Practical training July 2013

At the studio of Catharina Kajander, http://www.ckajander.com/

A jug and 6 cups

Casting clay decorating and glazing

Some of the first designs, casting and glaze tests from the goblet/cup mould.

Plaster moulds and casting clay working process

For the  plaster wheel mission I chose to make a goblet. This was a very educating since the leg was extremely hard to do, because I wanted it to be  thin. The leg-model reguired metal structure for support and to be build layer by layer.
When  I finally got to make the first half of the mould from the model, plaster managed to leaked to the other side. In this point I let the leg project to rest for a month and concentrate just in the cup part. The cup I designed to be used also individually and as part of another misson I carved an ear out of plaster for it .
When enogh time passed I was ready to see if the leg model still could be saved. First I managed to separate the model from the mold, then I started carefully to carve the unwanted plaster off the surface. In the end I managed to make a full mould out of a catastrophe.
Now the challenge is to manage to cast a straight coblet, but that is another story.

Skills Demonstration no. 2

This assigment was to choose a finnish ceramic artist´s work, at least 50 years old, and copy it. I was idly looking through a book about  Kupittaan Savi that is known of their "common people" decoratives and found some lovely pieces of Kerttu Suvanto-Vaajakallio. She was the art director of the company in the 30's and brought art deco influences and freshned up the style of the factory. She died in 1939 but her work stayed long after in the production.

I build the jugs with slab technique from white stoneware (the original probably was from red erthen ware or red and white earthen ware mix). For the test piece I estimated the measurements by a real size copy of the picture from the book (the height was mentioned). It was suprisingly hard to figure out the depht and if the circle was a perfect circle from the picture.

Luckily before the skills demonstration day I found in an internet auction page pictures of the same jug in lots of different anckles and also all the exact measurements.  I was also working a lot to find a glaze with similar athmosphere. I took the recipe silky matt base no. 172 of  Emmanuel Cooper and started to experience with copper, rutile and titanium.
The final jug´s glaze was running untill the kiln plate for it  was too thick. I managed to get the jug off without breaking it totally. In the short time we had, I could not find yet the perfect shade, but I got pretty close.

Woodfiring autumn 2012

This firing we done in one day,  about 06.00-18.00.  I did some new glazes and concentrated testing them and different decorating techniques.

The pitchers/vases are claytests, dark grey and yellow brown. The  white glaze don´t look so white on them. Must test this glaze next on white clay.

 

The glaze on the inside of these bowls is nice, next time Iĺl try it with black on the outside.

Celadons and one peach bloom glaze

Painting with black glaze

Shino cup and pitcher, that are in everyday tea break use.

Some random tests

The Chun glaced platter , that I hoped for the turquoise and not the red. The four marks on the middle came from the "legs" that the pieces are standing on in the kiln. I gave it for the school's examples collection

These are the unfortunate glace combinations that didn´t work well with each other: roughness, crawling, bubbling and plain boring.