Description
Japanese tea – both the tea ceremony, Chanoyu, and loose leaf tea, such as sencha, have a long and rich history, and have inspired many generations of master potters to refine classic and new forms for enjoying tea.
Studying these forms and making methods will definitely deepen your practice of working with clay, whether you chose to continue making Japanese teapots or not!
This class is designed for students who are comfortable centering, pulling thin and even walls in both bowl and cylinder forms, and are comfortable collaring in cylinders, but want to continue pushing themselves to make challenging forms.
You will experience a tea tasting and learning about Japanese tea traditions and see some master level tea pots and tea bowls, catalogs and books for inspiration, and get hands on instruction in the making of a Japanese Kyusu teapot.
We will cover some theory and practice – like the water line – on what makes a teapot suitable for Japanese tea and what common design challenges make it less usable.
We will cover making techniques like using a throwing stick to shape from the inside of narrow forms, throwing off the hump, safely moving wet work, making and assembling all the parts of a Kyusu teapot. We will look at other common Japanese pottery tools and other forms like the tea bowl and guinomi (sake cups) if time allows.
4 weeks
Brandon Hale is a potter from Deerfield, Massachusetts and has been collecting Japanese teapots for over 20 years. He has studied with several artists from the US and Japan and is excited to share knowledge he wished he had when he started making.
