A Piece of Cake

Hand-built cake stand. Take 2.

This is the debut of the cake stand I made a while back. The running joke at the studio was that I now need to bake a cake. Not sure what was harder, making the cake stand (took 2 tries btw) or baking a cake to put on the stand. A couple of years ago, I would never imagine myself doing neither. So go figure, never say never.

With the advice from my pottery teacher, I opted for a design with a removable top. This makes firing easier and also storage will be more efficient when you’re not using the stand. For a beginner like myself, it also minimized the risk of mistakes. For example, it took 2 tries to get the top plate right. The first attempt, the slab wasn’t dried properly. It warped and skewed. With the guidance of my patient teacher, Lisa Young-Chow, I took the time to dry the slab and built some foot rings to help latch the base and provide support for firing. Happy to say, these improvements helped and the surface is fairly flat and even. The base was made with the a template that my previous teacher, Carolynn Bloomer. It’s a lot of geometry to get a conical base! If I were to do this again, I would likely throw the base on wheel instead.

It’s nice to have a functional piece at last and this was a great exercise to improve my slab building skills. Most of all, I learned a lot about the nature of clay and how to think technically about all the different stages of production. The decorative floral pattern was inspired by the texture that I’ve rolled into the base design. It was painted with underglazes that I mixed.

In case you’re wondering what kind of cake this is… it’s a ricotta lemon cake. My neighbour introduced me to it. Rather than asking her for more cake, I thought I should try to make it. Turned out to be a big hit with family and friends. A new go-to added to my recipe box!