Starting to Play with Drainage

Labor Day Weekend:

I’ve started playing with trays again, with the key focus on drainage. These trays would be utilized during the brewing and serving of tea where time is of the utmost importance. During the pour, the server will quickly circle around to all the tea cups within a couple seconds to assure similar steeping times between cups. I’m playing around with simply drilled holes or cut out slots. My current conundrum is the balance between the business of holes and the drainage rate. I witnessed this during my last run of trays where the tray and the pots atop clashed heavily. My next experiments are using a drastically different clay body or making a base not out of clay.

Getting back to teapots.

I’m really enjoying the spout and handle making process. I used to strictly throw my pouts, but they kept unraveling on me. This resulted in spouts out of alignment causing a disrupted pour flow. I am now experimenting with solid sculpting and carving out to create the spout. I have attempted slab building them, but I need much more practice. On the handle end, I am actually letting them dry out more before attachment.

Shellac resists.

Starting to play with shellac resist again. I have no real design intent with the raised lines, I just want to break up the flat plane—hoping to create more depth with the blue and white decoration.