Reflections: Teacups

Can't remember exactly when I made these but sometime between 2009-2011. The idea came while drinking tea with my parents. They had a tea cup with two walls such that the outerwall and the innerwall was separated by a gap. The effect was simple: insulation; when you held a hot cup of tea, or whatever hot beverage, your hands wouldn't get hot. Separating the innerwall from the outerwall allowed you to hold the cup regardless of the heat. I thought this was great. The piece that my parents had was pretty remarkable, something that I could probably never duplicate, and had a hunch that it was factory made. I was intrigued nonetheless and wondered whether I could replicate a similar effect. You can see them here. Some turned out alright, aesthetically, others not so much; they all achieved the desired function of insulating the heat.

So with the idea of trying to reproduce a certain function, and a particular piece as motivation, I abandoned the idea of trying to replicate its aesthetic or style, which allowed me to be creative in achieving the desired effect. I remember sitting down on the wheel and thinking about how I was going to do this double layered tea cup. I could throw one cup and then use a slab over it, carve it up and smooth the lip, which seemed like a bit more work than desirable. Yup, I'm lazy.

The next idea was to throw a very tall and thin cup and then fold it over in the middle creating two walls with a layer of air in between. I could then smooth the lip and the foot over and in its leatherhard stage I could carve the outer wall to make it lighter and accentuate the gap. I figured this was as good a strategy as any.

I made the first couple with relative success. The process wasn't difficult but it soon became a process of getting the aesthetics to a point where I was satisfied with the outcome. And to be sure, I'd probably throw away most of them. As I began carving out the outerwall, I really started to like the cave-like effect or even something like a termite mound:

 So I tried to mimic the colours:

It even reminded me of lava rock:

So I tried to mimic that as well:

There was also a point when I got really sick of the carving and making sure there was a layer of air between the first wall and the second. So I decided not to do any carving:

As you can see, there is a pocket of air bulging out the side of this piece. For the one's above, prior to firing it in the bisque, I would have carved that pocket out. If you click the link above, you can see pieces where the outerwall didn't quite make the separation I would have wanted.
 
At any rate, the inspiration of these pieces began with something factory-made in my parents' cupboard and progressed into mimicking something in nature. I think the piece - from this series of teacups - I liked the most is probably the one at the top of this post, glazed in purple. The rest I don't care so much about and, if I was a professional potter trying to perfect my craft, wouldn't think twice about tossing them.