The National Art Museum Show is coming up soon,

I've been working on a "tear-drop" or "egg" shaped vase for my submission. I've made about 5 of them recently. I started at around 1.5 kg, the smallest one at the bottom, and then progressed up to about 4kg at the very top. I'm planing to pick the best one and enter it into the show. This has been a particularly interesting challenge for me on a technical level, because in order to make this shape I have to make my own chuck to trim it in, each time. This basically means I wind up making another 1/2 of a vase for each vase I've made so far. It's good practice, but it's also rather inefficient.

I also made a "Phoenician" shaped vase, at least it's Phoenician looking to me, the people at my studio seem to think it looks "Oriental" which seems weird to me on several levels. But anyways, there's no picture of it because the rim of the lip was broken by one of the handlers while firing it. They were nice about it and gave me 3kg of clay for free. Unfortunately, this is the most difficult shape I can kind of, sort of, sometimes make. It'll be a while before I try again because I'm so busy right now. So please hang in there.

Incense Burners No.2

This constitutes all of the incense burners I've made so far.

Incense Burners No.1

I was inspired by a shop in a department store near my station that sells incense. So I made about five of them to get a feel for it. I can say I'm really happy with the results. I got really great colors on this first one. The second one has no glaze, but looks really great too. The lids fit nicely, and I've tried out the design and they work great.

Just some

Odds and ends...

It's all shiro-matto in reduction. Actually on the teapot, I very painstakingly painted a leaf and vine pattern all over the whole thing, only to have it lost under the glaze. O-well...

Tea cups to match

I made these because a while back I made a teapot that has the same color and picture design.

Scroll to the bottom:

http://royaldirt.blogspot.com/2010/07/some-new-teapots.html

I really didn't like the way it came out, It was basically an accident, but I was stuck with it, so I decided to just make some cups to match and this way it would at least look I intended to make them look that way on purpose. On a positive note, one of the ladies at the studio who I really admire seemed to think these cups were really great. It makes me feel better about the whole thing.

Vases

Just two, but I thought they needed several shots to show what they look like. I think they look even better in real life. It's hard to get good light... Anyways, the first one is another Zogan

ぞがん in English, I believe it's called Scriffito but I don't know how to spell it. It's a dragon, and it's my first try. I'd like to try again. I think I can do better. This one I used white clay with iron oxide colored clay for the zogan, but the iron made the whole vase turn red while I was working on it. I was a little nervous that for all my efforts I would wind up with just a red vase so I scraped a little more than I would otherwise have done, and in the process, scraped away some of the picture as well... Live and learn I say, live and learn.

New Stuff

From the Kama. Here is a Tokuri and ochoko とくり と おちょこ aka sake bottle and cups. I think they came out really nice. I didn't glaze the outside, only the inside so they're just a little rough to the touch. The clay I used was a little coarse.