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ALCHEMY OF CLAY: Art and life connect! Enjoying my newest Charlie Tefft mug, by the TV streaming fireplace!

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Monday, January 13, 2014

Letting the clay guide me

I sat down to throw something.  Maybe a teapot.
So I made some components.  No design in mind, let's see how they go together.


Critique:
I'm thinking it looks just like that, some components thrown together rather than a planned design.  So I learned something out of this ...and may try to do some changing since it's slowly drying. 

1.  I think the connection of the handle to the body is too tenuous, and will try to add some clay around the base of each connecting place (if possible).

2.  next time I'll try to remember that when I see a width of a handle as I throw it,  it won't be that thick by the time it dries and is fired.  I'm sure this one is way too thin for the size of the body.

3.   I wanted to work with the curve of the handle, which is a hollow thrown circle.  But it dried too fast for me to do anything but cut it and try to find a place to fit it to the body.  And yes, it does have a hole on the underside to release pressure as it fires.

4.  I learned about putting a handle at the joint of spout to body.  But I'm not sure I like it coming off the widest part of the body on the other side.  Perhaps the next one will go more parrallel to the wall of the body rather than perpendicular, which looks as if it would break off easily. 

5.  conclusion is this doesn't look like a workable vessel.

4 comments:

  1. well, but it DOES look cool and if you don't experiment, you don't learn anything, hmm? :)

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  2. One nice thing about clay is that you can do this, learn from it and then recycle the clay into a new, improved form.

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  3. Ah teapots....no wonder they are considered a difficult thing to make. But don't you just love doing them?

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  4. Great to hear from potters without any criticism. I do enough for myself! So many teapots, so many friendly potters. I'm enjoying looking at your posts!

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