So remember those tea ceremony cups i started making? Well it took me all day but those are finished. The amount of concentration needed to make those is amazing. You'd think okay looks good, so I'm done now. Nope, that is not the case. Takao today showed me how to do this whole process. Basically you carve the pot out of the clay you have, inside and out. The pots in the beginning weighed around 1200 grams. Now that they're done they weigh 400 grams! Thats 800 grams of clay i had to take off by hand. The little details go off the charts, like at the foot of the pot there needs to be a little indentation around it, the lip of the cup needs to be turned inwards to keep the tea warm. It goes on and on. Every time I thought I was almost done, I realized something wrong, something off centered, not trimmed properly. Needless to say my concentration skills are gone for the rest of the day.
Now I have my four traditional japanese tea cups now. Sadly enough, they won't be done until June. Tomorrow I need to tell Moto if I want them to be akai-raku (Red Raku glazed) or the traditional Kuroi, black Raku.
The good thing about ceramics, is that the clay makes your hands nice and soft. The bad thing, it also leaves them very dry. Today was the first day I had an issue with my hands. The tools they use here are metal. Basically, they have 6 inch long, 1 inch wide metal strips (flattened) in a box. When they need a tool they do not already have the can make it themselves, adjust the size, width everything. Since they dont have handles the metal digs into your skin, well, my skin. With all the carving I had to do today my fingers are red and hurting. Takao was nice and noticed the redness and gave me a pair of gloves. Really helped a lot.
Im proud of myself. Today was really hard and Im happy I have something to show for it. Tonight Moto is taking my stepmom and I to this Canadian tea master Soei Sensei aka Randall Channell. Hopefully I'll be able to learn something interesting. Turns out there are so many specific way to hold the cup, make the tea and it all has to be done in a certain order. Definitely looking forward to checking it out.
