New Teapot Design with cups

Last weekend I attended Ginger Steele's workshop on Form and texture. We made handbuilt mugs and a teapot with textured slabs along with textured roulettes and learning how to pull handles off the pot. I don't have pictures of the work I made there, but it sure was fun to learn.

What facinated most was the process of making a spout. I love those long elegant spouts which are next to impossible to throw on the wheel. Ginger's technique of rolling the slab on a mandrell was quick and efficient. I got back home and tried one of those spouts on my extruded teapots as seen in the picture above. This is one of my first handles pulled off the pot as well.
The cups are extrusions too which are rolled. I like this new design and will play with it some more.

Thinking about teapots, 5 years back, I made a 22 inch commisioned teapot for which I needed a long spout. I used Steven Hill's method to pull a spout from a pool stick. It came out fine, but it was a little heavier than I would like. I can't wait to play around more with teapots again but it will probably have to wait till the end of the year.

Final stages of decorating jars

A few weeks back I had blogged about the process of decorating my jars.

That was one of the earlier stages after which the pieces get bisqued. After getting bisque fired they look colorful.

But to have the colors pop out more, I go through the process of painting the groove lines that were carved with a contrasting color. It is a time consuming process but makes all the difference.These are then glazed over and fired again with the following results.

You can find these jars for purchase on my etsy shop.

Why do I need to learn Math?

Parents can admit that they have been questioned several times by their kids, “Why do I need to learn Math, Geometry, Algebra….?” And the list goes on.
I for one loved doing Math as a kid. For me it was a good pass time. Yes, you heard right, good pass time. When I was asked to study by my parents and I used to always pick Math. My parents had to push me to study other things. As I grew Math and Physics became my favorite subjects.
Of course this did help me in acquiring my current job as a software engineer. So you are wondering why I am even mentioning this in my art related blog.
The fact is that I see myself applying my knowledge of Math in my art work very often. A good example are these big jars I made recently. Of course, one option was to throw them on the wheel, but I wanted to make them big and much lighter and consistent in size. So I decided to make them from slabs of clay, a technique I got more confidence after seeing the work of Ginger Steele.
For the walls, I could make straight cylindrical in shape, which would involve cutting a rectangle and joining the ends. But what if you want it slightly tapered? I would have to have a curved slab, but how big? What curve? What radius? What angle? That is when geometry and Math help. I spent several hours designing the shape that I wanted and then trying to figure out the template for the slab I would need to achieve the shape I wanted. Here is a small snippet of my scratch pad. Oh yes.. it sure has some Math there.
Once I figured out the size of my template, it was a lot easier to construct these jars. Once I knew I had the template right, I didn’t have to struggle with the shape that I wanted. The top lid seats and lids have been thrown on the wheel. I still need to go through the process of decorating them, but at this stage I am happy with the way they turned out. I will post more pictures when I am done with these.
So tell your kids to stick to Math, even if they don’t know where they will need it. It will surely benefit them in some way or the other.