Sunday, September 9, 2012

Self Made Celadon Teaboat

Celadon Teaboat


Keep in mind we are talking about the teaboat, the misshapen green thing underneath the teapot. I have had this piece for quite awhile, I really didn't think I was going to post about it, but it has certainly seen enough use, I figure I really should.

This is another one of the pieces whose form comes from day 1 of my pottery class this past summer.  It took me awhile to remember exactly what I did for this one, as i did not remember making a wide and shallow pinchwork bowl like this.  Well this piece was the Knee pot our teacher had us make.  I can hear some people wondering "what is a knee pot?"  Well its simple take a ball of clay throw it at a table while rotating it to stretch it out into a somewhat round shape to a somewhat uniform thickness. Lift it up, and throw it over your bent knee press it down slightly but not enough to leave dents in the clay.  Then pull it off your knee and decorate.

In hindsight, I realized this was the only finished piece that I will ever be showing off on this blog that I did not apply the white glaze to, that was not Western Raku fired.  But I went with the celadon glaze as I did a simple design that I was quite happy with on the bottom of this piece, which needed a semi-translucent glaze to show off.

Celadon Teabowl Bottom

Of course if I were to try and redo a piece like this, I feel just so I could apply the glaze as far down as I would have wanted to make sure the design was completely covered, I would create a simple coil foot. Although I would make it be a rather small coil, as I personally like rather low profiles for teaboats.