It Took Nine Sinks

Commissions are quite the process.
In February this year, I got a commission to make three, custom bathroom sinks. I was so excited with this prospect–I thought it might be a new direction for me to explore. Well, I just completed it and got the final sign off yesterday. It took 2 1/2 months and me hand-building nine sinks!

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Ceramics has elements of uncertainty throughout the process and I wanted to cover any unforeseen eventualities. So even though I needed three sinks, I made four. As they are drying and I’m moving them around, I end up placing one on a board that slides off it’s support and dumps the sink onto the floor, catastrophically breaking it.

Now I have only three sinks–no back up. I decide that I really need that backup and build another sink–number five. It’s a good thing I did because after bisque firing, I noticed a hairline crack on the rim of one of them. If you work with ceramics, you know that crack will only get bigger with glaze firing. So, only three usable sinks.

Now comes the part that has conflict and learning. I invite the client and designer to come see the bisque fired sinks and finalize the glaze choice. During this meeting, the designer tells me she is worried about the size of the sinks, they seem too big. After checking, she confirms that two will just about work but the third is too big for the space it will go in and I have to remake it–for free. Well, we argue about this quite a bit and I learn a lot about commissions and communication and being VERY specific.

After we come to a conclusion, I agree to make another smaller sink–number six. Now, I have one spare bigger sink.

I glaze and fire the other two bigger sinks and have them both come over to see. Now, you probably know that clay shrinks as it dries and shrinks even more was it fires. I estimated the shrinkage for these sinks as I made them so they would end up with the correct dimensions. Well, they didn’t quite shrink as much as I estimated–they ended up being a 1/2 inch too big. This was my fault. If they couldn’t fit into the bathroom space then I offered to make them over. After checking, it was determined that they couldn’t fit. Okay, now I’m making two more sinks–seven and eight–and a back up, just in case–number nine. And, I now have two more finished bigger sinks.

So, I make the four smaller sinks. One just takes on everything that could go wrong. It cracks in the drying process and I mend it with paper clay. But in the bisque firing, the crack shows again and the rim separates almost completely from the basin. Luckily, this fourth backup sink became the sacrifice–all the bad things happened to just that one sink. It pays to make a backup!

So, the other three smaller sinks get glazed, fired and now they look great and the client is happy!

In the end I have the three smaller sinks going to the client, two bigger sinks glazed and ready for somebody else, one bigger sink that can be glazed in any way, two bisque fired but unusable sinks and one pile of broken green ware ready to be recycled. It took nine sinks but my commission is finally done.