FILLED TO THE BRIM

I am always looking for creative ways to fill the kiln to absolute capacity and after throwing the bulk of bigger pieces I set about making things other than the usual yunomi and teabowls. For this firing I made a number of tall, slender chaire style covered pieces with spire knobs as well as some western style tea caddies and a few Japanese style candlesticks. The three Oribe hakeme chaire in this slideshow video measure just about five inches tall with their lids and were fired on pins, you can see the tell tale marks from the pin tripods on the bottom of each piece. All three were fired without their lids on giving the mouth a nice glazed finish and only the very bottom of the lid ring is free of glaze. It is nice to expand the possibilities for packing the kiln and these recent tea caddies are great for quirky and hard to fill spaces between a bunch of round, squared and oval stuff.