Post 73 Indian bow tie clamping

On my recent Indian trip I visited an amazing place called Jaisalmere, in the north west of Rajasthan, close to the border with Pakistan. It has always been on the trading frontier of India and was once a very rich place (no doubt still is like a lot of India).

The old town is inside the fortress and the 'houses' are more multi storeyed mini palaces, intricately decorated both inside and out.

Up on the fort wall you'll never guess what I found. Yes evidence of the old bow tie clamps used on the defensive stonework. The metal clamps have long since been robbed out but the rebates remain.

There was a post long ago where I raised these clamps and talked about a repair I was attempting on a pot that had cracked during bisque firing. Its taken a long time to get it into the kiln for glazing but it's there today. As I was giving it a wash down in preparation for applying the glaze I noticed a second crack.
 Isn't human nature amazing that we have to go back every now and then and retest cause and effect relationships, just to see that things haven't changed and they still apply. Well the message about building with clay of uniform moisture has been reinforced.
Having invested the time so far in this pot experiment what could I do but install a second bow tie on this other crack.The result will be clear tomorrow.

Post 72 New Pots

With the tree loppers outside cutting and chipping the fallen timber from the storm last week I've been taking some more pictures and measurements of the pots that were in the last firing with the shohin pots.

Each of these pots are  of an intermediate size and reasonably shallow.

 The first one is the first of my Bekabune pots to be glazed. A nice little oval at 350 x 256 x 65

This flanged Sabani has a vertical texture pattern on the walls, which is reminicent of some of the earliest decorative patterns used on primitive pottery. The glaze is an olive cream which breaks to red brown tones where thinner. Final dimensions are 363 x 260 x 63
 

Here is another flanged Sabani which is 368 x 260 x 65, glazed in beige.
 

And finally this time, this one is a handmade oval glazed in my 'mint green' glaze. It's a very useful size at 336 x 245 x 65.

Post 71 First Shohin pots

It has been some time since I made my first Shohin prototype and mold, which is based on the profile of a 10th century BCE Chinese pot. That one was wheel thrown, no doubt on something like I saw in India.

 I took the profile and support skirt design of that pot and turned it into an oval shohin pot. Other things took my time and energy but at last I have had the chance and kiln space to glaze fire a few.
 

 
I think this yellow/mustard one is the pick of them. The digital rendering has made it a little more yellow than in the flesh but it is close enough. The finished pot is a cute 180mm x 145mm and just 60mm high. 

Here it is in a much more matte light brown mottle.

And this one is in a tenmoku glaze. I think the shine is ok for a shohin pot, they can be a little more showy sometimes. Tenmoku is iron rich and it is the iron crystallation on the surface that floats over the red-brown background.

 And the last one is in a matte cream, with a little differentiation in the application to bring in some tonal variation. I did a presentation today for the folks at the Toowoomba Bonsai Group and left them with this pot for a little fundraising raffle.

I have a few more ready to fire and a couple of those have a bit of a radical streak.Two are quite different and two follow the same design but have be 'antiqued' a bit and I plan to just stain these, but need to test a couple of combinations first.
They are fiddly little things to make and take more time than their size suggests!
I hope you like them.