Two Planters

I made the foot on the right last summer. An elderly ceramacist who wasn't using her studio during the summer graciously allowed me to work there. For a month or so I used her wheel, practicing. But I made an error that prevented me from firing and glazing all the pots that I made: I mixed together different kinds of clay, so that it wasn't possible to know what temperature the pieces should be fired at when it came time to glaze them.
To glaze pots, you have to fire them twice. The first firing is at a relatively low temperature, but the second one is generally at a higher one, and clay that is meant to be fired at a low temperature will melt if it's fired at too high a temperature, and that will ruin the kiln it's fired in. So I had a few dozen bowls and cups that I couldn't fire and glaze.
I recycled all of the clay, smashing the pots, throwing the shards into a bucket of water, and dissolving the clay. There was something spiritually useful in that act, a reminder not to be too fond of what I'd made.
So I had a lot of clay that couldn't be glazed. I decided to use it to make things that don't have to be glazed: planters. I made three of them in the form of feet, and that was fun.
I made the flower pot on the right more recently. I bought a book about alternative firing methods - I'm not ready to invest in a sophisticated, electric kiln - and had an iron worker make me a barrel-kiln (which is generally not used for first firings, but rather for second firings, to give pieces special surfaces and colors).
I cleared a space for myself in a spare room of our house and started hand-building. A lot of the pots that I made and fired in the barrel-kiln collapsed and exploded during the firing, and some of them were extremely fragile - they hadn't been at a high enough heat long enough. But some of them came out interesting, and I planted a succulent in one of them.