Creating Texture

 A few weeks ago my niece and her friends came by the studio for a little pottery party to celebrate her 15th birthday.  Before they all arrived I pulled out all my tools for some handbuilding that we were going to do- wooden stamps, rubber stamps, cookie cutters and cutting tools.  I liked how inspiring they all were and started thinking again about how I could bring 'stamped' patterns into my own work. 
It had me thinking back to the work I did in collaboration with my friend Disa MacKay last year.  I don't know that I've posted the final pieces  here, but here's a few of the hand-built with relief patterned vases we made, photographed professionally so that they look really lovely.  The patterns we used were all hand-cut, without using any commercially made stamps.  If I remember correctly, our 'paisley' inspired pieces took the longest and were the most complicated to make.