going to 70+ different homes across the U.S.
It turned out to be so much more complicated than we had
anticipated but we were able to learn so much as potters and
are grateful for the experience and opportunity.
With love,
Ericka & Gabriela

THE PROCESS

Each piece is handmade and made from a stoneware body clay
that is carefully cut, weighed, and then wedged by hand into a
humble ball of clay.
The balls are thrown on the wheel and then shaped into bowls.
The wet bowl is covered with plastic and left on the shelf to dry
until it becomes leather hard.

Leather hard bowls are then
reattached to the pottery
wheel, upside down, using
little wads of clay placed along
the rim. Using carving tools,
we trim away excess clay and
shape the foot. Once the
piece is trimmed, the bottom
is signed and numbered.
Depending on its intended
final design, the pieces are
then carved, drawn on, or
painted with underglaze.
Underglaze is a combination
of clay, colorants, and water.
They can be brushed on in
layers to achieve opaque or
translucent layers that give a
sort of watercolor effect.

They are then put back on the
shelf and lightly covered with
plastic so that they dry out
evenly as they reach what is
called their bone dry state.
You can tell the clay has
become bone dry when the
color becomes dramatically
lighter. This is the most
stressful process the piece
goes through, and it's very
delicate at this stage.
They are then fired in a kiln for
the very first time, in what is
known as a bisque fire. At this
point, the bisque ware has
become stronger but is still
not fully vitrified. So the bowls
are still porous enough to
soak up the glaze that will give
it its final color.

They are then glazed, a
painstaking process that involves
brushing on glaze chemistry in
layers. Each color must be
brushed on at least 3 times, and
each layer has to fully dry before
another can be brushed on.
This means that something like a
color-block piece can have as
much as 16 coats of glaze! It also
means we have to do extensive
testing of glaze combinations to
avoid combinations that run.
Once the glaze fully dries, the
pieces can then go back in the
kiln for their final firing.

Before & After
the glaze firing, although this
photo is slightly misleading
most glazes do not look so
similar out of the bottle to their
final fired result.

THE MAKE/100 GEMS

COLOR-BLOCK MUGS

CYANOTYPE BOWLS

SETS OF FOUR

STAY IN TOUCH
bit.ly/brightravenmail
@brightravenstudio
Comments: Gabriela@brightravenstudio.com