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you can't throw just one pot !

updated thu 19 may 05

 

Daniel Semler on wed 18 may 05


Hi All,

Another pointless ramble coming up ! Hit delete or remember you were warned.

I have been throwing coffee mugs and bowls. Coffee mugs since last summer
sometime. I now have too many. I have to take a box to work soon to get rid of
them, but I digress. I like bowls but they two are tricky in their own way. You
can't throw one of anything. It seems it takes a while for the form to enter
your system (mine anyway). It takes a while to be able to just rattle them off.
But out of a dozen or so in a sitting, the hit rate does rise eventually. Just
the way it is. Idea in the head, executed through the hands, eventually
absorbed in the sense of form.

Oddly you can't make just one glaze either. I've been working on a clear gloss
for 6 months, and that's with calculation ! 50 tests ! There are many things to
learn. Get your method down. Stay focussed and so on. Different from throwing
sure, but the same, practice.

I expect its the same with firing, certainly has been with raku for me. It no
doubt will be when I start firing cone 10 myself.

One day in the distant future some archeologist will dig up my place and say,
"lo, we have found a great mound of rubbish !" and quickly bury the whole place
again. In fact I rather wonder why that isn't more often the case already. There
must be piles of really poorly made stuff buried somewhere. Perhaps the hammer
was invented earlier than I thought.

Anyhow, you can't make just one, of anything, if you want it to be anything
you'd be proud to have dug up.

Time for cake.
Love and goodnight.
D