These tea bowls are thrown from coleman’s porcelain. I wanted to make a series of teabowls and then chinapaint surreal images on them.  Unfortunately, I forgot that you shouldn’t throw composite pieces in the summer, as they dry too quickly.  Even painting wax on the joints and wrapping it tightly wasn’t enough to keep the handles from falling off. I don’t mind teabowls instead of teacups, but now they have slight divots where the broken handle took some of the cup body with it when I snapped it off.

Also, the cobalt mixture that works best on bisqueware requires ingredients I don’t own, and I’m incapable of placing an order from Big Ceramics Supply that doesnt involve a hundred dollars’ worth of ceramics supplies.  So my backup plan was to use “Seth’s Black Ink” a thin stain that works like India Ink. I painted the outside of the cups and the top of the saucers with this, and I intend to scratch off parts of it, using the surface of the cup like scratchboard.  I’m not very good at scratchboard art, so this will be good practice.  I’ve done some pieces with this technique before, but that was with slip painted onto greenware, not stain on a bisqued piece.  We’ll see how it goes.