It’s not so bad to be at the mercy of weather… sometimes a moon on a clear starry night, or a drizzly drippy shower can be quite inspiring.

That’s how this handful of fun and expressive ceramic spoons came about — they’re a family of “weather spoons,” with a few bunnies thrown in for good measure. They have a more refined shape and are quite a bit larger compared to my previous test spoons. Their whimsical design is a spin-off of traditional “blue and white painting,” a technique used for centuries in China (see this blog post about qinghua painting).

This photo was taken after the lines were painted, using the fine line brush, and before the “water pushing” (or filling) step, which is done with a “chicken head” brush. It’s interesting to note that the paint is dark grey in color at this stage.

Each spoon was hand-formed from stoneware clay and allowed to dry before being hand-painted using the traditional Chinese cobalt pigment. I have used porcelain in the past, but decided to use a speckled stoneware clay this time around to pull it further away from its original qinghua roots.

CATEGORY: In the Studio
POSTED by blue bean	September 25, 2013