Sunday 2 December 2012

Post 58 Bekabune

The Bekabune is another traditional inshore Japanee fishing vessel. This picture from Douglas Brooks' excellent website shows one he made as an apprentice in Japan. The craftsmanship is exceptional. This museum quality build was done entirely with hand tools only - now that's dedication.


 
The edge joined planks and flush sides of the craft offer enough similarity (never mind the pointy end) to attach the name to my latest pot model.

I made the mould a few weeks ago and this is now the first one produced, pictured full frontal and three quarters, wet clay yet to dry out.



Final fired dimensions for the pot will be about  340 x 260 x 55, so it's a useful intermediate size a little smaller than my other ovals, which are both a little over 400mm long.

In my first design for the pot I toyed with the idea of making it without the rim flange to give a very clean line. But I think the composition works, the proportions are sound and having incorporated the rim flange in the mould gives me the flexibility of making a pot without it. It would be more challenging to do it the other way around.
There are as usual with mould made pots, opportunities for post production alterteration to break the pattern. Things like setting the feet back slightly to break the line, changing the rim flange profile, outer or inner rim flange, wall planking or other textural detail and even pot height; one mould many pots.
It will be good to get a few of these down the line. I have a number of my trees in imported pots of unknown origin which are about this size and they are looking very ordinary. So it will be good to change them out and there will be a bunch of secondhanders on the sale table at the next exhibition.

I have a friend who refers to my kiln as 'the blast furnace' and suggests that every time I fire it his lights dim a little. Ha Ha. Well his lights should be doing just that today with 4 more pots in for glaze firing as well as my moonstone rock which I have glazed with what I'm hoping will be a super matte iron reddish brown glaze.

2 comments:

Happy to hear your advice, feedback or questions