Smashing Success

For all the talk we have about making, we rarely talk about the downside of broken ceramics. I am the "bull in the china shop" of lore in our house. I break so many things, that I have gotten to the point that I consider all of our functional ware as "long term disposable".

That said, no one ever discusses the fine are of ceramic restoration. It is a skill set that we all should be experts as, yet I don't know anyone who does it. I know that one of my favorite artists Mark Burns did it years ago, but that is about the only mention that I have come across in all these years.

I was fascinated to come across these posts by Mill Girl talking about her days as a restorer and some of her methods and tricks. I won't got into it, as she does a great job explaining the process (Sand, who knew!?!). So stop on by her blog and give it a good read.

Story One
Story Two

Via

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Big Nothing

The Tata Kaapi Coffee Company in Bangalore, India has created the worlds Largest Coffee Cup. The diner style mug is 20 Feet tall, 14 feet Wide and has a Five Foot Handle and is made out of....fiberglass...


/sad trombone

via

Thin Rice (bowl)

TAIPEI (Reuters Life!) - A Taiwan potter is producing razor-thin ceramic bowls, raising a historic Chinese art form to a fragile, new high and aiming to sell the 0.2-mm (0.008 inch) thick wares in China at a hefty price.
Taipei-area potter Huang Cheng-nan has made eight of what he says are the world's thinnest bowls, some suitable for a scoop of rice and one big enough to mix punch.
But even the clink of a spoon could shatter the ceramics, the smaller of which sell for T$200,000 ($6,350).
"I've been at this for more than 10 years, but I've only made them successfully since last year," Huang, 55, said in his studio where he broke thousands of pieces before cracking the technique. "The difficulty is extreme. A lot of bowls get broken."
Chinese have made ceramics over about 2,000 years for utilitarian and religious purposes as well as for decoration, with very thin bowls especially prized. These wares are often characterized by ornate paintings, support legs and lids with handles.
Huang, a ceramics maker by trade, got started on his bowls after he saw ultra-thin, record-breaking wares in China and brought some back to Taiwan to study. He says his bowls are more than twice as thin as the thinnest in China.
"You wouldn't want to eat out of one," Huang quipped. "That would cause breakage."

Huang imports specialized clay and hires painters to do patterns on the white bowls.
His shop in Yingge, a Taipei suburb known for ceramics production, aims to exhibit at World Expo 2010 in Shanghai in May. After that he will set a price for the larger bowls and offer it for sale in China.
(Reporting by Christine Lu, Ben Tai and Ralph Jennings, editing by Miral Fahmy)

Broken (record, in) China

We love China for it's general ceramic and cultural awesomeness (we're not getting into politics). 
Chinese artist Pei Yongzhong has set another major ceramic accomplishment. Creating the world's longest ceramic painting and in the process setting another Ceramic World Record. 

Original Article. 

Author not attributed.

Pei Yongzhong, an artist from Jingde, Jiangxi Province, spent five years creating a 241.2-meter porcelain painting. Guinness World Records recently certified it to be the longest of its kind.

The porcelain work consists of 242 independent parts, each depicting a scene from "Dream of the Red Chamber," the greatest Chinese novel of all time. Each part is 76 centimeters long and 57 centimeters high. The total length includes the painting's wooden frame. There are more than 3,800 figures in the painting.

Pei said he is a literature enthusiast and likes "Dream of the Red Chamber" very much. He started working on the painting in 2004, using various traditional and innovative methods. He spent more than 5 million yuan (US$732,339) and completed it in the second half of 2009.

Pei was born in 1969 in Jiangxi. As a veteran ceramic artist, he is famous for creating figure and scenery porcelain paintings. He has created porcelain portraits for many leaders, including former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

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