Heart Lab: Pigeon Toe Ceramics

OK, I'm not gonna lie... ever since I saw Demi Moore in Ghost with her earthy rendition of Beals' famous flashdance look, I've had a secret desire to chop off all of my hair, straddle a potter's wheel and get my hands dirty (I can do without the whole Whoopi Goldberg part).

Pigeon Toe Ceramics, a fairly new brand, was founded last December by Lisa Hough. Every piece is hand-thrown porcelain on the wheel, made by hand in her Portland studio and then hand embellished. She also has an etsy shop at PigeonToeCeramics.etsy.com. She describes her work as rustic chic with Scandinavian influence - I couldn't agree with her more. She also has a collaborative artist series called PTC, Alyson Graves of Unruly Things (amazing blog by the way) is her first guest artist.

She kindly agreed to give us an exclusive look at her process in the studio. All of these beautiful photographs were taken by another talented artist Alicia Carrier. Enjoy!

1. The centering sweet shot
2. Centering the clay on the wheel to throw off the hump


3. Delineating the bottom of a thimble cup
4. Opening the clay to make a thimble cup
5. Widening out the floor of a thimble cup to get it to the correct size
6. Cleaning up the thimble cup before I remove from the wheel



7. Lifting the wall of a small tuck pot on the wheel
8. Creating the attached saucer of the tuck pot last from extra clay at the bottom


9. Unloading the kiln after a bisque fire
10. Bisqued tripod pots ready for glazing
13. Waiting for the clear glaze to dry on a pleat vessel
11. Pouring out glaze from a small tripod pot
12. Cleaning the excess glaze off carefully with a sponge


Make sure to visit www.pigeontoeceramics.com/our-process/ for a more detailed look of the process!

Thanks Lisa!!