656. Throwinhg a Sodium Silicate Texture Teapot~ Class Demo with Hsin-Chuen Lin 林新春 岩花瓷茶壺拉坯示範

Okay, it's centered, and then open the hole. So usually I will keep on going until I reach the right thickness, which is around a half of inch to five-eighths or three-quarters of an inch, depending on how tall you want to leave your foot. And once I reach there, fingertip is going, my left fingertip is going to my right palm. So kind of pull the floor level, and then you can go back there and compress a little bit. Use your fingertip to compress it. It doesn't hurt to compress more, so that your base will be stronger, okay? And then once you open up the floor, the floor is done, you start to raise up the wall. Usually my initial, if the clay is not very big, I'm just using my left hand to grab it and then pull it up. But make sure you stabilize your hand, so I am raising here. This thumb, this is touching the thumb. And then this is kind of controlling the wall. And this wrist here is resting on the splash pan, okay? Pinch and raise it up, and compress the rim, okay? And I'm making the cylinder a bit narrow by color. Push the wall into the center. And I try to use most of the clay, so you can see that my fingers keep on grabbing the clay from the corner, just doing this squeeze, tuck the clay in there, tuck it in, squeeze it in. And then I'm going to raise it up again. Before I do that, make sure it is slippery. You can put a little bit of water, or the best way is if you can pull the slip from your fingertip, remove it, and then put it back in, okay? And then I'm going to do the same thing, lifting, but my thumb is too short, so I'm extending my right thumb to replace my left, but doing the same thing, just pull it up. Keeping the rim a little bit thicker. I have more clay here, but less clay here, so I'm going to pour a little bit more here to pull it up a little bit taller, because when I'm stretching it, this height is not enough for making a nice shape, so I'm going to pour a little bit taller. Put the slip back to work, just a little bit of water, touch it up on the outside, and you can see that I use the water very efficiently, so I don't have even a water drip on my splash pan, just enough water. I don't recommend people use a sponge and then squeeze a lot of water, the water is not going to stick, okay? So that's the secret of adding too much water to the wall. If you're adding too much water to the wall, you're making it weak, so it's hard for you to pour it taller. I'm going to squeeze a little bit more clay from the base, but kind of relax on the top. And then compress. So I think I've got enough height, now I'm going to make the cylinder a bit straight and a little bit smooth before I put the texture on it. So I'm using this rib, this is my number one new rib, and then you can cut it off, cut this part off, clean up the bed, because later on you don't want the sodium silicate to drip on the bed, so you want to clean it up before you do your process. You want the surface to be smooth so you will be able to see your texture a little better. First I would put a little bit of texture, and then I will brush the black slip over and then stretch it, okay? Just grab anything that you can find and put in the texture here. And leave this part here without putting texture or the sodium silicate. Okay, this part, because later on we are going to work on here, so you need to keep this part a little bit thicker and a little bit of room so you can close it in. is a little bit drier, like at the later hard stage, it will be easier for you to brush the slip on, otherwise your slip might be too thin. We just want to get the contrast, when I stretch it out, all I need is the black color, a little bit of black color, alright? And then we are going to use the torch to dry it a little bit before I apply the sodium silicate, otherwise this is a little bit too dry. And then I'm bringing in the sodium silicate, it usually comes in a liquid form, I don't have a good brush, so I'm going to use, okay, yeah, I'll get a barrel, alright? Yeah, the sodium silicate, when it's coated, sodium silicate is also called water glass, it's like a form of liquid glass, so it's binding on the surface of clay, but once it's dry, it starts to crack, so it's binding the clay, so you will see the crackle, so that's the effect we are looking for. You can stretch it, but it's not dramatically, like if you brush the sodium silicate, you silicate over this part here, just leave it alone, and I also didn't brush it all the way, because later on, we probably need to trim this part here, so you don't have to put a coat of sodium silicate there, and you can just wash it in the water, that should be fine, a little bit is not a big deal, you don't want the brush to get dry, so wash it a little bit, and then we are going to dry it again, but before I do that, there is a bit of