A sad week in pottery

Was hoping that I could take a picute of my assembled teapot before I updated my blog, but somehow, my teapot is no where to be found... I suspect it is still in the kiln. Hopefully it will be found next week.

I collected back quite a few of my finished pieces too, but I am very, very disappointed with the way the glazes turned out. So let me grieve over them for a while, and when i am ready, I will write about them.

So here is what I threw and trimmed these two weeks:

This vase is made using raku clay. I was trying to make a vase with a small opening, and this is the end result! Ok, I am happy. BUT, as I picked up the vase, I realise it was rock heavy! *sigh* Yeah, I wanted to leave the walls thicker so that they can withstand the stresses of having a small opening and a sharp angular profile. Unfortunately, I overdid it. So although the shape is right, the weight is not.

Plus, after leaving the pot to dry for a couple of days, an S-crack is starting to form on the base! *sobz!* I don't think it is going to make it through the bisque firing, not to mention the glaze firing. That leaves me only one option left: to destroy the vase! I still cannot bear to do it yet... But the good thing about clay is that as long as it is not fired, I can re-use it again and again. So I will probably make something else using this raku clay again. Anyway, the raku party has been postponed, so that gives me a bit more time to come up with something.

This is a mug which I made. Playing around with profiles again. The handle is extruded and stuck on, but I made the mistake of sticking on the handle before trimming the pot. But fortunately, the trimming needs only to be done to the bottom of them mug (since I painstakingly trimmed the shape while I was throwing for this particular mug), and I managed to do so without knocking the handle off.