This week ran smoothly in from the last, I carried on carving, sanding and smoothing my handle down. On Monday I finished off my tile moulds and sad with Cerys and Nina perfecting my handle. I also planned with Nina our carving session for Tuesday, we were on the lathe!
On the Tuesday morning before Nina and I could take over the lathes Ian came around and had informal tutorials with us all. I realised that i had been far too relaxed with my handle. I had not focused enough and had shaved it far too slim. This was fine though, it was easy to start again and create a new one. At least now I knew more about how to create one. In the morning Nina and I created our plaster mix to carve on the lathe, this was a messy process and plaster did come pouring out the bottom but we saved it and it was perfectly usable! We then got on the lathe and within four hours had carved our mug. It was a very satisfying process, but also a tiring one. I enjoyed doing it with Nina, we had fun working out the measurements together and ensuring we hadn’t made the mug too skinny and the height was okay.
On Wednesday we were instructed to continue working on our handles, producing tiles and carving our handles. I broke two handles that day. The plaster was a weaker mix than the one we had previously been using (i think!). I was relieved to have a demo with Bridget which stopped me from pulling my hair out! The demo showed us how to create a mould out of the espresso mug and handle models. These moulds can then be used to slip cast!
This project is very fast moving. There is little time to stop and think ahead but that isn’t a bad thing, it allowed me to think about one thing at once rather than 100 things at once which is my usual method of creating.
On Thursday 11th November I spent the day in London by myself. I did some early Christmas shopping and visited T2. This was really interesting because for the first time I began looking at the mugs and wondering how the moulds of those mugs looked and checked to see if i could see any seem lines. I also wanted to look and see if there were any imperfections where the handle meets the mug body. There weren’t any! I continued on to the contemporary ceramics collection and saw a large number of beautiful ceramic pieces. I asked the lady which pieces were slip cast work and she pointed out this collection of white vessels, which i wouldn’t have guessed at being slip casted. I also visited the British Museum and imagined out some of the artifacts could be made in an industrial fashion.