dripping on the bed, so you might want to get rid of it, because once the sodium silicate is dry, it's like a glass coating on the surface, so make sure you wipe it off. Make sure you don't overheat it, if you overheat it, when you stretch, you will see it's split, and also when you want to stretch it, so make sure you leave your wall a little bit thicker, make it a little bit thicker, leave it a little bit thicker, now I am going to stretch from inside, but without touching the outside, I am putting a little bit of water to lubricate is usually go look further here, to see if the curve is right, it's not here, it's further to see the contour of the shape, so you can see that, it's starting to stretch it out, so it reveals the background color, which is white, so it's black and white contrast. Keep on going until I am satisfied with the shape, so basically the contact is, don't use your nail to stretch it, it's too sharp, so it's kind of slightly curved, so it's kind of using the pad of your fingertip here, and then slightly curve out, and then push it out, when you are stretching it, okay, let me put a little bit more water, it's feeling a little bit dry, okay, so you can see that when you want to do the moon jar, I do it slowly, and check here, the curve here is good, here isn't, so I can emphasize a bit more here, by just going back there, and then stretch it out, right there, right, so that curve is a bit better, okay, let me go back here, and stretch a little bit more, and I will be done, I keep on looking at the shape, and look further here, where I can see how the curve is coming along, okay, so now it looks good, and I'm gonna take care of the rim part here, for making my gallery for my lid to fit in, before I do that, I like to clear, clean up the inside of the floor, okay, and this part is a little bit dry, so I'm putting a little bit of water, but I don't want to put too much water, so I put water on my sponge, okay, and just touch it up here, just touch it up here, here, and here, and I don't squeeze, because I don't want to affect the surface, and slowly pinch and move the thicker part of clay toward the center, to make the opening a little bit smaller, see that, that's, that's what I'm doing, right, put the finger underneath, and then this thumb is pulled in toward the center, and this finger is stabilizing my thumb here, right, okay, a little bit dry, so a little bit of water here, a little bit of water there, this time I'm going to use my metal rib to connect the curve a little bit better here, but I don't want the bottom of the rib to affect here, touch it up here, so I'm putting my finger here to kind of bend it up, okay, like that, and using where is my elbow here, right, when I'm shaping, try to stabilize, okay, this is hard, this is good, right, stability, okay, when you throw, then we keep on emphasizing that when you throw, what, my elbow is here, right, yeah, this five, this six, like four, between four and five, just rest it here, right, and put the fingers inside to kind of slightly push out, but you see that, I'm connecting each part together, okay, that's how you make your shaping more stable, okay, so see that curve is following, not quite yet, we go this part here, I need to push out a little bit more here, right here, so if you see that shape isn't quite followed through, go back there before you close further, right, and push it out, see that, when I push out, the whole severe follow through, right, our whole curve follow through all the way, I don't know if you can tell the difference or not, before and after, you saw that, yeah, yeah, yeah, so, so you could push out a little bit more, and when you trim, you can trim this part here, right, later on, we trim it, and to make it fit a bit better, and see that I told you that I'm going to make this into a teapot, so for the teapot, this is my usual way of making the body, keep the rim simple, put the gallery on the lid, so that your lid is not moving, that way, some people do like to put the gallery here, and then keep the lid simple, but my take is that when I put in the gallery on the lid, that this part here, you can go insert there, so when you're serving the tea, the lid is not falling off your body, okay, so put the gallery here, so even you can make it longer, so you know, when you pour the tea, the lid is staying on the body, on top of the body, without falling off, if you just make a very simple lid, that I guarantee when you're serving, that the lid is going to fall off from the body, and also you don't want to have this opening too small, okay, too small, it's very hard for you to clean, okay, but you don't want to make it too big either, okay, because when you have a, you see that you have a liquid inside, if your lid is this wide, so when you start to tip over, the liquid start to coming out from here, instead of from the spout, so get a