Influential Workshop

This past Sunday I attended a workshop by Sequoia Miller at the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts. I have been reading Sequoia's blog recently and when I got the chance to see him work I had to take it. The workshop was supposed to be two days but Saturday we unloaded the 25th anniversary firing of the East Creek Anagama, more on that in a couple days. Although I missed the first day of the workshop I was still able to see Sequoia alter and decorate a lot of pots. My favorite part of the workshop was when sequoia demonstrated making a teapot. The teapot he made was pretty incredible so naturally I had to make one myself. I changed a couple things here and there but I will definitely have to change the design more to make it "My own". But, as I have said before, I would rather make good pots then bad pots for the sake of originality.

The thing that I changed most about the teapot is the lid. Sequoia makes an inset lid for his teapots while I chose to use the style of lid I have been making for a while. I also changed the lid to make it relate to the squareness of the teapot. I will admit that this is the first ever idea I have actually used that I came up with by drawing the pot first in my sketch book. I am usually against drawing pots before making them but I think that it definitely helped me out with this one. I think that my biggest problem with the design of the teapot is that I want to work out a way to have a more traditional foot ring. I like the feet that sequoia makes on a lot of his pots but I don't think they relate very well to the style of pots that I like to make.