Jun 15, 2013
Having friends all over Korea makes for great weekend visits. I met Kayc when he was living in Cheongju, now he lives in Icheon (very close to Seoul) and they are known for clay making. Kayc told Christina and I about this pottery place and so we (Christina and I) decided to visit him one weekend and make some pottery. 
Icheon is a very small city in Gyeonggi Province, we met at the bus terminal and had some Baskin Robbins since it was super hot out. We had to taxi to the place since it was a bit far and I'm not too sure there were buses that went that way. It didn't feel like a city, more like the countryside.
The place looked like it was closed (it wasn't) and it was pretty remote. There were only 3 other people there; a mom and her 2 daughters. The lady who helped us was very nice and patient.
I didn't know what I wanted to make at first but then I thought: Totoro. Found a photo online and got busy sculpting my mug. The process was not what I was expecting. I was thinking we were going to get messy and work with a pottery wheel but we ended up working with dry(?) clay. I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to experience the pottery wheel but by the end of the session, I was thankful we hadn't. Knowing me, I probably would've been covered in mud and not have made anything.
We built the mug by coiling strands of clay and then smoothing it out.
The outside of my mug isn't entirely smooth. You can see ripples if you look at
it from the side. And when you look inside of the mug,
you definitely can see the coils. I didn't have time to smooth out
the inside. I was too occupied with keeping Totoro's ears from falling off.
They fell off twice because 1) I didn't put enough support clay and 2) they
were too thick. Making his right hand was also tricky. I wanted it to be fatter
but the weight of the clay kept making his arm droop. After sculpting out the
body, it was time to paint it. All this took more than 2 hours. The lady let us
stay because she saw how hard (my OCD) we were working. She also said that my
mug was one-of-a-kind and that she had never seen anything like it before. Take
that for a first timer!
The last thing we did was fill out the form to have the finished product mailed to us. They have to cook the clay, let it set, add some shine to it and then mail it to us.The website is in Korean:Icheon Clay Academy
