A Barter of Barters

One of our friends is a woodworker.  He's also a husband, father of 7 (5 boys and 2 girls), speaks dutch and collects antiques.  He and his family are pretty cool to say the least.  His kids are all blonde and say "excuse me" before they talk to you.  When they are very excited and have many things to tell you, their house is a chorus of "excuse me!"s.  They are freaking cute.

So, this friend, Gorg, offered to make us our wedding gift.  As a wood magician, this pretty much means any household item- an amazingly generous gift.  So, at this point in our lives, our dog had figured out she was plenty long enough to grab anything off the dining room table (when we weren't looking) and dine human-style.  I was getting pretty tired of sharing my dinner with her so we requested a table- a couple inches taller than the current.

So, when we came home from our wedding to drop off a couple items, lo and behold, there was our new table in the middle of our living room!  It's fabulous- I have no idea how he makes these things but it is pretty impressive.  

Our new table...

Pretty nice huh?  Ok so, what would make this even more awesome?  Perhaps some non-folding chairs??  Yes!  Well, it turns out  Gorg's wife, Mindy, is in the market for new dishes.  And she likes pottery... can you connect the dots?  So, I now am making a 12 place setting and canisters in exchange for our chairs to match our table (which does a better but not perfect job of keeping the dog off the table)  I guess actual training is in order.

Yesterday I went to the studio and pounded out some sample plates to show what types of shapes (round), textures and treatments I could do for her plates. Then, she could choose her rim, lip design, and base treatment to create her own personalized plate.  Here's a glance at the four samples I did...

She chose the last rim treatment of the four with a tight swirl in the middle that only comes about a 1/3 of the way out to the rim.  I think these will be awesome!

As for the canisters, Mindy found some gorgeous ones on the web.  I love lidded vessels so I think this one will be a lot of fun.  If you notice, the lids are all a little different.  One sits on top of the rim and the others set at different places inside the pot.  Very unique but still very matchy.

I guess my work is cut out for me! I'll post some finished products in a couple weeks as they begin to come to life.

Muah!

Lisa