From the British Museum

This is a surprising object. First of all, it looks quite old. And it is in the British Museum surrounded by unique, one-of-a-kind examples of Japanese art. I photographed it because I had never seen a ewer quite like it. I estimate it to be close to 9 inches long. It has a nice porportion and looks like it would serve it's owner well. The decoration fits the form and is beautifully executed.

Imagine how surprised I was to learn that this is a modern piece. It was made around 1990 by Soma Masakazu, an artist born in Okinawa in 1949. The information card reads:

"This ewer is designed for pouring alcoholic drinks. It has a typically Ryukyuan combination of clear, bright colours. The distinctive curved shape, called a dachibin, can be worn at the hip. Soma, the maker has given the traditional local style a modern twist."

The piece is stoneware and was donated by the artist. It would be a great form to experiment with.

Beauty in Objects

Here's a simple bell displayed in the Victoria & Albert in the Viking Section. What a striking, simple form and an inspiration for a teapot handle.

Taken a bit farther in ornamentation, these two bells are real beauties. (Sorry about the quality of the photo--lots of glass-case reflection going on) They look like ancient bells that had been encased at a later time in brass. Makes you wonder how precious they were that they would have this ornamentation added. What were they used for that would cause the owners to embellish them so? Was the brass casing an influence of Irish design; the result of seeing/taking plunder from Irish monastaries? There have been cases of plunder from raids being broken up or redesigned to embellish Viking artifacts. These pieces seem to be examples of this practice.

Two cases held stunning drinking horns. How beautiful they are and how amazing it is they have survived all these years. One wonders how they were used; what went into them? What did the animals look like that had these glorious horns? They were quite large--it would take two hands to drink from them. Were they hung on pillars in the log houses? Were they fastened to packs and taken on ships? Who drank out of them? Were they ceremonial horns or for only special people to use? By the way, the collection of small pots in the lower left of the second photo is a grouping of brass-capped burl knots made into little containers. Quite unique. For Viking chap-stick, perhaps?

Back and Brain-dead

Back home again and still walking around in a fog trying to sort out suitcases, papers, wash clothes and think of something for dinner. Flying from London to Seattle is not pretty. We broke our trip in D.C. for a night's sleep and a re-group, but 6 hours plus another 5 1/2 hour's flight really whacks your clock. Besides which - all the check-in lines, security lines, suitcase dragging and hikes to more lines to catch a train or to be bussed to yet another hike to find a departure gate. T'was getting a bit tedious. Flying isn't fun anymore. We've got our packing down to one suitcase each that holds about 35 lbs and a regulation carry-on. Thank heavens for the compression bags! They really make clothes go flat and save space. But still.....

Anyway

Went to many museums and venues in D.C., London and Madrid during the trip. Filled up a travel dairy with notes and drawings to use as references for new forms in clay. It's great to get out there and look at so much stuff that you go into total overload. I loved going into the stores and looking at all the new modern things. Europe is so much ahead of us in design. Also spent hours in museums looking at historical collections. I'd love to just rent a room across from the V&A and go there every day for about a month.

This time in London we not only returned to many of our favorite spots (We lived there for 4 1/2 years), but also made an effort to visit the places we never got to in that time. I truly love London and the UK.

Also had a great time listening to the people of Madrid and finding my tongue getting looser every day. Give me a couple of months and I'd be rattling off Spanish again pretty easily even though I haven't spoken it extensively to another soul for at least 40 years. We were also in the Catalan area. I'd never been there before and they put an interesting spin on the language.

Part of the trip was business which meant a lot of social events and a packed schedule, but the London part was purely enjoyment.

More later.........

Disruptions

This is a funky pitcher that was hand formed with slabbed and stamped clay. It makes me laugh inside every time I see it. It reminds me of one of those dinosaurs with the flared plate around the back of the head and the spade-shaped vertical plates running up and down it's back.

Then I made "Count Olaf's Pitcher". I love Lemony Snicket's books. I like this pitcher better than the first. Both pitchers pour like champs. The spouts are a design I developed based on leaf shapes. These are variations of tropical leaves which evolved to shed water, since there is such an abundance of it in those climates. The shape at the very end of the spout also discourages drips.

In the next few weeks, other commitments are going to keep me out of the studio and away from work. I would just about prefer to eat, sleep and work at this point, but there times when it is necessary to attend to other things and shelve the work for a while. I'm trying to get ahead with bisque and large pieces that can be left on batts to dry while I'm out of my studio. It will be much easier to resume the work that way. So I'm firing my kiln tonight, rather early in the morning. It has a computerized timer which I have programmed with a delay that will begin the sequence at 5 a.m. tomorrow. It will fire all day and cool after an automatic shut off after about 12-14 hours depending on how densely it is packed. This one is packed. Even though the system is automatic, I never leave my kiln to run on it's own. I'm continually mother-henning it checking to make sure everything is working right.

Clay Jags

I'm on another 'clay jag'. It happens. I get all enthused about making a certain form--in this case, tumblers--then try and see how many different kinds I can make. Sometimes I have to race to get the ideas all down on paper before going merrily off on another 'jag'. This finished tumbler was made while taking a class by Jamie Walker some time ago at Pottery Northwest on painting on raw clay with underglazes. It's an experimental piece. (Pfuut! as if that was something new. Nearly everything I make is experimental.) The designs were lightly drawn in pencil on a slightly damp thrown piece then outlined and filled in with a brush and underglaze. I used a bit of scraffito on the wide band at the top just to see what would happen. (I love to use it because it holds a pint of liquid and has a very comfortable lip.)

