Hana - Winter quarter 2008

I'm taking pottery again this quarter. I'm pretty excited about it, even though I was kind of exhausted by the class near the end of last quarter. I think with the days getting longer again it'll be a bit easier to keep my energy up.

There have already been three classes. I missed the first class on Jan 10 because I had to get a root canal that day. That in itself is a long story, but not pottery related, so I'll skip it. Suffice to say, I wasn't up for a class that evening.

Jan 17th was my first class. Looks like a smaller group than last quarter, I noticed that several people from last quarter hadn't returned (included a couple people that I found vaguely annoying (this one woman always smelled like mosquito repellent), and one person who was pretty quiet that I seemed to quietly get along with), but otherwise everyone there had also been there last quarter. So it wasn't like going to a new place with new people, and therefore a little easier to do. It didn't seem like I missed much the previous week. Apparently this quarter we're going to work on teapots. yay! That has been a long term goal for me, so I was pretty excited.

We started on 1/17 by throwing a round form, then making a certain shape on top. Once you have a fairly thick rim on the piece, take a 90 degree tool and press it diagonally into the rim. So, imagine if the rim forms an arc or about 90 degrees, you take the corner of the tool and touch the arc at 45 degrees and press it in radially. At the same time, put one finger into the pot and press up from underneath. This creates a little edge inside the rim for the lid to rest on. It's called a "galley".

Using calipers, measure the rim diameter and the galley diameter. We then threw a variety of lids to fit the pot, where the main lid part was smaller than the rim diameter. If you throw a flat bottomed lid, that's all you have to do. But a better kind of lid has a part that goes down into the galley so that when you pour, the part sticking down there holds it in place, so your lid doesn't fall off when you pour the tea. Gary said the part that sticks down should be about a third of the diameter of the galley. You also have to be careful that the part that sticks down has a smaller diameter than the galley. It's a lot to think about.

Then, just to relax a bit, I threw a couple large mugs. They are roughly the size of a pint glass. I'm not intending to attach handles. I just wanted to do something simple after the work of teapots.