Some Assembly Required



I create the separate pieces of a teapot at different times and allow them to dry to a leather hard state. When the clay is leather hard it can be handled without deforming the clay, but soft enough to manipulate and assemble the pieces. From left to right is the teapot lid, body and spout, along with an handle that has been extruded. The extruder's die was custom made by me.  

(Sorry for the yellow hue in the pictures.  Either the camera flash malfunctioned or the fluorescent ceiling lights interfered with the flash.)  



 I start with the spout.  After imagining it on the teapot body, I cut the bottom of the spout to fit the curve of the body.


Next I scratch an outline at the location of the spout on the body.  Using my thumb I press the clay inward.
This is the beginning of the internal strainer that is part of all of my teapots.


Next I create the internal strainer by making small holes in the clay.  Some use a set pattern for these holes.  I don't.


Now the spout is ready to be attached to the teapot body covering the strainer.


The next step is a bit complicated for photographs.  The extruded handle is curved and attached to the teapot.  And then (and here's the little tip I learned years ago), I place the teapot upside down allowing gravity to help shape the handle's curve.  After the handle has set enough to keep the handle's curve, I return the teapot right side up and cut the tip of the spout to form its angle.



I place everything under plastic laundry garment bags so that the clay dries very, very slowly.  Sometimes I will dry a teapot under the plastic for a week.


Finished Teapot




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pop Up Camper Repair - Part 1 Let's Remove the Roof

Image
Prologue A few years ago I purchased a 1981 Palomino pop-up camper from a 1st grade teacher.  It was an impulse buy.  I know nothing about pop up campers. But now I know I paid a bit too much for the unit.  We have used it for 5 years without much maintenance.  But we still paid too much. The picture above is a few years ago with the camper set up.  It is rough but functional What I knew was that the wood on the roof was a bit sketchy...and when the lift arms cables broke after the season in 2010, it was time to undertake fixing the roof.  Due to a few circumstances beyond my control, I couldn't fix the roof in 2011.  So this May (2012) we began the project. The Roof Repair With the help of reading posts on www.popupportal.com and obsessing about this for a year in my head, I began the process.  The first trick was how to remove the roof.  The external lift arms had to be removed to repair the spring / cable mechanism anyhow. The roof arms are spring loaded.  In the e
Read more

Pop Up Camper Repair-- Part 2--Oh Oh

Image
Once the roof was in the garage, I went to work removing the aluminum channels and skin to find out what I was working with.  OMG!  One side wall was completely gone.  I mean gone.  There was nothing between the two pieces of aluminum but sawdust and rotten fragments of wood.  The ants had had a feast while the camper had been parked for the year. There is a wood frame around the outside of the roof.  The inner core looks like rigid insulation.  This wood frame was also gone on one side and so wet on the back, front and other side, I decided I would remove all of this also.  Actually, I had no choice with the one side, as that was missing as much of the roof wall above it was. Note the orange can of ant spray.  That was my main weapon against the ants that just kept on coming. So this is what I was facing after a day of removing all the metal.  A roof with the rigid insulation sandwiched between the top and bottom pieces of aluminum. This was going to be a bigger pr
Read more

New Wheel

Image
In 1974 I spent $175.00 for a brand new potter's wheel.  It was a lot of money for a college graduate without a high paying job, but I was interested in upgrading from a stand up, homemade treadle wheel that was gifted to me right after high school.  I researched types of wheels.  I looked at buying a kick wheel kit and casting my own fly wheel. But I didn't want to deal with the weight and I was still living in apartments. Creative Industries had the cheapest electric wheel on the market at the time and that tipped the scale. 40+ years later, five relocations and hundreds and hundreds pounds of clay, the wheel looked like this. The wheel has been a real work horse.  The only maintenance I have done on this wheel for the past 40 years is a little cleaning and greasing the wheel bearing's through the zerk fitting. When the photo was taken I was deep into making. There was one problem with this wheel that was a constant; the splash pan.  It was merely a horseshoe shape
Read more