little enclosed, so the liquid is inside when you pour, it stays inside, okay, that's the reason why, when you see the teapot, you don't want to have it too wide, otherwise, if your lid is not very tight, I guarantee the water, the tea is going to coming out, spill from that part, okay, okay, do the very final touch before I remove it, you could trim it, okay, here, but I usually like to get it right, okay, that's good, and now I could cut the bottom off, I usually like to have a very sharp knife, or a wooden knife, so if you are buying from the basic kit, you should use the same paper to kind of sharpen it, so it's easier for you to cut, okay, and you see that when I'm cutting it, I'm just taking my time, and also brace my elbow right here on the back end, until I touch the back, and pull out my wooden knife, I'm using my, this is my number 10 trimming tool, very pointy, and very thin, so when I undercut it, versus the needle, sometimes the needle has a thickness, so you push back, your part is sticking back on, with the very thin blade, you don't have the problem, very nice and clean, so for making this part, all you need to do is just grab a small piece of clay, like that, okay, so you are centering this part here, and basically you are going to throw like a very tiny bottle, a wider base, and a small tip, all right, so here, drill the hole, and pinch, compressed it a little bit, making the base a bit smaller, and keep on lifting, and pinch it smaller, and keep on pulling it taller, and like I told you that you want to make a little wider here, so now I am going to stretch it a little bit here, and keeping the top a bit narrow, and when you're making this part, you have to compare the size of the body, okay, the size of the body, well, it's hard to, to exactly, usually you could, you know, make sure that, that my body is kind of big, so you could make this part a little bit bigger, and usually when you are making this spout here, the bottom part here a bit bigger, and then gradually you taper in, so you get to choose what part you're going to use when you attach in the spout onto the body, so if that is too, that is smaller, you can use a smaller part here, right, to attach, if the body is wider, you can use a wider part here, so making this part here a little bit wider, right, so you have a little room to adjust, but again, when you're the fingertip work of doing that, and the spout a bit smaller, and when you are pushing it from outside, the wall becomes a bit thicker, that's why you want to have something to stretch it or compress it to make it thinner, right, so I'm holding this, and then this part here is kind of hold it to support it, stabilize my spout, and then using my thumb to push the wall against, this is going to put it the spout is not level, see that this part here is taller than the other side, which is good, okay, for the spout, when it's not level, you could use it a higher point to when you bend it, so that would be the tip of the spout, okay, so that looks fine, and then I am going to just push that clay in here, so the base is even smaller, so I told you that making it into a bottle shape, a small bottle shape, all right, just a tiny little bit of adjustment here, so that the curve is a bit better, okay, so that's my lid, and then before I pour it out from here, usually I like to dry it a little bit, okay, let me okay, so I would torch it dry a little bit, okay, not too much, especially I like the teapot to when the tea spout a little bit curved, a little curved, so actually I'm going to bend my spout here, but to be able to bend it, I need to dry it a little bit, especially I could dry it a little bit more here, from this part here to here, but this part here is less, because I'm going to bend a lot, so you don't want to, when you're bending, you don't crack the spout, so don't over dry it, so I'm focused more on here, so the torch is very powerful, so you just be careful with it, all right, make sure my fingertip is dry, okay, so I am cut it up, and then make sure that this part here is the higher point, right, so I'm going to bend my spout this way, so go ahead and push it, so you see that, that spout start to bend and forming a little curve on this side here, okay, and then you see that this part here, when I'm bending this part here, there's a little dent, right, which is not a very good looking, so what I'm going to do is, I will cut, so this will be the middle section, and I'm just cutting this up, okay, so cut it up, eventually we're going to attach the clay this way, so cutting this part up is fine, and then my finger will come in there, and then push it up a bit, push it up, it's good, okay, something like that, and just let it sit aside, and let it dry, and if you wanted to, when it's a little bit drier, you can come back here, and kind of a pinch a little bit, so you could extend, if you don't