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(What? No Chapter 1? No Chapter 2?
Alas, I didn't realize that I wanted to document this until very late in the game. About the best I can do is show you what it looks like now, and try to follow the rest of the process. Maybe next time I'll get the beginning stages, if there's someone to hold the camera while I'm covered with mud. For now, however, this is what I have, so this is what you get.)
(17-18 July, 2000)
Sometimes I think I fall into ruts fairly easily, making the same bowl shapes and the same teacup shapes too often, and when that happens I either make something else or I fidget a lot and become anxious, to no effect.
It's all the same, sooner or later I have to make something, and eventually I get up my gumption and try either a new shape or a new form.
There are many things that excite me, many shapes that catch my eye. I'm not always sure what influence they have on me (if any), but this one I think I can actually identify. If you look through photos of old Japanese pots, you will find various items labelled "tsubo". This seems to mean "jug" or "storage bottle" or something like that. Tea (cha) was kept in cha-tsubo, which had characteristic shapes.
There's a kind of rice-cracker called senbei, and those were also kept in tsubo with characteristic shapes. ...Or, at least, that's what I gathered from looking at pictures in books. I could be wrong.
The shape I saw that was labelled "senbei-tsubo" (and I
really do think I saw at least two of these) was a good
one, bulbous above and below with a bit of a waist in
between. I liked it enough that it stuck with me, and
every once in a while I make something that bears at
least a generic resemblance to that shape. This teapot
is one of those things, but here I've attenuated the
upper part a bit. I'm not really sure why; perhaps it's
because there's this big spout taking up so much attention.
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You will notice that this teapot is of a suspiciously grayish (not to say, elephantine) color, has no least trace of a handle nor any way to attach one, and is sitting on a dirty plastic batt. (I know, most people spell it "bat", but I looked them both up and decided that "batt" was the marginally more appropriate spelling.) It is decidedly greenware... Soft, fragile, mutable.
I am, in fact, carefully spraying it with water every day or so, and keeping it wrapped in plastic, specifically so it will stay soft, fragile, and mutable, because I need to mutate it. A teapot without a handle is not a happy thing.
This teapot is going to get lugs for a bamboo handle, for two reasons. The first is that it is already probably too dry to attach a wet handle to. The second is that this teapot is the best spout attachment I've ever done, and I'm still lousy at handles, and I don't want to screw it up. The third (welcome to The Spanish Inquisition) is that it seems to me to be a nicer shape for lugs and a bamboo handle than for a large loop of clay. I think there was a fourth reason as well, but I've forgotten it.
I will try to provide photos of the lugs, either as I make them or after I get them attached to the pot. I don't really expect that a whole lot of people are going to care about this, but it's what I'm doing (well, it's one piece of what I'm doing), and it is a process that most people don't get to see the guts of. Besides, if you're reading this page, it should really be because you want to be reading this page.
The main delay is the fact that I don't have a suitable surface on which to roll out slabs. I've decided, partly on a suggestion from Jeff, that I should make flat lugs rather than rolling out little cylinders. This, too, is a new form, which is partly why I was receptive to the idea. In addition, this is going to be a moderately heavy teapot (it's a bit big), and I want the lugs to be very firmly attached.
...So I went to the fabric store and bought some canvas
or chino (strong stuff with a pleasant weave), and I'm
making a wedging/slabbing board. Unfortunately, my board
is a junky piece of chipboard, so I need to waterproof
the edges, which is taking longer than I'd like. I line
up the little ducklings one at a time, and at the end of
it all I'll try to apply the lugs to the pot. I hope to
put the photos here, when that happens. In the meanwhile,
here are two more photos; the first is just the pot,
positioned so the shape is a bit more evident. The
second shows the footring and the inside of the lid
(arranged so that the lid appears to go onto the bottom
of the pot, argh), for anyone reading this who is a
potter or cares about footrings.
Those cryptic markings on the bottom, btw, are: my initials, which look like a loopy "W"; a glyph that consists of the letters "J" and "K" combined, signifying that the pot is made of Jeff Kirk's house clay (that's the usual stoneware in use at Glen Echo Park Pottery, where Jeff is my teacher), and the date on which I carved the footring, which was probably July 8th. I'm too lazy to go downstairs and check right now, but I'm pretty sure I'm reading it correctly off the photo.
I should mention the fact that I'm rather finicky, and
I'm not fully satisfied with the way this lid fits on
the pot. I may do a little tweaking to make it a bit
more crisp; but that involves some risk. If I overdo it,
I ruin the lid, and it is decidedly nontrivial to make a
new lid for a partly dry pot because of the shrinkage
involved in the drying process. I may just grit my teeth
and tolerate it as it is. It doesn't fall out when I
tilt the pot up to horizontal, and maybe I shouldn't ask
any more than that of it. This time. If I may quote the
illustrious Daniel M. Pinkwater, "Next time, things will
be different!" ("I Was a Second-Grade Werewolf")
Pseudo-mailto: jon [at] bazilians [put that dot here] org
Last modified: Sun Jul 16 22:19:20 PDT 2000
