Thursday, July 7, 2011

Tea-bowl for Rick Lash, #5 of 36, "The Vampire Cup"


















    "Little bats, from iron rich clay,
     Nibbled my lip, they crawled through glaze.
     This Vampire Cup was made from mud,
     With vampire bats, for drinking blood!"



Already we're at bowl #5 of 36.

Imagine if life were like this. You knew you would drink from one cup each day of your life, and you knew what the cup on the last day of your life looked like.

I'm fascinated by bats. Fascinated. But I don't like them. They scare the hell out of me!

One day you awake . . . it is there . . . the cup you've dreaded all your life! The Cup of Death! 

Fantasy constructs our picture of reality. Truth is, this cup did get nibbled by the fire. The clay did crawl. And these bats are imaginary. It's what I see. Time marches on.

So who shall this end up with this one? I haven't a clue since it hasn't been claimed.

This part of the kiln got hot, it hit a cool Cone 11 minimum, two dips of Shino fluxed, melted, and crawled, making wonderful patterns on one side.

The bats are winging their way across a sulfurous sky . . .

The 'The Vampire Cup'.

On hot summer nights bats occasionally come into our apartment. We've had some hellish moments getting them to fly out a window!

Inside this bowl there are some crazy colors made by dripping glaze! O-oooooh!

-:-

I knew the Vampire Cup would be the last one claimed. It was. I knew only someone fearless would be interested. And so that also transpired. A cousin, and writer of fiction has decided to drink from it. Rick Lash, it's yours. Can't wait to get it to you, someplace suitably, . . . vampiric.


-:-

    123,  4,  5,  6
   78910,11,12

Tea-bowl for Lan Ma, #4 of 36, "Simplici-Tea"


















     "Why so pleasant, drinking tea?
      Life's great lesson's is simplicity."


This is the 4th tea-bowl I'm giving away as part of an art performance.

The Shino here has almost no variation caused by the fire, is only lightly reduced, and seems sagar-fired, or from a gas firing.

Lan Ma, a student in Plymouth, in Devon England, chose this one.

You can tell this piece is wood-fired. The crystals that formed near the lip, were caused by ash.

Most wood-fire results show a lot of ash deposition, which makes one side of a pot or bowl very different from the other.

So it's a welcome surprise when something turns out simply, like a bride who walks through fire without getting soot on her dress.

Tomorrow I'll be posting bowl # 5.



-:-

    123,  4,  5,  6
   78910,11,12

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