Reid Ozaki
Nezumi Shino Teapot
Stoneware
Black Slip
Shino Glaze
Reduction Fired; Cone 10
10 X 9 X 7

While I am only an occasional tea drinker, I think that the teapot as an object holds a special place for a functional potter working at the wheel.
Most of the time we spend looking at our work in two dimensions: height and profile.
Teapots take us out of that limited vision and into three dimensions and to a more sculptural view.
Add to that the parameters required for the teapot to function well and you have quite a challenge.
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The clay is a high iron/manganese stoneware from Clay Art Center in Tacoma. All the pieces were thrown, trimmed and assembled.
After bisque firing, the teapots are glazed inside with a Temmoku, given a thin coating of a Barnard (substitute) slip on the outside and re-fired to bisque temperature.
This series of teapots were then glazed with a very thick Shino glaze and fired to cone 10 in a reduction atmosphere.

This particular series was a bit of a departure for me. My typical teapots tend towards the spherical.
Here the flatter top adds a horizontal element to these pots to match the horizontal pattern created by the glazing.
The glaze in combination with the slip creates a bronze luster at the margins. The thick application of the glaze leads to cracking of the raw glaze as it dries. Veins of bronze appear where those cracks were as the glaze melts and seals. The glaze itself is interesting in its three-dimensional crazing.