Storage and Serving: It's All Covered Sumi von Dassow

Appears in the Nov/Dec 2016 issue of Pottery Making Illustrated.

A good cheese tastes better if it’s allowed to warm up before being served. Keeping cheese in the refrigerator wrapped in plastic until the moment it’s served keeps it from molding, but doesn’t allow the full flavor to develop. A covered cheese dish is a way to give cheese time to come to room temperature while protecting it and keeping it from drying out. It also makes for an elegant presentation. And if you like baked brie, the covered cheese dish can be used for both baking and serving it.

A covered cheese dish is basically a plate with an inverted bowl for a lid. Adding a little lip to the plate just inside the lid will hold it in place. I throw both pieces from white stoneware, using 2 pounds of clay for the plate and 3 pounds for the lid to make a dish that will hold a 6-inch diameter brie cheese.

Throwing the Plate

Start by centering and flattening out the 2-pound piece of clay to form a 10-inch diameter disk that is inch thick. Now, starting at the center of the disk, use the heel of your palm to push a ring of clay out almost to the rim, building it up like a wave of clay as your hand moves outward (1). Inside this ring, the base of the dish should now be about –3⁄8 inch thick. The ring of clay should be around 8 inches in diameter, meaning you will have an inch of clay outside the ring.

Flatten the clay outside the ring to bring it to the same thickness as the rest of the dish. Now, with two fingertips, thin out the ring of clay, then bring it up into a lip about  inch high. Use a soft rib to compress and smooth the center of the dish. Finish the outer rim by running a wooden trimming tool just under the edge to lift it (2) and using your fingertips to thin the edge and bring it up  inch (3). This creates a groove about  inch wide for the lid to sit in. Don’t make this groove too narrow or you’ll have a hard time making a lid to fit. Besides, if you leave enough room, you can use the groove to arrange crackers, crostini, or apple slices for serving. Smooth the rims using a chamois and cut the dish from the bat using a wire tool. With calipers, measure the outside edge of the inner rim; making your measurement a little loose will make it easier to fit the lid (4).

Throwing the Dome

Now use the 3-pound lump of clay to make a domed lid. Throw a bowl that’s relatively flat and wide across the bottom, and make sure the rim of the bowl is close to vertical so it will fit into the groove on the plate. The calipers should fit just inside the rim of the bowl (5). Be careful not to make the fit too tight—if it ends up too loose it’s easy to trim the rim shorter to make it slightly narrower. Smooth the rim with a chamois, trim any excess clay from the base, and wire under the bowl. Loosely cover the pieces with plastic to ensure they dry evenly.

When both pieces are leather hard, turn the bowl upside down and fit the rim into the groove on the dish. If it doesn’t fit comfortably, you might be able to trim a bit of clay away from one or the other piece to make it fit better. Trim the bottom of the bowl into a smooth dome (6).

Adding a Knob and Glazing

Either throw a knob onto the top of the dome, or pull a loop handle for it. I pull my looped handles directly off the dome (7, 8). Place the lid on the dish, dry slowly, then bisque fire with the lid in place.

To glaze the cheese dish, first wax the rim of the lid and the groove where it rests, so the two pieces can be fired together. If you try to fire the lid separately, it can warp in the firing and end up not fitting. I use a white glaze in the interior of both pieces to better show off the cheese, and so the white unglazed surface is not too obtrusive.

The exterior of the domed lid presents a great surface for decorating. I use liquid wax resist to create a pattern with two contrasting glazes. After pouring white glaze inside, dip the lid upside-down in your chosen base glaze, just up to the rim so the glaze doesn’t get inside. To glaze the plate, hold the plate sideways and rotate it as you dip the rim into the glaze you used on the lid. If the second glaze will be white, the center of the plate can be glazed with the second dip.

Use a decorating disk to create evenly spaced divisions around the rim of the lid—you can draw lightly with a pencil directly onto the dry glaze (9). Carry these lines from the rim toward the knob. Now with the lid centered on a wheel, you can paint circles of wax resist to create a grid pattern of horizontal wax lines and vertical pencil lines. I always paint a -inch band of wax at the rim, to keep the covering glaze away from the rim (10). This helps prevent the glaze from running and sticking the two pieces together. Now that you have a grid marked out, paint the same pattern in each section of the grid with loose flowing brush strokes of wax resist (11). Know your glazes—if you have a combination that moves a lot, make wide wax strokes. Give the wax plenty of time to dry—either a couple of hours in front of a fan, or overnight. The plate doesn’t offer much scope for decorating—all it needs is a band of wax above the foot on the outside of the dish, and outside the groove on the inside of the dish (12). This way you’ll end up with the second glaze just on the rim, where it won’t flow too far.

Now dip the lid upside-down into a second glaze (13). Blowing on the wet glaze as soon as it comes out of the bucket will help encourage it to pull off the wax. If you have to do any cleanup, use a damp paint brush to wipe the glaze off the wax pattern (14), wiping the brush on a damp sponge after every stroke. It’s easier to trace the strokes of wax with a brush than with a wet sponge. Dip the plate completely in a white glaze. If the second glaze piled up in thick drips anywhere on either piece, shave these drips down a bit with an X-Acto knife so they don’t spoil your wax pattern. Carefully check the rim of the lid, the groove in the plate, and the foot of the plate for glaze drips before firing.

Sumi von Dassow is an artist, instructor, and regular contributor to Pottery Making Illustrated. She lives in Golden, Colorado. Check out Sumi’s book, In the Potter’s Kitchen, available in the Ceramic Arts Daily Shop.