Tea Bowls and Totem Testers
Tea bowls are based around an old Japanese tradition where people would create bowls to drink tea from and everyone would gather and choose one. The last one to be chosen was crowned as the tea bowl with the most wabi (the humble appearance of a piece where one can visually see the hand of the maker, straying from perfection and embracing mistakes) and the creator of this tea bowl would be honored.
We were to create two tea bowls of our own with our own personal wabi and raku fire them.
I would grade my tea bowls 95/100.
The totem testers were created to allow us to test raku glazes before using them on our own projects. We were to create a group of three totems that went together and could be stacked or were able to fit together and then we were to test the horse hair firing technique as well as copper matte and crackle raku glazes.
I broke two of my totems while bringing them to the kiln and ended up with only two still intact.
I would grade my totem testers 87/100