have enough clay here, you can pinch it, because you have a clay here a little bit thicker, so just go back there, and then pinch it out, so you will have more clay here to follow through the curve all the way here, right, so I will do it a bit later, for now, I'm just putting it aside, and now for the lid, this part here, the heat can't dry it too much, so I will cut it out, all right, so for making the lid, oh, I lost my contact, my size, okay, that's fine, we will use a caliper, oh yeah, yeah, okay, thank you, so for making the lid, I'm going to throw the lid upside down, so the knob, this part here is going to be the knob, and I'm putting the gallery here, so you can put the gallery on this part here, and this will be the knob, so you could squeeze it in, so you don't need to have so much clay to trim out, if you want to trim your knob, okay, so basically, you are making like a dough knob, okay, turn the dough knob, okay, push in, so that will be the knob, and then you are going to open your hole, not too deep, okay, a little bit shallow, not too deep, and then I stretch it out, so like you are throwing a very shallow bowl, the bowl is shallow, but keeping the side of the shallow bowl a bit thicker, we are going to do the gallery here, so you want to have a little bit clay there, a shallow bowl, right, and let's measure it, so I would know where is the gallery, see that, this is already a bit too wide, right, so I don't need to stretch out so much, so we could push the clay back in here, push it back in, and then check it again, all right, push it back in again, and you see that this finger, my left finger is pinched here, and using my index finger there to squeeze it, so you can see that I already have a little gallery there, right, right, and before I do the gallery, I want to make sure the inside is nice and clean, I found that this part here, your thumb, actually you have a very nice curve, I'm using the curve to compress the inner part inside of the lid nicely there, okay, and let's do it again, all right, so see that, still white here, right, from this part here, still a little bit white, right, so that's what I'm gonna do is getting a very nice 90 degrees angle, okay, you have this wooden rib, and make sure this part here is sharp 90 degrees, okay, and just put a finger there to support it, and use that to squeeze it, and squeeze against the finger inside, let's double check if that is the right size, see that I squeeze it in, now it's the same size, okay, you give it like a millimeter tolerance, or yeah, I give it a millimeter tolerance, so this part here actually should be a little bit wider than the actual size, so when you are fitting, when you're trimming, you can either trim the body or trim this part here, so they will fit nicely, okay, I like my teapot to be very tight fit, so throw it a little bit bigger so you can trim it, yes, yes, and I also taper a little bit the lid, see that, there's, I put a little bit angle here, so it's easier for me to drop in, and if you want to have the lid to be holded when you pour the tea on the inside, you can make this part here a little bit taller, so if you want to make the part a little bit taller, all you need to do is just push it down, using the wooden rib to push it down further, right, so this part here is taller, all right, and let's do the final check-in, okay, actually it's a little bit too wide, so all you need to do is push that part in a bit, so making teapot is, I would say it's very tedious, a lot of job that you want each part to fit right, okay, so take your time to do, it's good, and now this part here is hanging out a lot, see that part here, normally you don't have the lid hanging out too much, so what I will do is get a knife to just chop it off, chop it off, and then around the corner, around the rim a bit, all right, and you see that there's still lots of clay there, this is what I would do, get a nice sharp knife, wooden knife, just go over here, right, okay, and you can just wire it up, okay, so that's the lid for the teapot, and you'll dry them all together, so they will have the same stage of dryness, so when you are fitting, you're trimming, if that lid is too dry, or the body is too dry, sometimes after you trim it, it becomes too loose, or not fitting very tight, so make sure you dry them all together, and if you could, sometimes, if you could put the lid on top of the body, and dry them all together, that would be even better, so that they, making sure that they are on the same dry stage when you're ready to trim, okay, so that's the teapot demonstration, combined with the sodium silicate texture, next week, I will do the trimming and assembling together, okay, next week is our fifth week, right, so we will also do the clay glazing, okay, glazing demo, finish glazing the pieces that we did in the class, okay, all right, so hope this helps, okay.