Days Eleven & Twelve- Final Countdown
Day eleven started off with an hour of Taichi, then we went into a lesson about the chemistry components in pottery. One thing that I learned was how different materials create different colors (for example, iron is used in most color creations). After taking some more notes about chemistry, we then started our independent work time. Since day eleven was our last day in the studio, we had to finish up on all of our projects. However, my mad hatter sculpture and my teacup both broke so then I worked on mending my sculptures using slip and clay dust. Unfortunately, they kept on breaking, and so I was very frustrated. On the other hand, the pieces I had finished glazing a few days ago were out of the kiln. I was really surprised as to how they turned out, since the glaze was much more different than the color I expected. But, I still really liked the end result.
After lunch, we continued on our independent project time. To my agony, one of the people working there accidentally knocked down my mould piece and it shattered. But, since they were very nice people, I had the chance to pick out another mould piece. I picked a teapot with a long handle, since it reminded me of Aladdin’s lamp (which fits in with my Disney theme). Along with day eleven, the superintendents came to visit our studio and we had some fun talking them through our process. After dinner, we then had a brief hour to work on our projects one last time. I was very frantic, since I was not done with half of my glazing pieces. But in the end, I still managed to finish (though the quality of glazing went down by a lot).
Day twelve (today) was a day focusing on learning more about the traditional pottery process (since we are now out of the studio). We visited a pottery museum this morning, where we saw practiced potters work on each part of the process. I thought it was really cool how everything was handmade, and even the potter’s wheel was spun using a long wooden stick. This then led us to interview some of the people working there, where we learned that almost half the population of Jingdezhen has a career linked to pottery. After learning about how the process changed as time went by, we went to visit some of the traditional dragon kilns. Finally, after all that was done, we went to lunch. Lunch included a discussion about being a successful artist, and how pricing will affect being a successful artist. We learned about how pricing changes in different places, and how in Jingdezhen everything is more cheap due to there being so many artists. Post-lunch was a shopping trip for art materials. First off, we went to clay tool stores, where we bought needle tools and different sponges. Then, we visited more generic tool stores, where I bought a carving tool kit (and I was very satisfied by it). Finally, some of us chose to visit an art materials store, and we looked through it and hectically bought items (since we only had ten minutes). I was mostly happy with what I bought, though I really wish we could go back since time was very tight. This then led back to today’s blogpost, which is our final blogpost of this trip.
Air Jingdezhen 