Past Work - Teapotty: Wax
 | Completed teapot | |||
 | This whole project started out as a response to an "Acts of Making" festival in the summer of 2015 in which I was one of the performers in a project that involved pouring water into unfired clay pots so that they disintegrated slowly. I started out making several wax teapots and melting them in various ways. The one pictured was steamed. Then I started thinking about making teapots in other "unsuitable" materials - that is, materials that prevented the teapot being used for serving tea . The project ended up going full-circle - Teapotty is all about my acts of making. | |||
 | Making the first plaster 2-part mould from the original teapot. I ended up making another 3-part mould, one that more accurately reflected the top of the teapot, so the lid would fit better. Both moulds proved useful. They were used to make wax, cocktail stick, papier-mâché and tea-leave teapots. And a wax teapot was used to make a nail teapot. | |||
 | This was the first plaster mould of the teapot body and lid. I had to drill a hole in the lid mould - I'd forgotten to create an opening to pour the wax in! | |||
 | Making wax teapots turned out to be relatively straight-foward. I soaked the plaster mould in water so the wax wouldn't stick and then bound the parts together. I poured molten wax in, waited for several minutes and then poured the remaining wax out, leaving a skin of wax on the inside of the mould a few millimeters thick. I removed the wax teapot from the mould fairly quickly - within an hour in most cases. | |||