Sunday Final

I hit the road in search of inspiration.
Instead I found rain.
Here I am, hiding out like a I'm made of sugar or something:



I cut my ride short and headed back home to work on that teapot.
Teapots like the one I'm doing are not made to be functional. I make mine to pour, though even that's a stretch.
I use the teapot as a theme, then combine it with another theme to sort of push the idea of the teapot to it's limit.
Handle, spout and lid are the only prerequisites.
Looking at what I had already done, I decided to go industrial.
I ditched the handle I made and started over.
First I rolled out some thin strips of clay:



Spraying the body with water helps to keep it workable and not too dried out.
I then attached two strips to the outside of the teapot body, one on each side:



You can sort of see where I'm going by what I did to the spout.
More spraying then I blended the strips in:



The idea is to create the illusion of an overlap.
Once that was done, I made little clay balls and added some rivets:



I kept the same concept on the handles(the wrap around) except I decided to create bands on the top and bottom. For a second I gave some thought to making the handle out of wood, adding it after the firing, but decided against it.
More on that later.
So, two bands, top and bottom to hold the handle:




You can see where I left the handle long, that's so that it can hold itself up. The clay here is very stressed.
More on that later too.
Then I just added more rivet thingys.
Foo-foos:



I'm still not liking the lid but besides that, I think it turned out okay.
Well, a bit more than just okay.
The thing is, I give this piece about a fifty percent chance of surviving.
In fact, I was doing some patching up until I covered it to dry.
This particular clay has a shrinkage of around five percent. That means as it dries, the clay begins to shrink.
It does most of shrinking in the kiln as chemical water is burned off.
The bands and the way I attached the handles are still sort of wet while the rest of the pot was halfway to dry.
Not good.
If everything dries the same, it has a chance, if not, I expect major cracks to form.
Here's some close ups of the handle area:




I gotta say that's pretty crazy, even for me.
There were a couple of different ways I could have executed the attachment points, but in a fit of madness I did it the hard way.
Using that design it would have been easy to fit a piece of wood for a handle, I just don't know if it's going to make it.
Anyways, we'll see what happens in a couple of days.
If it holds together, I'll probably make a different lid. I was going to do one today, but after thinking about it, I figured I might as well wait.
Next weekend, I'll try something more traditional.

Limiting Factors, Design Problems

I messed up.
I don't know why, but it never occurred to me to measure in the inside of my kiln to see what sort of design limitations I have.
If it can't fit in the kiln, I can't fire it.
Here's the teapot with spout attached:



At this point, I'm not real happy with how it's turning out.
I don't like the lid and I think it's starting to look like a circa seventies coffee pot.
I didn't like the lid from the start. In fact that is the second one I made, the first was, well, I don't know what I was thinking when I made the first one.
I may do another lid later.
Sometimes these things happen.
Especially if you just go in blind.
It's good to start from a sketch and not just make stuff up as you go along.
That's when you get things like coffee pots.
I think I have images in my mind that subconsciously surface when I make stuff.
Once I made what I thought was a really nice vase until I stepped back to look at it and realized I had made a table lamp.
On the other hand, so many forms and shapes have already been done, it's difficult not to make similar shapes.
It's too late to make significant changes now, for the clay has set up and is pretty stiff. If I try to abstract or bend things and shape things, the clay is susceptible to cracking.
I did some coils to make the handle:



For the handle, I had the idea to wrap a coil around the top and drop the handle down to match the angle of the spout:



This handle design happened for I realized that I was approaching the limits of height in my kiln.
Originally, I wanted to put the handle on top, but as it stands, I have only an inch or two of clearance left.
By putting the handle on the side, I'm now approaching the width restrictions in the kiln too.
If I make another lid, a flatter one, I open up more space and options for the handle.
I may do this for as I said, I'm not digging what's happening so far.
Or I can go with what I got and add some foo-foo stuff to the pot itself to detract from the what I consider flaws in the design.
I can still use the glaze to break up the shape.
What to do.
I'll go ride my bike and think about it.
Maybe something will come to me.