Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Oribe style dish

This is one of those things that has been percolating in my mind for a while. I made 3 different versions of this piece. This is the "Sandy Beach" version--named for a traditional style, 3 lobed shallow dish you see in the Oribe tradition. The others were a gourd shaped dish and one that turned out like a bicycle seat (think large, comfort minded bike rider seat). I caned a dark reed handle for this one, used a bamboo handle for the gourd shape, and did little reed knots for the bike seat.
These were all thrown as big, shallow, flat-bottomed bowl forms with straight sides. Immediately after throwing, I cut through the wall at the base of the floor, then moved the walls inward to alter the piece, smoothing and rejoining, and cutting the excess floor (now on the exterior of the pot) away. I learned this method of altering from Cynthia Bringle, who showed it for making oval or squared dishes. Your limitation is the original size of the bowl and the degree you want to alter the form.
The finished, handled version was on the set of images that disappeared from my camera. Use your imagination.......
If you would like more info, see these links: Birmingham Museum, British Museum and Asia Society.

1 comment:

Sister Creek Potter said...

I can't wait to get into the studio to try out the alteration technique you describe learning from Cynthia Bringle! Looks like great fun! I appreciate all your sharings on your blog--you are very generous with your readers. I made your soup from an earlier post--my family really liked it! So thanks for all your offerings! Gay