26 January 2014

Australia Day teapots

I've started making teapots in the hope I will have some ready for the Melbourne Teapot Show in a few months time...

Before I could start I had to cleanup my little room which with tongue in cheek I call my studio.


and to avoid breathing in any clay dust, mop it out..

Then I needed to prepare some clay,  I found lots little bags of leftovers while doing the tidy up..
so I bashed the clay inside the bags with a mallet and then put them into a bucket with water

then it is dryed out in a plaster mold

then the wedging starts to get rid of those air pockets
























once the clay is ready I can start to throw the teapot bodies.










and the lids

and the spouts




and then pull some handles and all the while managing how quickly each piece drys, enough to hold its shape but not too dry that it cracks or can't be manipulated into shape as each piece is joined to make a teapot.

Today is Australia Day so I thought I would share some images of the place where Captain Cook thought the first English settlement would be... he was wrong..  Captain Arthur Phillip decided that Botany Bay was not a deep enough harbour for future use and went further north and found Sydney Cove and made the settlement there.  We still acknowledge Botany Bay or the promontory where Cook landed, Kurnell, as the first landing.  These images were taken last winter when we visited the park at Kurnell.

Kurnell

The bay is used as a commercial site for off loading oil tankers one side and the airport runway on the other side, along with a container terminal on the other point.

walking through the park you would not realise you were  so close to the largest city in Australia


Hope you had a nice day.
You can see more blog posts over on Kim Foales blog linkup, Sunday Ceramics...

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4 comments:

smartcat said...

It looks like you have found some nifty pink potter's shoes too!

kim @frogpondsrock said...

I was wedging reclaimed clay this week as well. I just throw all my clay scraps into a large rubbish bin and when I am getting a bit low on clay I fish some out and wedge it up. I don't know how this lot will go as it is a good mix of RGH, Walkers 10, BRT and a dark feeneys stoneware. But the marbling is interesting and so I am using it for small skulls and some test bowls to see whether it cracks or not :)

Anna said...

Hi Smartcat, they are similar to 'Crocs' and very light and save me bumping toes on buckets or such, plus a nice bright colour :)

Anna said...

Hi Kim
I made the mistake of adding some paperclay in my last scrap bucket - now the whole bucket load will have to be treated as paperclay which is fine but not what I was expecting at the time. I hadn't realized how little paperclay it needs to give those qualities. That marbled look is very popular around here at the moment, should make some interesting pieces for you.