Getting back to making pots

It has been a while since I last did anything with clay, let alone throwing pots on the wheel. It always makes me feel a little trepidation as well as a thrill to see if I can throw without the first pots looking like they are made by a learner. So 30 October before #lockdown2, I started rolling out clay and throwing some small planter pots using some heavily grogged crank clay. This clay is very forgiving and is ideal for pots that need to be tough enough to go outside in the garden. In my head I am aiming at making small low-walled planters for succulent plants and a sculpture based on some cardboard packaging, which I want to use as a mould.

The pictures show what I have made previously with Sempervivum plants installed with grit for extra drainage. I want to put these in the store for Christmas, but I have to be practical about what I can safely send in the post; the live plants and compost/grit are not going to arrive in the same state as these images. So I need to make the pots and offer them for sale?

The sculptures are coming on nicely and I have removed the shapes from the formers and added a flat side where I needed to. Can you guess what the formers are? Two cardboard spacers from the inside of new trainers and an avocado tray. All the cardboard gets floppy in the process so I expect that I can only use them once, but that makes each sculpture more unique. I have dried and done done lots of rasping to refine the shapes and finally covered the clay with three coats of brushed on white englobe. These will be a semi-matt white after final firing and I soon need to decide how to mount them; a wooden painted plinth or should I make a hollow clay plinth….?