So here's some tumblers in process on the current jag: They have been thrown on the wheel and altered, they are awaiting a complete dry-out before being put into the bisque kiln. The first series of 6 (really 7 just in case and to keep a reference piece) were what I'm calling Innies and Outties. They either have areas that are pronounced dents or bumpy bits added to the outside. It's amazing how interesting they are to hold. A hand diversion.

The second is pure class. I have a stamp which I used to make the center medalian. First, I stamped slabbed clay, then thought, "How can I make nice clean cuts around the shape? I know, where's my biscuit cutter!" There's an old cutter rattling around somewhere in my studio. (See, that's why you need all kinds of crap in your studio because when you need it you NEED it.) I made another set of 6 with this motif, but with more going on with the surface--nubs and dents. The one pictured here is sort of an 'out-take'.

And the final set of 6 are tumblers on small pedestals. These are thrown separately and will be bisqued as two pieces, then glazed and fused together in the final firing--another test to see if THAT will work. I'm seeing these in a reddish brown with dark chocolate brown interiors and bases. We'll see.........

I still have more designs to go. Another set of 6 with the flared lip and oriental-like stamps down one side, a set with a series of large dents and indented lines, and yet another set with an underglazed big, dark spot on one side.

Ray Guns

I just noticed an article in Wired about a potter who is makeing raku ray guns. They're really nice. You can find them at http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/04/ufo_ray_guns_in.html.


I've been making ray guns for several years and also do them on the wheel, but they're made from procelain and used a clear glaze fired at cone 6. On the first two, I selected primary colors in order to relate to the colors used in cheap, shiny plastic toys. Sometimes I have used underglazes and sometimes overglazes. The first one is named "Molecular Redistributor".

The second is "If Mars Attacks" and has more overglaze treatment, though it is difficult to see the difference. Both "If Mars Attacks" and "Molecular" were exhibited at "Toys Designed by Artists" at the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock AR and "The Whmsical Clay" show in Beverly, MA a couple of years ago.

The white ray gun, "Ectoid Extractor" , has not been shown anywhere yet. I have a mate to this one still in the studio yet to be assembled. I like the white shiny surface and glass combination.

The darker fourth gun is "Lunar Artifact" and it was included in the Whimsical show at the end of last year.

Paul Lewing's China Paint & Overglaze

Paul REALLY knows his stuff. This is a great book. This book covers so much territory, it's a mini history of an area of ceramics that has not been addressed in such a contemporary way. With this book, Paul has created benchmark and a major reference as an example for others to use in this kind of research. It's a great resource not only for potters, but historians, china painters, antique dealers and collectors.

I know how long he has been working on this and the results are stunning. I'm savoring this book in bits in order to absorb the amount of information that is packed between the covers. Paul not only is tackling the subject full-on from the origins and progression of china decoration through cultures, there's a complete data dump of technical aspects; tools, chemistry and technique. Makes ya want to run, RUN to your studio and start working! (Big problem there, since I usually get my reading in while all tucked up in bed between 9 p.m. and 10 or 11 o'clock at night.)

Beside being a luscious book to look at, it's a generous one. The narrative is easy, just like talking to Paul, and completely comprehensible. He holds nothing back, giving everything he knows and he knows a lot. I'm so glad the publisher, The American Ceramic Society, splashed out in heavy-duty slick pages and beautiful color photographs.

You may need two copies. One to keep pristine in your house and one to paw over in the studio! Go to Paul's webpage at www.paullewingtile.com to order the book.

Another Example of Appearance

This bowl is made with a basic white glaze and various glazes applied over the base coat.

This is a minuet, ballet music, pizzicato. It has a completely diffferent look than the second bowl--

The second bowl is only two glazes overlapped in different ways: A shino which breaks into a reddish color when thin; cream when thick and a satin black that reacts depending on which thickness it is over, how thick it is.
This is Wagner, trumpets and horns, drums and cymbals.

Form & Surface Treatment - What a difference

This is a bowl I made about a year ago using a 50's plastic salad bowl as a form for the bowl shape and cutting a newspaper pattern out to make the base. It is quite large and was absolute murder to put together. I had to form the base and bowl shapes, allow them to get leather hard, assemble the base and then mount the bowl form on top. Even though I thought I had estimated the curve, it still took quite a bit of twiddle to get the two forms to marry well. I added the side detail at the side of the base just off the top of the head as I was assembling the piece and manipulated the rim of the bowl to creat the undulations, then added the tendrals to finish it off. The whole thing is glazed in celadon. This form really encourages glaze run and I had difficulty after the firing with a stuck foot. (A previous piece which was just the base form only with an added bottom to make a square vessel did not work out well and the foot pulled away when I removed it from the kiln.)

What a difference between the top image and this one. The second piece has a Southwest feel because of the glaze. I love the variations of color on the base. This time I made the base a bit taller and the corners are joined at a different angle.
The second piece was constructed in exactly the same way, but appears to be very different because of the glaze. This is a shino from Cayote Glazes. And this time, I waxed the feet far up on the base to be sure that there would be no sticking this time to the kiln shelf. I also used lots of kiln wash which allows the piece to roll on tiny granules on the shelf surface as the piece expanded and contracted during the firing/cooling process.

The Wolf Tooth Necklace

Here's the Wolf Tooth Necklace just finished. I tried to replicate it from "300". I love the way the necklace threads through the movie as a symbol of courage and love. And the use of it as a symbol of legacy. I only have a few right now. They'are handformed, made of porcelain and fired three times. The necklace length is adjustable with the wooden bead.
Contact me through comments with an email address if you're interested.