My Pieces for the Wood Kiln

I guess I should attach a footnote on that title.  The attempted tea tray which was going to be a gamble anyway that is in the back, and bone dry, did not survive the night.  I went to pick it up by its edge, and SNAP! I am sure I don't need to tell any tea drinkers on the forum a tea tray is only useful if it can actually hold the water.

I have two carved pieces attempting to mimic Kaneta Masanao and his carved pieces ( far right).  One I hope to be a yunomi, the taller thinner one I hope to be a flower vase.  Two teabowls are missing from this line up.  Above you see two more teabowls, and two pinchwork yunomis of slightly different shapes.

These pieces while I am working on making a fluid piece throughout the entire piece, they are sort of a tale of two sides.  What do I mean by that, well lets look at the yunomi feet.

 

While I like these strong very apparent feet, they are very geometric in nature, compared to the rather fluid and ebbing and flowing nature of the pinch work sides.  I can only hope these survive bisque firing.  Then it will be time to glaze them and prepare them for the firing in early May. 

A late 90's 90ml Yixing Teapot

So I know a few years I wrote a post somewhat denouncing yixing ( I forget if it was on this blog, or my tea blog), but I have slowly waded in, and the pace has made all the difference.  The first rule of Yixing, do not even think about yixing until you have read massive amounts about them, and drank massive amounts of tea so you know where your tastes lie.  Somewhere in there you should also look through massive amounts of pictures, it would help if these pictures also came with feedback from others indicating to some degree if anything look suspect.  While not all bad pots can be identified by picture, ( and some good pots do not look that great in photos), at least being able to start there is a good way to make sure you do not make many many many dollars worth of mistakes.

This pot has a wonderful clay body, while not overtly sandy on the outside, there is obviously a very fine sand inside the clay body itself, its as the vendor put it after I bought the yixing "a very strokable pot." This is the best photo I have been able to snap of the texture of the pot, and yes it is mildly textured just through the creation process itself.

Thought this picture was fun, not perfectly lined up, not entirely sure if it is the pot or my angle with the photo, but fairly straight line through the spout nob, and handle.   I should also remakr about the color, I have other Zini pots which are honestly more brown, this pot as these photos hint has a nice purple/ reddish hint to it, in person the pot almost reminds me of a deep maroon color, a very nice and appealing color.

Two Guinomi ( made by myself)

The amazing thing about networking is sometimes offers come your way that seem too good to pass up, these two pieces are related to such an offer.  Through a tea forum I have had access to conversations with several well respected teaware artisans, one of which gave me the offer that if I could get some pieces bisque fired to send them off to him to be glazed and fired in his wood kiln.  I choose these two guinomi.

This first piece started a bit of pinch work forming the indentation in the center, then I carved out the rest of the piece.  It was finished off by Shawn at Greenwood Studios in his wood kiln, and these photos are taken by him as I have been horribly remiss in snapping photos.

These last two photos are from a piece I carved completely by hand from a block of clay. This was placed in a "special" part of the kiln known for creating intense firing effects, which is seen by the huge amount of ash bullets built up on this piece.

It was only a matter of time...

It was only a matter of until I started having dreams about ceramics.  In the past week I have had two dreams involving ceramics, one a just weird dream, and the other a nightmare.

The first dream while weird because it was surreal in only the way dreams can be, but it involved a ceramics class, but this time it took place in a large warehouse, which I remember wandering around for quite some time, there were huge palates of every single type of clay imaginable.  A giant section of glazes, and all throughout the warehouse were tables for people to make pieces.  I am not sure if it was a giant ceramics store, or if it was a very well stocked studio, but it was interesting.  I forgot the parts of the dream that made it really weird, i.e. the task I was trying to accomplish and the weird emotions running throughout the dream.

The second dream, I honestly forgot most of it, but I remember the ceramic part as clear as day, and I think it is deeply related to frustrations I have with one of my favorite pieces.




This Seong Il chawan, which I love for its rustic form and simple glaze, the glaze has not adhered to the rim of the chawan well at all, and in several places just through use and time the glaze has popped off certain parts of the rim.  Well the dream took that a little further, in using the chawan, it got tipped over and a very large portion of the glaze popped off, I picked it up and in frustration at this effect, I chucked the chawan to the ground shattering it into pieces.

I am not some one who reads into dreams, but understanding a little bit about what dreams actually are, I figure the fact that I am dreaming about ceramics indicates that they have reached a certain level in my life, requiring a decent amount of time spent thinking about ceramics in my life.