When it comes to hand building, I am never quite sure how I
got there or honestly exactly what I am doing. In my mind I had this idea that
would play on the fact that some of my glaze surfaces run quite a bit, born to run
if you will and, in this case, the piece sprung up from that central theme and
decoration. Obviously, slab-built, out of stoneware, the main goal was the creation
of a form that then had diagonal channels carved into it to allow the glaze to
collect and run as it most certainly did. In this instance, the pot was glazed in
my Kuro-Oribe surface though only the top two thirds, the bottom third was
straight Oribe. Had I decided to go all in with Kuro-Oribe even the simple fact
that this was fired on wads, placed on soft brick slabs, one inch thick, I
suspect the pot would be a permanent resident of the shelf on which it was
fired. As you can see, the glaze collected just as planned and ran down so
precariously close to the base that as the kiln was colling, I still thought
that I had a disaster on hand. Once cool enough, I picked it up and it came
along without any issues. My general working process does not usually begin or
revolve around an intended occurrence but in this case, how I wanted the glaze
to respond and behave certainly was the genesis for the slab-built pot and likely
not the best way to proceed in the future.
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