Felix v.Bomhard – 100 pots, a learning path

[Bok]

Another detail shot of fifteen.

Don’t be fooled by the images, they make this pot look better than in reality…

[William]

Along comes fifteen.

Although I am quite happy with the overall shape, this pot has some issues.
First of all, the lid does not fit very snugly. However it is flat enough to not let any air in, it just moves sideways. When i trimmed that pot I enlarged the interior rim to much, so none of the lids I had prepared fit perfectly anymore.

The lid handle instead of a knob works well though and I like the look of it.
I also tried another style of handle which is quite comfortable to hold.
This pot is also a lot lighter than my previous ones.

The bigger issue I have with that pot is the colour…
It was supposed to be a sort of dark green with lighter undertones. My Dasixiong (older student brother, like they also name it in Kungfu schools) advised me not to spray this particular glazing to thick as it thickens up and drops down, which can glue things together.

I guess that made me to cautious and I sprayed it too thin. The colour is now more of an olive green and at times even orange where the clay shines through. You can even see some fingerprints of mine, where I held it while cleaning the glaze off the rim and bottom of the pot.

Waterflow is also far from perfect and trickles unevenly.

The colour of the glaze is spectacular!

[Bok]

The colour of the glaze is spectacular!

I guess it depends on one’s own expectations.
In my head I had imagined (and was looking forward to) that nice mat dark green I had seen on one of my teacher teapots…

For me personally it is too glossy, which is why was dissapointed on how it turned out. But as your comment proves – that’s all personal!

[Drax]

The colour of the glaze is spectacular!

I guess it depends on one’s own expectations.
In my head I had imagined (and was looking forward to) that nice mat dark green I had seen on one of my teacher teapots…

For me personally it is too glossy, which is why was dissapointed on how it turned out. But as your comment proves – that’s all personal!

It certainly looks nice. The unevenness of the glaze gives it an almost "yohen" quality without being such. It may not be what you intended, but it has an interesting style of its own.

[SlowOx]

I'm inspired. This is quite fascinating. This is... inspiring!! I'm addicted to this thread already!

What are you going to do with all these pots?

[Bok]

I'm inspired. This is quite fascinating. This is... inspiring!! I'm addicted to this thread already!

What are you going to do with all these pots?

Thank you! Glad if my path can inspire the one others are taking

To answer your question: I always thought it a waste not to use objects which are meant to be used. Which is why I have given away quite a few to friends and family (though only to those whom I know to appreciate and use them).

Myself – in turn inspired by Petr Novak’s 12 gems, am keeping the ones I like best at the moment, which gets reshuffled each time new ones are finished.
In the end I only aim to keep a select few.

Some are no good to use and even less to give to someone as a present. Those are discarded and await an unknown future use, maybe as flower pots…

[SlowOx]

Petr Novak...

I have a stone Tea boat by him. Cost me a pretty penny. I'll exhume it from the basement and take some pics. I need to sell it

[Bok]

Sixteen. Similar issues in regards to the colour, which is the same glaze as the previous pot. However, this one has a tad more glaze, so you can have a glimpse of what it was supposed to look like.

I tried a new body shape on this one, which I haven’t tried before.
The lid opening is quite large, so heat loss can be a problem – Although that won’t bother me too much in Taiwan
On the other hand it makes emptying the pot a lot easier.

What really surprised me is that was a noticeable improvement on how the tea tasted. I brewed the same tea in 15 and 16. This pot performs a lot better! Pour is nice as well, so overall I am quite happy with it.

One formal misstake though – the handle is definitely too low, which makes the handling not ideal.

[demonyc]

Great pot, Bok! I like the shape of the lid and lid button. Also, the glaze has really nice color variations, and I can see a little better what your intention was with 15. Keep on throwing!

[Bok]

As none of the above would be possible with competent guidance, I think it is only fair to write a little something about my teacher, Fang Laoshi. His full name is 方啟文 (Fang Chi-Wen) and he is from Tainan, Taiwan.

In his previous life he used to be an interior designer, owned a tea shop and used to be a judge in tea competitions. I don’t know the particulars, but in the end all that went away and he is now dedicating his time to his pottery and students.

He runs a small workshop in the city, where he teaches his students. Each class is usually followed by a tea session downstairs, where friends and students pop by for a cuppa.

His own workshop and kilns are at his home on the countryside. That is also where we visit to spray glazing, the city studio has only the possibility to do dipped glaze. This workshop is like a treasure grove! It is filled to the rim with all sorts of potteries, old and mysterious, statues, old furniture, clocks and other wonderous things – I could spend hours there browsing! Only downfall is the infestation with Xiaoheiwen, a small black stinging pest of an insect, which you won’t forget once you make its acquaintance!

Third, he shares a wood firing kiln with fellow pottery masters in yet another place on the countryside. Basically just a shed around the kiln in the middle of the fields.

Like many of the older generation of potters here in Taiwan, his online presence is almost non-existent…

He recently opened a small shop in central Tainan, you can have a look at it here: https://www.facebook.com/tnsalo?fref=pb ... le_browser
Not many images of teaware on there yet unfortunately…

[Bok]

And now for something different – seventeen.

The shape is rather unusual. I had pencilled it in my sketchbook and tried to get as close as possible to what I had drawn.

By doing that I neglected practical requirements a little. Normally I do not like to venture to far into the arty and prefer to stick to usability. Must be my professional habit as a designer – form follows function.

Well, not so much for this one.

To achieve the triangular lid, I had to sacrifice the lid knob.
As the lid as is would be too slippery and hot to lift, I tied a ribbon to it.

Aiming for a seemless transition from body to lid, I neglected the rim stability of the lid. Which is why in the process parts of the rim crumbled off. I could fix that a little before glazing by sanding it off, but you will still notice where parts broke apart.

[Bok]

I also experimented on a different kind of handle. Quite comfortable to hold.

Now to performance. It does not do well when used. Probably the worst water pour of all my teapots so far!

How to explain… the water trickles down at almost a 90° angle! That’s how bad it is. Part of the reason are the holes which do not align properly with the spout exit. Another part is the slight widening of the spout exit which does not allow to channel the waterflow, but rather disperses it.

Overall I still like the unorthodox look of it, sadly it is almost unuseable.
A good lesson in why not to sacrifice function to superficial esthetics!

[debunix]

I love the pot/lid continuity too. Sad that it didn't work out for this one. Clearly it would take a lot more work (test pots?) to make such an unusual shape as functional as it is beautiful. Now imagining a lid design where the triangular shape is carried along one axis--but on the other axis it is pinched in to make a tab instead of a 'knob'.

[Bok]

Now imagining a lid design where the triangular shape is carried along one axis--but on the other axis it is pinched in to make a tab instead of a 'knob'.

Good idea, might take you up on that one!
That is also definitely the next stage – to pick one shape and then fine tune it and repeat it over and over...

For now I can not resist the temptation to do something new each time

[Bok]

So that happened… I chipped off parts of the spout of number 13.
I have a lot of teapots, but that has never happend to me before…

Guess it is part of the learning path – nothing is eternal, everything perishes at some point. Well, I am being dramatic here, it was some clear chipping, so it can be fixed, still researching the best food-safe way to glue it back.
Note: The crackling is from the glaze after using for some days, not caused by the chipping!

Fancy gold fixing would be over the top for this pot.
And as my wife lovingly said – “it happened because the next pot is going to be better anyway!”

Shame still, it had become my everyday default pot, now I need to go back to the previous candidate and wait until I have a suitable replacement.

Which is btw being fired as we speak, this time wood-firing for at least 10 days, you can imagine my excitement!