The Copper Yunomi

Kiln placement is certainly an amazing thing.  This being one of my pieces from the latest Ceramics class that I took, and as you will see nearly all the pieces look completely different from one another.  This piece like all the others is unglazed on the outside.  Well actually I lie with this one, on this cup I dipped my finger in the glaze and made a few streaks on the outside of the cup, but you can barely notice them unless you are specifically looking for them.

This piece though came out looking pure copper in color nearly the whole way around.  None of the white/ green ash build up on the outside.  The above picture shows the area that accumulated the most ash, which only give the slightest hint of the white ash build up that quite a few of my other piece are nearly covered in.



This is the bare side of the piece, which you can see two of those finger swipes with glaze on the outside, the rest is basically clay that was blushed by the fire, to a degree that it blends wonderfully with the rest of the piece.




I gave this cup a try yesterday, it preforms well enough, but something just doesn't feel quite right about using it.  Proportions seem off in too many ways, lip is too thick, foot is too small, size and weight just in general seem off.   It is fun to look at especially in what I captured nicely in the photo below.  The interior of this cup is oddly mesmerizing.

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. 

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.

Some shots of clay works in progress

I promised some studio shots, and this post is hopefully the first of several that deliver.    The blobs above are how I first set up my clay to start my pinching and forming of the pieces.  I have been exploring several different shapes, I did not photo graph any pieces that are really close to being ready for the bisque fire.  But I did take some photos of the progress I made towards two pieces that day.

This is going to be a yunomi, and while it looks very blocky, I am a huge advocate of nice koudai on pieces even pinch work ones, so when the clay dries out slightly, I carve away at the bottom of the piece to get the desired foot and bottom shape I want.

The same idea holds true for the tea bowl/ chawan below.  The base is extra block like so I can really get in there and carve it down to how I want it to be.   I also included a side shot.

Working With Clay

There is something amazing about working with clay.  While I am far from proficient at throwing, I have in my ceramics class which is based on firing in an anagama kiln later this spring, been working on hand building pieces.  This is the second clay body I have worked with, and its already teaching me a lot.  I never realized that different clay bodies could act so incredibly different.

I hope I can snap some pictures of this, but for now I can not, but I am making several pinch work teabowls, and this new clay body specially formed for firing in the Anagama kiln when it gets exposed to air even for a somewhat short amount of time dries to the level where the exposed sections crack easily.  As such I have a teabowl that I am really hoping looks out, as it has an incredible tree bark crackling effect on its outside.

Yet there is something so peaceful about working with clay, that I am sure I do not need to tell any potters.  My teachers have often said let the clay do what it wants, and honestly while you are forming the clay, each piece is unique as each little bit of clay really wants to do something special that only that bit of clay wants to do.  So no matter what you are doing, its always turning into a hybrid of letting the clay do what it wants, while guiding it into the form you ultimately want.  The very best pieces have both come together in perfect harmony, and it really is magical.

Self Made 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.



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.

Making pottery

Two classes into my beginning ceramics class, and I am learning many many things.  First and foremost is that clay is incredibly fun to work with, though getting it to do exactly what you want it to do is perhaps the biggest challenge.  So far my class has covered  slab, pinch, and coil pottery, while our first weeks worth of work has just gotten bisque fired ( have not seen how my pieces fared yet).  I look forward to learning about glazing which I understand will be covered this upcoming week.

The biggest surprise for me was how much I would enjoy coil pottery, and I have my fingers crossed that a yunomi/ wan I made will turn out in the end, as I love the shape I made with it, and it is something that could not be made by being thrown, at least not easily.  Its a somewhat standard wan shape, but its built up on a triangle, and the piece though it bows out and is bowl like maintains the hint of a triangle shape throughout the entire piece.  I also spent a decent bit of time carving the foot to make it actually look like a foot for a cup.

At the same time I am a little bit scared as the substitute instructor the other day gave us what was a cross between a warning and a reassuring comment, that honestly quite a few pieces just do not make it through the entire firing process, even for very experienced potters.  Granted while I am not sure that any piece I have made has been "great" I am worried that some of the pieces I put the most effort into, would suffer from  "overworking" and as such end up having some sort of structural failure during the process.