The Chair Project part 2

The chair project is evolving a bit further, I made more elements in clay and porcelain. The carrots (see previous post) would need leafs too, tricky to make. I solved it by gathering plumes from reed and drying these. Once dried I dipped these in liquid porcelain, the type which is used for casting, and fired them only once, at 1280°C. Normally you would fire porcelain twice, but after the bisque firing at 950°c these would be too fragile too handle as the supporting reed has burned away and the porcelain has not reached it's full strength.

Some mice have appeared and some birds too. One would expect the part above the ground to be clear, white, happy, normal and the part below dark, gloomy, crooked, ... But I chose for these to be mixed. White porcelain with the crooked figures of the rabbit and mice and the dark figures of the birds, mole and earthworm look fairly normal.

The Chair Project part 1

On Monday evenings I meet up with a group of fellow ceramist to play with clay. We are all experienced ceramist, but like to meet and be challenged so we still have a teacher, who comes in every 3 weeks or so. Usually we pick a few group projects but are otherwise free to do what we want. We make some excursions every year to any ceramic related event that has our fancy. I like it a lot and it draws one out of ones comfort zone, it's nice to see what other do and how different they work.

This season we are working towards a group exhibition in September of this year. Last summer we picked the theme and since September last year we have been working on it. We chose to buy the same chair and do something with it. This is the chair:

Some make a ceramic cushion for it, another turned it into a chessboard, someone will cover it with little ceramic beetles or ceramic figures of men, some are turning in into an abstract work of art. And me?

I'm turning it into a little world, a scene, a Tim Burton inspired landscape. The last only happened when I was already working on it. I quickly had the idea of a rabbit sitting on the edge, but why was it there, a rabbit alone was too easy. Than I imagined the slats to be rows in a garden with vegetables, carrots in this case. And than it just kept on growing. I got all these elements so far:

The dark clay still has to be fired and some bits of paper are stuck in the clay they will be gone after firing. 

Here ends part 1 of the Chair Project, see what other elements where added and how they will be assembled in the upcoming blogs about this project. The final blog will reveal all 10 or so chairs.