Ooooo! New Banks

That ghostly thing is another bank, well wrapped in plastic to slow the drying process. Hopefully that will keep it from cracking as it dries.



So, yes, there are more banks. I'm having a lot of fun making them, far more than when I was plodding through the mugs. (Though it's funny: One of the women at the studio who knew about the mug challenge said, "Oh, I'll bet making handles for the mugs really helped you with the banks, adding all those little arms and things." And I was, like, hm. Because adding the little arms and things is straight up hand-building, which I've been doing for the better part of the last decade.

In fact, making the mugs did help, but only because it improved my throwing skills to the point where I can throw the little closed forms that are the basis of the banks. Before, I would've gone to Dave and said, "I need closed forms, about so big and I need a bunch of them." Now I can just do it on my own. (Though we did collaborate on three very large banks, because I don't have the skill--or the desire to learn--to throw very large forms. That's one of the banks Dave threw for me, the ghostly one in plastic. It's about the size of a half-gallon of milk.)



Anyway, people in the studio are so funny. When they ask what I'm making and I say "banks," it's as if they have never heard the word before. "Banks?" they ask, "What's that?" Ever literal minded, I hate calling them "piggy banks" (a term I know they'd recognize and which would clarify things immediately), because they're not piggy banks (with one exception, as seen below). But is there another word for banks? "Coin banks" perhaps?



It's funny, isn't it, how rarely you see banks anymore. I suspect it's because we've all been weaned off of cash and onto credit and debit cards and also because there's almost no reason to save our pennies when pennies have absolutely no real buying power.

One man in the studio, when I asked him if he had ever had a smashable bank, said, "Of course!" But he's an Old, like me.  He went on to describe a bank that had a built in calendar and you had to insert a penny to change the day and a nickle to change the month. When I said that wasn't very much money saved a year, three hundred and sixty-five pennies and twelve nickles, he explained, "Back then a Coke was a nickle."



When I think back to being a child, I think about how a handful of change was a pretty impressive thing. Now of course, I couldn't care less about change except when I'm forced dig around in the car for quarters to feed a parking meter or through the bottom of my bag for enough dimes to buy a diet Pepsi from a vending machine. But when I was little, having a few coins was serious business. And in some ways, I hope that these banks express a child's triumphant jubilance of having a whole .87 cents to one's name.

And just because I said it existed, here is the only piggy bank in the lot:



I'm holding it up so that you can see the top and where the coins go in the mouth. The legs are not functional but decorative; the thing sits on it's tail. I even added a faux coin slot on its back: