Elizabeth Rawson

Ceramicist, among other things

I Made You a Cake

Ok I know the previous blog ended with saying I am done with cake, but there is in fact another cake to discuss.

I made a second cake shortly after the first. For this cake I used what I learned from the last set, and that helped a bunch! Generally I was more mindful of slowing down and allowing things to take the time they take, which was a huge part of not getting as frustrated with these. I do also think I got the piping strategy down a lot better. The biggest difference in this piece from the other one (aside from the piping designs) is that I cut each plate down about half an inch to give the plates less depth, and make a set of plates that had more plates without being absurdly tall. It was tricky to make sure they all still had level rims, but I made it work. Overall, I was way happier with this cake in pretty much every way.

Until I fired it.

“But Elizabeth,” you think, as you look at what appears to be a complete set of three plates in the form of a cake, “surely it wasn’t that bad?”

It absolutely was.
To make an outdated and somewhat niche reference:
the cake is a lie.

Devastatingly, the kiln overfired and all of the plates in this set warped. I was about as heartbroken as I have ever been over a firing disaster on this one, because I was SO excited to improve upon the first design, and see the pretty green and pink cake come together. In the end, the warping was so extensive that these plates don’t actually fit together at all.

I had planned my portfolio work and submissions to include this piece, and I was really counting on being able to use it. By the time I was firing this work, it was nearing the end of December and I needed to start documenting things. There was no time to remake it, and I had already invested so much time and energy into making it as it was, so I needed to figure out how to photograph it at least vaguely convincingly enough. I am honestly not sure how well that went over on my applications, or if anyone even noticed. But I managed to get into an MFA program, and it seems convincing enough to most people, so that is a small win out of this disaster I suppose.

With a combination of careful camera angles, balancing, and some museum putty, I managed to take photos of this piece in a way that at least got the point across. I hate that it isn’t actually a functional piece, and I still don’t know what to do with it. The magnitude of the failure in contrast to the amount of work that went into it kind of took the wind out of my sails for the desire to continue to iterate on this idea any time soon, but I think I will eventually come back to it. If there is one thing I have learned as a ceramicist, it is to never get too attached to things. On the first day of my first ever ceramics class, my instructor said “clay will humble you,” and I have always kept that in mind.