Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Skills Demonstration no. 2

This assigment was to choose a finnish ceramic artist´s work, at least 50 years old, and copy it. I was idly looking through a book about  Kupittaan Savi that is known of their "common people" decoratives and found some lovely pieces of Kerttu Suvanto-Vaajakallio. She was the art director of the company in the 30's and brought art deco influences and freshned up the style of the factory. She died in 1939 but her work stayed long after in the production.

I build the jugs with slab technique from white stoneware (the original probably was from red erthen ware or red and white earthen ware mix). For the test piece I estimated the measurements by a real size copy of the picture from the book (the height was mentioned). It was suprisingly hard to figure out the depht and if the circle was a perfect circle from the picture.


Luckily before the skills demonstration day I found in an internet auction page pictures of the same jug in lots of different anckles and also all the exact measurements.  I was also working a lot to find a glaze with similar athmosphere. I took the recipe silky matt base no. 172 of  Emmanuel Cooper and started to experience with copper, rutile and titanium.
The final jug´s glaze was running untill the kiln plate for it  was too thick. I managed to get the jug off without breaking it totally. In the short time we had, I could not find yet the perfect shade, but I got pretty close.











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