Camel tea pots

I made this one day when I was encouraging a student to make a novelty teapot.

The saddle lifts off to add tea leaves and hot water.

I am always quite nervous adding colour to my pots.

It can "make or break" and there is no way to fix it is it does not work out...other than start again.

 was on a bit of a roll and decided to make some book ends.

My husband was horrified when I cut this sculpted camel in half.

It made sense to me.

I have some old books that I prefer to display with the camel...."A girls own adventure"

The finish on this one is cast iron paint. A paint thick with iron filings and a product called instant rust.

I thought I would put a few traditional RAKU pots in as well.

They are fired to 1000degrees Celsius and then removed from the kiln and placed in a bin full of sawdust. This provides the carbon to make the unglazed bits of the pot black, and encouraged black cracks called crazing. Raku is my favorite for of pottery but it does make the work very fragile and no good for using with food.

The glaze is a copper based glaze and if handled right it can range in colour from this Egyptian blue to metallic red. I will confess I was aiming for red so these are abject failures from an intention point of view.

But quite beautiful for failures.