STARTING WITH THE BONES II

Quick update, illustrated is one of a group of teabowls I made trying to get to the simplest form that was practical and had movement and eye interest. The clay I used was a new stoneware I am mixing up with sand mixed in of varying size. Once thrown the forms were slightly altered by minimal faceting or scraping the surfaces to expose the clay and sand with the intention of using my Oribe, Kuro-Oribe or this iron yellow (saffron) glaze over a thin Hagi style white glaze (haku-yu). As you can see in the picture gravity has once again done a good deal of the heavy lifting in decoration this teabowl with the addition of the faceted areas adding a diagonal movement to the surface. Having opened up the clay surface prior to glazing the surface now is uneven and punctuated with areas of pits and highpoints from the protruding sand and grit making for a very textural appearance and feeling in hand. I think that with this group, there are several more to fire in an upcoming firing, I have gotten pretty close to basically starting at the beginning with the advantage of having some amount of experience and technology to add to these elemental forms.         

As a postscript, like most of the glazes I have been working with, each light source creates its own version of the surface and ultimately the bowl.