Ed, my tutor, will be demonstrating raku firing at CoCA in York, in early October. Rather than be limited to bowls, I have agreed to make some figurines for people to glaze and then we raku fire them!
Lots of ideas and the first to pursue was the chameleon. I wanted to make a two part mould so quite a few could be produced by pressing clay into the mould. The design needs to have fairy shallow curves and no undercuts [ie bits where clay would get stuck when trying to get it out of the mould]. Got some pictures of Common Chameleons from the internet and I set about making an original; here it is in the mould making process:-
… Here it is out of the mould making process [you can see it survived almost unscathed],
and here is a very quick press moulded chameleon using the plaster contaminated clay.
You can see that there is a flashing of clay where the two mould pieces meet and the clay is caught between them. This excess clay can be cut away the a knife.
Meanwhile, we came across an interview between Mary Beard and Clive Anderson on the BBC. Clive James’ head interested me and over three days last week [probably 8hours of work] I made this,
But then it was back to the figurines and I made an octopus in the evenings.
Next i make the mould and then lots of copies. I’ll provide an update after the event at CoCA.
