Great News

I will be exhibiting one of my Raku Pieces at Unit Twelve :

http://www.unittwelve.co.uk/exhibitions.htm

From the 1^st November – 25^th November really pleased I managed to get this J

ANOTHER SLIP CASTED PIECE

Below are a few images of another slip casted piece which I have decorated with black and white slip. Before I did any decoration, I produced some drawings which influenced the designs on the piece.

My Raku Pieces

Below are a few images of my Raku Pieces 

Raku in the Making              

As I haven’t had the chance to do Raku before Mark gave me the chance to have a go at and it was great. 

The technique which I learnt through this process was slab building and how to do pinch pots. With the slab building I learnt that if you measure the slab out correctly then they would all fit together nicely and look good.

So the first thing I did was to make the slab long and thin and then had to leave it to go leather hard before I could do any work to it. Once the clay was leather hard I started the measuring and cutting, I used a T – square as this gave me straight lines and edges. Then I constructed the pieces together starting with the longer sides and then the smaller sides. Once it was all together I started to add surface pattern on to the pieces.

With having 3 slab built pieces and then 10 pinch pots all bisque fired then it was time to have the Raku Firing Celebration. As Raku Firing is a celebration my family and Marks family all got together and then got everyone involved in the glazing part.

With the Raku kiln being fired up and hot enough for the pieces to be put in the excitement started. My roll at first was to put the straw, hay and sawdust into the metal bucket where the red hot pieces were being put in and flames started to appear. Once the pieces where cool enough we got them out and scrubbed the burnt hay, straw and sawdust of them and left them to cool. The second firing I got to take the pieces out of the Raku kiln with metal tongs this was enjoyable. The last firing was eventful! 
Over all the experience was amazing as I have never done this type of firing before. In the near future I hope to do this type of firing again when I get my own studio as I will hopefully have the space. 

 Below are a few images of how I made my Raku pieces.

The Weekend of 24^th- 27^th August 2012

Exchangetonbury !!

As the weekend grew near I was getting more nervous about how well my mugs would sell. I didn’t need to be worried as I sold most of them. Also I got very good feedback from the costumers saying the handle is very good, light in weight and very pleasing to the eye. The Teapot I made also went down well raising around £150 for the charity Douglas Macmillan Hospice.

Completed my Mugs !

So pleased with the transfers as they are a sold bold colour! I really enjoyed working on this project as I got to learn a lot of new skills and techniques.

Continuing with the PROJECT!

I have pushed myself with this project as I only gave myself 3 weeks for it to be completed! I feel that I worked extremely hard as I was getting 12 casted cups out a day which I think is a great achievement. As the pieces were coming out the bisque kiln I had to think of designs which would sit on the mugs and came up with 3 different ones to show variety. One with just black text which was hand written, the next with a black background with white text on and then a final one with just a black band around the top of the mug. To finish it off I decided to look into transfers to make it more personal to the pub where I work, The Royal Exchange which is part of the Titanic Brewery situated in Stoke-on-Trent. To do this I had to contact the Brewery and ask for the logos which I am going to put  on the mugs. The logos which are going to go on to the mugs are Steerage, WhiteStar, Iceberg, PlumPorter, CaptainSmith, Mild and Stout as these are the post popular beers we sell.

The technical still I have learnt over this period of time doing the live project:

Time management – I have always struggle a little with this as I seem to spend more time at the beginning of the project not doing what it is I need to be doing:

·        Making the mould always takes longer than you imagine

·         Casting up the object takes a long time but once you get into the middle of the project it’s very easy to keep up with yourself as you keep the process going.

·         Having enough time to bisque fire, glazing fire and the transfer firing takes it time as you need to allow about a week or more for these.

Other skills :

·         Sponging and Fettling at first I found this technique a little hard as you need to be constantly moving the mug around to keep a nice even flow and avoid sharp edges on the mug.

·         Getting the slip right, at first the mugs weren’t looking right as there were ripples on the surfaces inside the mugs which isn’t what you want. To overcome this we added more clay to make the slip thicker. This changed the outcome dramatically as the mug no longer had the little ripples inside anymore.

·         Adding a handle, this technique was fairly easy as you get the mug mark where the handle is going to go and then get a knife (sharp tools) and scrape away the surface so you are left with a flat surface and then place the handle on the flat surface with slip underneath it to act as “glue” gluing the two parts together. Then with a brush, brush around the handle to make sure it holds together.

·         Dipping, recapped on dipping which is a glazing technique. This technique allows the glaze to sit nice and evenly on the mug.