Desert Mistletoe Menorah

This is a slab-built ceramic menorah decorated with impressions of desert mistletoe, Phoradendron californicum.

Cannabis Menorah 2

This is my second Cannabis Menorah.  (Here's the first one.) This one has seven Cannabis leaves of various sizes.

Screwbean Mesquite Menorah

They may look like maggots, but the decorations on this menorah are molded from the seedpods of the screwbean mesquite tree, Prosopis pubescens. 

 

Screwbean Mesquite:

Cannabis Menorah 1

This is a slab menorah with a large Cannabis leaf.  Cannabis and Hanukkah go together well because both involve lighting up.

Burrobrush Menorah

This is the last of this series of menorahs, Menorah 28, the Burrobrush Menorah.  Singlewhorl Burrobrush, Ambrosia monogyra, is a shrub native to the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico.  It smells like dill when it's dry.

Singlewhorl Burrobrush:

Desert Broom Menorah

This is Menorah 27, the Desert Broom Menorah.  Desert Broom, Baccharis sarothroides, is a common shrub of Sonoran Desert.

Desert Broom:

Purple Sage Menorah

This is a slab menorah with a pattern made with branches of Purple Sage (a.k.a. Texas Sage), Leucophyllum frutescens.

 

Purple Sage 

Rosemary Menorah

This is a slab menorah with a pattern made by pressing rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis, into the clay

The glaze is glossy emerald green which reflects light very effectively.  I found it difficult to photograph.

Red Spiral Menorah

I'm having a lot of difficulty taking pictures of these menorahs without a lot of glare.  This is Menorah #24, the Red Spiral Menorah.  The design on the front is made from a doily and isn't really a spiral.

Large Normal Menorah

This is the last and the largest of my series of normal menorahs.  This one has a spiral pattern and a glossy blue glaze.  It's 14 inches long, 8 inches tall, and 1.5 inches thick.  So who wants a normal menorah?  Hanukkah is just around the corner and you don't want anyone to think you're not normal, right?

The spiral pattern comes from the head of this Bride of Frankenstein candle.  Hopefully this doesn't affect its normalcy.

Trilobite Menorah

This is a black slab menorah with green trilobites.  The trilobites are molded from a fossil.  Since clay shrinks when fired, I made smaller versions by making an impression of the fossil in clay, using the impression as a mold, and then making an impression from the smaller trilobite.  Each iteration was a little more distorted and became unrecognizable after the fourth time.

Medium Normal Menorah

Here is the second in my series of normal menorahs, meaning menorahs decorated in a way that anyone can enjoy.  This one, for example, has a nice, wholesome concentric circle pattern on both sides.  Not to worry, though, because I'm planning some aberrant menorahs in the near future to have ready for Hannukah 2013.

The Medium Normal Menorah is 8 inches long, 7 inches tall, and 2 inches wide.

Small Normal Menorah

This is the first in a series of "normal" menorahs -- that is, menorahs without any overly weird decorations which might make them unsaleable to the general public.  This one is 6.5 inches long, 5.5 inches tall, and 1.5 inches wide.  It has a pattern from the skeleton of a cactus (probably a prickly pear).

Baby Head Menorah

This is a slab menorah with 37 molded baby heads.  There are two different baby head molds, one with the eyes open and the other with the eyes closed.  The individual heads came out in a variety of different shapes depending on how it was arbitrarily distorted.  It's 8.5 inches long, 7 inches high at the shamus (candle used to light the other candles) holder, and about 2.5 inches thick.

Small Slab Menorah With Snakes and Eyes

This is a small (6.5 inches long, 5 inches tall) slab menorah with a pattern of snakes and eyes on it.  I couldn't get the measurements of the slabs to come out right and ended up forcing them together instead of carefully fitting them, so it's a little irregular.  It's colored with copper carbonate, which comes out green when applied lightly and a dull metallic gray when applied more heavily, with an off-white glaze on top of it.

Blue Spiral Slab Menorah

This is a commissioned menorah made from slabs of clay.  It's 12.5 inches long and 7 inches tall.

Winged IG-88 Menorah 2

This is my third IG-88 Menorah and the second to show the assassin droid with wings.
Here are the other two:  

IG-88 Menorah 1

IG-88 Menorah 2

This is a view from above, showing the holes for the candles.  This menorah was constructed while the clay slabs were a little too soft.  Some of the pieces are warped and the slabs don't fit together that well.