Sunday, October 23, 2011

Sunday Final

I went bowling today.
Boy, it's been a while since I've been bowling and it took me a while to get back into the groove.
No, not bowling with a bowling ball silly!
Though it's been a while since I've done that too.
This kind of bowling:



I gotta say, bowls are not my favorite form to make.
I mean it's like the first thing you learn to do on the wheel and once I learned to do it, I sort of went off and started to do other things.
The thing is, I sort of never bothered to learn to make them correctly.
To the non ceramic folks, bowls are sort of well, just bowls.
To a ceramic person though, a bowl is a true test of ability and skill; I could often tell who made a bowl just by looking at it.
One thing I don't like about bowls is that you sort of waste a lot of clay for you have to trim the bottoms to create your foot:




That's about ten bowls worth of trimmings there on the wheel, and that's how a bowl looks after it's done.
Technically, there's a lot of things going on when you make a bowl.
There's all kinds of stuff like shape, size, and weight, stuff that the maker thinks of but the end user takes for granted.
Between yesterday and today I managed to make sixteen bowls and out of that, there's maybe like one that I'm really happy with.
So after all that, I still haven't recovered my Jedi bowl skilz.
Which is why making them can get sort of frustrating.
They look deceptively easy to make, but trust me, they aren't.
I figured I'd start off by making all sorts of bowls, round bowls and vee shaped bowls, big bowls and small bowls.
To no avail.
I still suck at it.
As they say though, practice makes perfect so maybe by the time I hit bowl thirty I might start to get a feel for what I'm doing.
Hopefully.
If not, it's going to be a long week:



I usually sell em for around ten to fifteen dollars so if I make like a two hundred of them, I'll be all set to make that call to Italy and talk to the frame folks!
Oh wait.
Somebody has to buy them first.
I forgot about that part.

5 comments:

shuichi said...

Hello

Awesome! I have never imagined that anyone would create such a ceramic bowls when I stop at bike entries. :)

Furthermore, they look neat.

Good job.

johnnytrashbike said...

pumpkin! bowl!

John Romeo Alpha said...

It looks like you have struck it rich! Keep a spare or two around! Pumpkin.

limom said...

Shuichi, you have stumbled upon your one stop shop for all things bicycle and ceramics.
I am the Shoji Hamada of bicyclists!
Okay, not really.

jtb, maybe.

JRA, all said bowls will go towards the funding of the next frivolous bicycle endeavour.
None will be for personal consumption.
Or use.
Or something.

shuichi said...

Oh, you are a student of the national human treasure, right?

Keep on your great crafting. : )