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.

Interior colors

It is often said that tea is best presented in a cup with a white Interior. Consider the picture above, in which the Yunomi holds green tea, but the color does not seem to stand out, and almost looks a bit of a repulsive brownish yellow color of stale green tea.

I would like to outline why I both accept and deny the concept that tea should only be presented in a cup with a white interior and talk about when it is okay to ignore that "rule."

The pro's of a White interior:

1. You have a well defined base color of which you can use to reference the actual color of the tea.
2. Using that base color you can see the density in the color of the tea, i.e. how the color changes close to the edge where the tea is thinner.
3. Easy to know if it is clean or dirty.

But white is also boring, so while it should be viewed as a golden standard for a teacup for any sort of tea. Though different colored interiors can do wonders for different types of teas. For example consider how wonderful this tea looks simply because it is held in a cup with a blue interior:

So while blue interiors do wonders for green teas, making their slightly more natural yellow colors come across as bright vibrant green. It seems darker colored teas look good in a wider variety of cups with interior colors. That is because they tend to be much more opaque and less likely to have the interior color create an off appearance with the color of the tea.