Today I paid a visit to a clay supplier in in the nearby town of Ureshino. They make a clay body that I am hoping will be suitable for large work in the front of the kiln. I picked up five 17kg pugs to make some tests with.
Two of the six filter presses.
Cakes fresh out of the press waiting for the pugmill.
A very small sample of their bagged clay.
Crushing, mixing, and blunging equipment.
Piles of Toseki (porcelain) waiting for the stamp mill.
After getting clay, I dropped by my favorite tea store for a good deal on seasonal tea, and to talk about having one of their certified tea instructors give a presentation during the biannual Workshop in Taku next fall.
Here are the first of a bunch of water jars and flower vases that are going into the kiln this early fall. I really needed some practice coiling, paddling, and collaring in necks on the kickwheel and 船徳利 funadokkuri (boat flasks) are the perfect shape for it. Traditionally these were used as flasks for oil, etc. on boats. They needed to be hard to tip over, hence the wide flat bottom. Now they are mostly used for flower arrangements.
All of the water jars will have wooden lids made for them. I’ve done one or two in the past with surprising positive response from viewers/customers. The lids are fun to make, since they are a non traditional item, you can play around a bit with them. I’ll post some lids later on, if the pots make it through the firing.
3 boat flasks and one taller crane necked flaskwater jars. any marks in the clay need to be pretty over the top, because the glaze covers them over for the most part.lug and lip detailmore jars, a couple with ‘nail heads’ added, instead of lugs. You sometimes see these on tea cups and food dishes in Karatsu ware.
all together now… The tallest flask is about 28cm tall,dry.Karatsu meets pueblo water jar, with kneeling, bowing tea person receiving tea. This started as a lug and sort of went bananas from there. This could be one of those things where I later slap myself.Tall necked vase with two pairs of tea people bowing.Karatsu meets pueblo water jar. sorry for the order here…Lug detail. I really must have wanted to drink tea that day.boat flask with porcelain additions. Here’s the big question: Will they pop off upon drying?tall necked flower vase with lugs, (finally some normal ones)
Well, last weekend’s firing is now unloaded and most everything turned out well. It was all for a wedding, so always good not to have to do it all over again…
Before and after pictures:
Loaded and ready to go…Finished katakuchi, about 25cm wide.interior detail
Next are some teabowls for the next wood firing. Made from some really gnarly clay, I had high hopes for trimming these…..until I forgot about them and they dried out too much to trim! Dag’nabit!
… some pictures of new fired/finished work. Finally got my brightness and white balance issues resolved and took a few pictures to share with everyone.
I made this table about 5-6 years ago with the intent of using it with guests downstairs in the studio, but as things filled the space I never had a place for it, and it ended up under the staircase for the duration. It had literally never been used for its originally intended purpose and gathered dust. Until a few days ago when I started rearranging the studio. Now with the stairs out of the way, it is out, clean, and ready for action. I scrubbed off 6 years of dust and crud this morning and started thinking about how best to use it.
If you haven’t noticed already, this is a huge grindstone (one of a pair I acquired), and it must weigh at least 200kg. Somehow I was able to get it up on that railroad tie frame with the heavy duty casters underneath so it can be moved. The current top is actually the bottom, and the actual top is slanted, so one side is propped up on two short kiln stilts so the table top is level. The grooves are close enough together that cups can sit without wobbling or falling over.
It occurred to me that the depression in the center would make a good improvised receptacle for tea goodies, and a garbage can could go under the hole for waste disposal. One other suggestion was to place a bamboo section in the whole as a small waste basket. One of the railroad ties partially overlaps the bottom of the hole, so the bamboo doesn’t fall through.
The freshly scrubbed table, about 80cm/32in in diameter.table surface detailFresh section of bamboo cut for the waste basket.goodies, with wrapper disposal in place.Mmmmm. Nice steamy tea on a cold morning…
I managed to get my hands on a used wheel, cheap. It is a gigantic banding wheel: wheel head is 50cm across and the whole thing assembled weighs 60kg. It looks like it might have been someone’s homemade wheel, made from acquired parts and put together.
It is an oddly constructed wheel, no bearings at all. The top of the shaft accommodates a pin in the wheel head like my kickwheel, but there is no bearing in the bottom, just tapered sleeve on the shaft that engages the bottom of the wheelhead shaft, heavily greased. It requires a very fine setting of the tapered sleeve. Engage it too much and the wheel doesn’t turn well, not enough and there is a waggle in the wheel.
It arrived pretty rusty and dirty, looks like it saw a lot of use at some point, then got left in a corner somewhere for a few years. I got a wire brush disc for my angle grinder and spent quite a while getting the accumulation of clay, gunk, paint, and rust off.
Removable wheel head shaftBase shaftwheel headtapered sleeveThe whole shebang, still dirty.wheel head assembly oiled and ready.
Finally got the wheel head assembly cleaned up and oiled, and with some experimentation found the ‘sweet spot’ for the tapered sleeve when engaging the wheel head shaft, and the wheel spins quite nicely. Click on the link below to see it spin: Wheel spin test
My plan for this wheel is to weld arms to the base of the wheel head shaft and mount a wooden fly wheel, and add a wooden wheel head onto the current steel wheel head. The resulting kickwheel should be great for onggi style coil and paddle work.
