Collaboration with Monstruo Espagueti

I was thrilled when Anastasia the woman behind Monstruo Espagueti contacted me for a collaboration on a custom ceramic project. 

Anastasia is a designer and illustrator and she works for numerous publications and she also sells her own products. Most of her work are black and white drawings with a sense of humor.

Anastasia was looking for handmade ceramic plates that she could draw her designs on. The style of the plates she imagined was thick, uneven and randomly shaped. And she wanted them to big with a diameter of around 25cm.

I proposed make the plates out of white stoneware clay, so it could act as a white background for her drawings.

Anastasia would draw her designs onto the raw plates with black engobe using a brush. 

Handmade ceramic tableware crafted with stoneware clay is very durable as it is fired to 1240 degrees Celsius which makes it perfect for daily use in the kitchen, it is also dishwasher and microwave safe.

The ceramic technique that seemed appropriate for the elaboration of the plates was rolling out slabs of clay and roughly cutting out circles. I placed the rounds on a plaster mold in order to achieve a slightly bended rim, let them dry so that they would maintain the shape. After taking them off the mold I smoothed out the rims. 

The following day Anastasia came to the studio and drew her designs on the leather hard plates. It was a very long but fun day and it took almost an hour to finish each one of the plates.

I left the raw plates to dry for a whole week until I placed them into the kiln for the first firing which is called bisque firing and it reaches a temperature of 900 degrees Celsius.

Two days later when the kiln had cooled down to 80 degrees I opened and unloaded it. All the plates came out fine, no cracks.

After that I glazed the plates with a coat of clear glossy glaze using a spray gun. I cleaned the bottom of the plates so there would be no glaze that could cause the plates to get stuck on the kiln shelf during the second firing.

The second firing is the glaze firing and it goes up to 1240 degrees Celsius and it takes about 44 hours.

Opening the kiln after a glaze firing is the most exciting moment in the whole process of making ceramics. It is then when you find out if everything turned out the way you imagined and there is nothing more satisfying when this is the case.

All the plates turned out perfect, but I always make a couple of extra pieces just to make sure I have the requested amount of pieces to deliver to the client.

Anastasia couldn’t have been happier with the result and the plates sold out within one day so we are already working on further collaborations in the future.