CHATTERING

I have to admit, the word chatter is not one that I can think I have spoken out loud in a very long time and to show you where my mind goes, that word immediately makes me think of two movies in particular; HELLRAISER and WORLD WAR Z. Having gotten that out of the way, I saw my first really in person piece of Onda-yaki, a small covered jam jar with chattering decoration at the home of Mitzie Verne way back in the early 1990s and thought I would like to give that a try. Using banding steel that I had been making trimming tools out of, I proceeded to make a tobi-kanna and set about chattering some terra cotta and stoneware pots. Off and on I have done this style of decoration but it always seems to be a passing fancy where I make a dozen to twenty pots and I move on to something else.       

Fast forward and while watching a movie there was a large Onda covered jar covered in chattering and I thought this would work for porcelain with black slip and decided to make a new tool that would chatter just a bit differently relying on just the very end of the tool to make the marks as you see them in these photos. I think this has a quirky look to it and fits the piece as well as can be expected and now I wonder if it will be another five years before I do this again?       

As a cautionary tale when I first tried this I had been making pots a little over a year or so and not particularly adept at using my homemade tool, that may still apply. In the studio at CSU was a guy who couldn't help copy just everything he would see and he set off make 40 or 50 pieces with chattering decoration and once bisque set about glazing them all in temmoku! Being the tech I gladly loading the gas kiln with his pieces and mine glazed in an amber celadon and a 1-2-3 celadon, when they came out he was just dumb founded as all the decoration was for naught. A word to the wise, use a transparent glaze of some sort or another if you are using this technique.