ICHEON A LA SERENDPITY

...WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS:

My daughter-in-law and a dear friend posted a link on Facebook for me and I fell in love with this fellow's pots.  I hope this link works for you:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzpZbcwdpMk  
I've tried to copy his work--I think he uses colored slips on leather hard pots then cuts and carves.   Well that's what I am doing anyway...

Here I am applying various colored slips to the damp pot still on the wheel after making it.

 

I have no idea how Kim Seong Tae makes his designs so I tried as hard as I could to copy what I thought I saw and cut out the negative shapes and then carved little bits out of the shapes.  The pots are still very rough, the clay is much thicker than I thought it was and the pot is not a good one, that's why I feel comfortable experimenting with it. 

 

 It is possible to see the layers of different colored slips in the carvings on the leaves.

I will continue to clean it up and make it presentable, then bisque fire and then glaze with clear.  

 

Here it is glaze fired.  Pretty rough, but first attempt.  My red iron oxide slip fires out a dull brown, not the red it shows in the green stage.  ):

  Now, on to the serendipity part:
We went to an antique store the other day and just wandered around. and then were getting ready to leave.   Something told me to go down one of the far aisles to get to the exit, and as I wandered toward the door my eyes fell on a little frame into which someone had stuck a piece of fancy linen.  The design is of flowers and the negative spaces are cut out; it looks so much like what I need for a pot to mimic Kim Seong Tae I couldn't believe it.  I asked the store manager if she would sell it to me, and she did for only $3.   That might seem like too much for a hunk of decorated linen, but to me it might be the source of numerous beautiful pots if I can figure out the entire technique.   

 

This is the piece of fabric I found and below is a trivet I made by pressing it into a slab, covering that with blue slip and sponging the slip off the majority of the surface.   Unfortunately the trivet warped in firing but I'll try another and make it square, flat without feet, and add feet after glaze firing.

 I also found that the cloth did not curve onto the surface of a pot the way I needed it to, but I still like it for it's design and inspiration.

 

 

Below are two pictures of my second attempt at an Icheon style pot.

 

 

 
 

 
 
This one has more green slip than the others.  I think I like the subtlety of it best with the dull brown of the 3% manganese slip visible in the carved leaves.

 

Below is my third attempt.  The first image is unfired; there is a layer of black (3% manganese) colored slip and a layer of blue (3% cobalt carbonate) colored slip on it but at this stage the slips dries to look pretty much just like the Laguna BMix I'm using. 

 

Here is it fired.  I liked it better when it was all white.  The black slip is virtually invisible.   For my next attempt I will not use any slips, just the clay body.   I also will smooth the edges of the cutouts more.  I was hesitant to smooth this one very much because one cannot see the colors of the slips in the green ware and it's impossible to know if they are being smeared during the clean up process.   

Also, in my continued attempt to make my work lighter and thinner I found that thin is not so good in this technique because it fires out tight and sharp. 

 
...and so it goes.  ttfn