Past Work - Teapotty: Chocolate
 | Completed teapot I had to make one in chocolate because of its "usefulness" | |||
 | I started by testing whether I could make a chocolate teapot using my existing plaster moulds. The answer was no. I tried making a lid with the plaster mould pictured and when I tried to open it, the lid broke in half and stuck like mad to the plaster. | |||
 | I decided I needed a flexible mould so I used the College's vacuum tool to make one, using the original teapot placed inside the plaster mould. (At that time I had painted the original teapot black so that it wouldn't reflect light while I was 3D scanning it.) | |||
 | Completed plastic moulds. | |||
 | I bought some high-cocoa content dark chocolate, carefully melted it in the microwave (so that it didn't overheat and separate) and spread it around the moulds. It looked a bit messy... | |||
 | ...but it looked stunning when I got it out of the mould | |||
 | It didn't stay stunning. I had to touch it and my warm hands immediately started making marks. Also, I had to join the 2 halves together, which involved quite a lot of "bodging" of the joint. The result is pictured. Afterwards, I discovered that I could have avoided some of the marking by working on it while it was plunged into a bowl of water containing lots of ice. However, I couldn't have joined the 2 halves together doing this and the teapot was bound to get handled sooner or later as I took it into College and as it was assessed. In any case, I like the "antique" patina. | |||