How Can It Be Done?

[seancisse]

This is a pottery from Li Hsing Lung (Taiwan):

Any idea how it can be done?

Not by carving?

Thanks

Sean.

[Marcia Selsor]

Li Hsing Lung has developed a combination of using traditional techniques- high fired stonewares with lacquer. No easy fix to making these beautiful pieces. They are in Museums worldwide.

 

http://m.vam.ac.uk/collections/item/O76177/cloud-on-the-mountains-ornament-li-hsing-lung/

 

Marcia

[Tyler Miller]

That's a carved stoneware body with lacquerware neck, right?  Nothing about that looks easy.  Nor the piece Marcia posted.

 

Asian lacquer work is dangerous and time consuming.  The active ingredient in the lacquer is urushiol, the same stuff in poison ivy that causes the bad reactions.  Toxicodendron vernicifluum, the tree responsible for the lacquer resin, is of the same genus as poison ivy and sumac, the urushiol polymerizes to form a hard, plastic-like finish.  Once polymerized it is safe.  The urushiol in the lacquer tree is much much more than poison ivy, and there have been people killed by the vapour ruining their lungs.  In order to get the finish up to the brilliant polish you see, it takes weeks to slowly build the surface up from nothing, curing each coat for days in controlled heat, light, and humidity.

 

Nothing easy about that work at all.

[MMB]

Jim Gottuso does this to his stuff using lacquer. Although the artist in question maintains some very clean lines.

[Benzine]

Tyler,

 

That's a pretty nasty process.  I was just reading an article, on how people, purposely, spread Giant Hogweed.  It's sap is worse than any of the other plants you mentioned.  The sap is activated by UV light, and leads to nasty blisters.  

I into some poison ivy, on a canoe trip.  The blisters didn't show up, until a couple days later.  They didn't hurt, but looked all types of ugly, and of course itched.  I've heard stories of people inhaling smoke, from such plants.  In some cases, they accidentally get thrown on a burn pile.  In at least one case, a couple of marijuana enthusiasts, ran out of their weed of choice.  So they started smoking any other random plant, they could find.  One of them happened to be poison ivy or oak.  Their lungs and throats started swelling and blistering.  They died by basically drowning on the fluid their lungs produced as a result.  

[Tyler Miller]

Hogweed's scary stuff, why anyone would want to spread it is beyond me.

[Benzine]

Hogweed's scary stuff, why anyone would want to spread it is beyond me.

 

From what I read, it was found in Asia, by Europeans, who just thought it was interesting.  So they brought some back.  Little did they know, that it spreads fast, can grow twenty feet tall, and its "blood" is only slightly better than that of a Xenomorph.