meant to be

Hello, how cute are these plates? These are a special order for somebody, 12 in all. I always make extras of special orders, and in this case I made an extra 3 plates. Three cracked during the bisque, so every plate left was precious if I wanted the 12 for the order. All three plates cracked in the exact same place in relation to the position of the birds. Hmmm. Another plate got whacked on the edge of something and had a small chip on the underside, which I sanded down so you couldn’t tell. Sara suggested an experiment: why don’t we fill in the crack with this stuff called Magic Mender and see if the crack would still show up through the glaze? This glaze is very thick and it wasn’t impossible that her idea would work.

Now this is the funny thing; I’ve learned over and over that when a piece is going wrong—cracks, chips, warps, etc.—that piece is just not meant to be. It’s like trying to fix up a cake that already fell in the oven. But I try anyway. We filled in the crack with Magic Mender and a half hour later as Sara was glazing it, it went flying out of her hands and shattered on the floor. Sara was devastated, but I knew right away it was the cracked plate. It just committed suicide right in front of us. When the glaze firing came out two days later, one of the birds had migrated across the plate. Again, I knew it had to be the chipped plate, and it was. I glued a dogwood flower to the plate where the bird should be and gave it to my friend. Then I made FOUR more bird plates.