I came in today to two important things - one a surprise, and one not. I had rather suspected as I left last time that the bottom of the vessel I'd been working on would be difficult to continue work on today, and to be honest I had almost expected to find that, in drying, the clay had collapsed in some areas, rendering the start a good learning exercise but definitely not a final product. More relieved that disappointed, I sat down to make another vessel body, this time intent on finishing the main chamber instead of leaving it open.
As I worked, the real surprise came: Kay gave me a folderful of information about making clay whistles, complete with troubleshooting info. (Maybe my endless and mostly futile attempts to produce sound last week had been louder - or more annoying - than I had thought? ;~D Haha, probably not, but the information definitely came at a good time.) This was an excellent help to me, and something that hadn't particularly occurred to me to look for in my research, silly as that sounds. After all, whistle technology probably hasn't changed much over years and cultures (though if it has that'd be very interesting). And I doubt that pottery was ever necessarily an entirely individual process, given the widespread use of common cultural patterns and forms.
All told, I ended the day well with a respectable vessel, coiled up to a rounded top with two openings. The coiling was an assumption on my part, and also a reflection of my limitations - I really wasn't sure how else it'd be made, and couldn't find such a thing mentioned in any of my books. I guess it's another one of those questions that comes up during "experimenting" that didn't seem so important before, yet reveals how much we see past products and processes through the lens of what we know in the present. In any case, I am now armed with new information and ready to make some working whistles the next time around.
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