extrusions

I’ve had an extruder in my studio for months. I needed it for a project, once, and never used it again.

Every morning, as I entered the room and saw it, I asked myself what to do with a tool which purpose is to make modules, all equal; quite the opposite of my idea of ceramics.

The idea finally came: to distort its meaning, distorting its results. Altering each piece, quickly and instinctively, only using the given material of the module. The concept is easy, so should be the approach: few and fast alterations will create the final shape.

I started from small cups, because I love them. Also, a small shape let me do several trials: at this point my brain was bursting with ideas.

After the first shapes, I was happy, but missing something: the foot. The foot is fundamental in most of my pieces, and between my favourite things at all to make. Here came my best idea: pinching the extruded piece at two thirds of its height, hence creating two separate volumes at once, the cup and the foot.

The timing, for once, was perfect: I needed pieces to bring to Jingdezhen, China, for a market I was invited to. So the natural evolution of this project is to make enough pieces to soda fire them all together and bring them in the capital city of porcelain. It also ticked a dream of mine: an entire firing of only small cups!

I should mention they are made in collected clay, and have a liner green ash glaze made of local red clay and ash.

I made so many they couldn’t all fit in my suitcase for China, so if you like them I still have many available, just send me a message and I will send you updated pictures of available pieces.

Thanks for reading!