Klyf Brown on fri 7 sep 01
Seems to me that you can carry the handmade thing to genuine
extremes. The next thing you know someone will be telling you that
you can't call it handmade unless you mine your own clay and glaze
material, ball mill it in a machine you built and power yourself, apply it
with a brush made of your own hair (i do go this far, but I bought the
stiick- a dowell. shame on me) and fire it in a hole you dug in the cliff
out back with wood you chopped down in the forest yourself. I have
little interest in slip casting, but my wife is into porcelain dolls. After
the zillion hours she spends on the cast piece and several firings in an
electric kiln that not only did she not build, but doesn't even own, and
then all the work on the body and dresses---do you think I am about
to tell her that her work is not handmade??
I like the extruder. Because it is pressed through a die and the basic
shape comes out the same each time does this mean that after hours
of messing around with the form and turning it into a box or vase that
this is not handmade?
I used to do a bunch of production throwing for hire. After throwing a
zillion of the same form I had turned into a human jiggering maching. I
still considered those production pots handmade. I did not even fire
them, glaze them or anything except throwing them and we all
considered them handmade.
I think that if you take a piece of clay out of a mold, an extruder, a
slab roller, a punch press or off a wheel and put your heart and soul
into that piece it is handmade. Each of these devices are only tools.
Each tool has its place and use. These tools can be used in
combination or by themselves. But in the end they are only tools it is
what you impart to that piece with your hands and mind that make it
handmade.
In my humble opinion.
Klyf Brown
Mesilla, New Mexico, USA
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