About 2 months ago, one of my Scouting friends was telling me about “hand building”.  I was immediately intrigued.  We discussed and she sent me a youtube link.  2 weeks, several hours of YouTube videos and 50 pounds of clay later, I have 2 tea pots that I made.

Now it’s about a month later and disaster has struck my painting desk.
Since I have never done any type of clay construction before, I must say that I was really, almost overly, happy with myself.  I let the pots get “bone dry”.  Then disaster…I was walking past the desk and knocked the spout off the spiral pot.  When picking the pour (lol) spout up from it’s resting place, I knocked the pot again and broke the lid.  Ugh.  I had the Van Gogh pot sitting next to it, which, by the way, when drying had a huge, and I mean Grand Canyon huge crack develop in the bottom of it.  I picked up the lid on it to move it over and the top broke in my hand.  Yup, so another one bites the clay dust.

So now I have a Grand Canyon cracked pot that will make an interesting planter and a pot without a lid or spout.  I haven’t decided what to do with it.

Fast forward to today.  I’ve done a bit more “research”, that’s Linda code for watching YouTube and reading articles from ceramic magazines, forums and posts.   I saw this amazing video of this artist who hand built a Yixing tea pot. It was, and I know I’ve used this work a lot this post, amazing.  To watch this brilliant artist create this pot in 20 minutes was awe-inspiring.  So, stupid me thinks, “you can do that.  It will take a while (much, much longer than 2o minutes), but you can do that”.  Yeah, no.  I was wrong.  So wrong.  Today’s journey of dirty hands is what has lead to the title “Hand-Building Disasters”.

I realize that it’s not the smartest thing to discuss failures on my business website, the place where I want to entice you to buy something, but I’m more about honesty than anything else.  I’m human, I make mistakes and I learn from them.  Join me on this wonderful learning process.

Back to the disaster.  I was pouring my cuppa this morning and after looking at my tea pot of the day for a while, I figured I could do this, I could hand-build a tea pot that looks like the one I was using today.

I pulled out my clay and started to work it out.  3 hours, several hand cramps and 2 balloons, I have reworked it into a big flower.  I cannot even tell you how badly I managed to screw up this pot.  I had a good bottom and was starting to get a nice rounding on it.  Then it cracked and it went downhill from there.  I tried to save it, but this clay was done with me.  There was no saving this mess.  My middle son walked by and the look he gave me was one of pity that I’ve never seen from him before.  In retrospect, it was kinda funny.

So, to recap this post, 3 months, hours and hours of YouTube watched, countless articles read, and I have one tiny pot that may work.  It looks like a UFO, but it’s rough. Very rough.  But the practice has been awesome.  I have a new appreciation for those who have the skill and talent to hand-build.  I’m going to continue to work on my skills and maybe one day I will be able to offer you custom build and painted tea pots.

Stay tuned for more Hand-Building Disasters.