turtles and the trouble with small

My customer's request was for two turtles but I made six, partly to make sure I remembered how to form them properly and partly just to cover the possibility of something going wrong which tends to happen more often than not when someone makes a special request.  Six doesn't seem like many, but the reason I stopped making these turtles several years ago had to do with time- very time consuming to make, and because they are small (larger size turtle is about six and one half inches long) people think they should be cheap.  The larger size took 3 hours each.  I didn't keep close track of the smaller size.  They may have taken slightly less time, maybe by 15 or 20 minutes because the shells were a little easier to handle.  That 3 hours is only what you see done in the pictures so far.  It does not include bisque firing, sanding, rubbing in the iron oxide, brushing on wax resist, glazing, or glaze firing.  So that's why only six turtles were made.  Several years ago I charged twenty or twenty-five dollars for the smaller turtles, knowing the price was low for the time involved.  The look of shock on people's faces when they saw the price sticker became tiresome, to say the least.  And that's the trouble with small- the expectation is small price.  I don't know what I'll do about the price yet.  Eventually, even at a higher price, they'll sell, but I don't know if I can take the shocked looks along the way.

Turtle parts

 

Newly assembled and propped.  Details still to be added.

 

A (flock? school?...um, herd?) of mostly finished greenware turtles.