making of tree house -1

During the show a man asked me how long it takes for me to make one piece of tree house. I said 'I can make 4 of the basic shape in a day and and and...' and couldn't answer to his question clearly cos I don't know myself how long. So I decided to see how productive I am!

Making the house starts from here: rolling out slabs. I normally do it before going back home in the evening so that the slabs are hard enough to construct into the forms on the next day. Today I made slabs first thing in the morning and left it out while I was out until lunch.

After lunch and a meeting with a client I started slab-building at 3pm. To put two piece of leather-hard clay together we score marks and use half-liquid clay (what we call slip) as glue. I score with a pin so that I can get fine and deep marks and the joint is strong enough to hold each other.

I made 4 basic forms by 6pm out of two and half slabs. I leave them overnight keeping some moisture in the container. This is one technique to make the joint stronger too. They are such simple form and are easily done by slip-casting which is another and much easier method to make the same thing. However, as far as I know it has to be done this way in this case because the plasticity of the clay has to be strong enough for the next process of cutting out. The form made in slip-casting is too fragile to survive through cutting-out.

ショーの間に、お客さまから、「tree houseひとつを作るのにどれだけの時間がかかるのか」と質問を受けました。私は「まず、1日で基本の形を4つ作って、、、（アレコレアレコレ）」と答え、結局自分でも正確にはどれほどかかるのかわかっていないことがわかり、今回、どれほど生産できているのか、計ってみようと思いました。

途中のプロセスも見せていきますので、興味のある方は私の10年目にしてもたどたどしい英語をお読みくだされ。