Nifty Nests: Using Kitchen Gadgets and Textured Slabs to Create Square(ish) Nesting Bowls Learn how to make nesting bowls using pie tins! Annie Chrietzberg

Annie Chrietzberg loves to scour kitchen stores and garage sales for unique implements to use in the studio.

Today, she shares a great little project, excerpted from Ceramic Projects: Forming Techniques. Using graduated tart tins with scalloped edges, she demonstrates how to make ceramic nesting bowls with texture using a simple template system and slab building techniques. - Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

I know I'm not the only overly-involved-with-clay-person out there who brings more things home from a kitchen store for the studio than for the kitchen. So, as I was browsing through a kitchen store, I came across tart tins with scalloped edges and removable bottoms, and knew I'd found something that would be fun and easy to use. I bought four of them in graduated sizes thinking: nesting bowls!

To get a square-ish form from a round slab requires removing darts of clay. After experimenting with different dart ratios, I settled on somewhere between a third and a half of the radius. To make the darts template, I traced around the scallops on the cutting edge of the tart tin. Ignoring the low points of the scallops, I cut out a circle and folded it along two perpendicular diameters, so that the folds made a perfect cross. I then found a point somewhere between third and a half way along the radius to cut the darts to. I folded the template in half and cut out a wedge, then used that wedge to cut identical darts all the way around. Explore the possibilities of different sized darts different numbers of darts, and different placement of darts. As long as you keep ratios similar from one template to the next, the bowls should nest.

Bevel the darts by pointing the knife point towards the center on each side so you'll be switching the angle of the knife for each side of the dart. As always with slab work, score, then slip, then score again to create an interface so the seam stays together. You may also want to add a small coil along the seams, since you're changing the orientation of the slab. Use sponges or small pieces of foam to keep the sides of the bowl just where you want them while you work on the join.

After all four corners are well joined, turn the piece over. Anytime you need to turn a piece over, find foam if needed, and ware boards or bats, and find a way to flip the piece without touching it. Run a finger or a well-wrung-out sponge over the backside of the seam, eliminating any sharpness and sealing it.

Repeat these directions with every size tart tin and template that you have, and you will have a lovely little set of nesting bowls. With four nesting bowls, you'll want to explore the potential using eight different textures-match textures from the top of one bowl to the bottom of the next, let the textures cycle through the set-there are so many possibilities!

**First published in 2012.