I've been thinking for some time about offering dinnerware on my website and through my gallery. A couple of months ago I bought these pottery hump forms at NCECA (National Conference for Education in the Ceramic Arts) to help along the project. These are made to drape slabs over to make dinner and salad plates.
(The "corn-ear holder" is to make a foot profile.)
With my stoneware clay's 12% shrinkage, these proved to make vessel sizes that are just a little smaller than I wanted, but the shape is really good, and decoration possibilities are endless:
(First effort at dinner and salad plates.)
I have since ordered a larger dinner plate hump form so that the next dinner plates will be closer to 10" than the 8.75" they end up being when using the current hump form. But I found a different solution to fixing the hump forms for salad plates, using an unpainted wooden frame I bought a while back at Michael's Crafts. This way the salad plates have bigger rims:
The first prototypes, with vegetable dish and serving platter (these items made over other GR Pottery Form humps), mug, bowl and a few serving pieces of my own design (mugs made on the wheel and bowls and olive boats from my own handmade template):
Exploration continues. Nothing is "etched in stone(ware)" for sure yet, but there are some nice lights I can visualize at the end of a shortish tunnel.