Post #479501 by Cammo on Wed, Aug 26, 2009 6:57 AM

So, here's the story of how this mug was made.

When Babalu showed me the original sculpt of the mug I looked at it and blurted out "HOLY CRAP THAT'S GREAT!"

Then my very next thought was - This is freakin' IMPOSSIBLE to make. Babs has taken on the most complicated mug ever designed and it just ain't gonna happen.

How can it dry? It's standing in three little teeny legs!

How will the mold pull correctly? There's all kinds of hand-made looking bits that will get stuck in the mold, it'll be like pulling two pieces of velcro apart.

It's IMPOSSIBLE, I tell ya. It will never happen.

But, of course, Babalu is a magical wizard of ceramics, the guy had a plan and he went ahead step by step and made the suckah. It's a two part process, three molds per top and bottom, with those little faces pulled from an extra (press?) mold. So it's a SEVEN PART MOLD.

We were talking a week later and he nonchalantly mentioned that he had molded his first 3 mugs of the Yipwan Drum and I spat up my corn flakes. "YOU DID IT???!!!!" I yelled. Oh yeah, he said. Go over to the TC thread and check it out, he said.

So anyway, in person the mug is even more amazing, cause it's the first mug I've ever seen that looked exactly like it was hand built, even though it was molded. No seams. And it stands on those little teeny legs just great. And it looks AMAZING.

So I told him I'd do anything if he'd give me one to glaze. The mug kept turning in 3D inside my head with deep. rich chocolate browns and bright red faces. If I could do a gold run on the main drum part, man that mug would look sweet.

"Sure." says Babalu. "Why don't ya just make me the little CoA card that comes with it? You could even make up a drink recipe too.

Hey, now that's an idea.

So I got to work making the card and put together this cool little watercolor picture of an Islander actually playing a Yipwan drum, with a drink on the back called the "Yipper Sipper" The ingredients were the most obscure, hard to find rums and contained a special liqueur that nobody seemed to know about called Limoncello. Yup, same as the room party hit of Oasis, that's right, Limoncello. This was WAY before Queenie announced her room party theme. It's bizarre.

I printed out the card for Babs, showed him the recipe, and then....

.... my computer got fried. Not the hard drive. Not the power supply. the MOTHER BOARD. I didn't even think that was possible. And it happened about 2 weeks before Oasis. CRAP.

So instead of making the little cards, I made him a fishing hat. (It's over on his thread.) And his one stipulation about the hat was - if he ever wanted to use the carved hook pendant again that wraps on the outside of the hat, it would have to be in perfect condition. So I just made it detachable. It's wrapped on with little loops of thread. It's cool.

Then I got to work on the mug, and here's how it was done:

The whole thing is done in chocolate and sienna brown, transparent glazes. The red face, after many experiments, I did in an two layer undercoating, then a two layer gloss on top. The intended effect was to make it look like it was carved from red rubies. Red is a really hard color to fire, I wanted this to look perfect, so under/overcoating was the way to go.

This part of the glazing took around 3 hours. I worked on it at Babs's place when Squid was there, then took it home and finished it up. Then, maybe another hour for the reds, which were applied with at one point with a 00 brush.

That's the one at the top of this picture:

Then, after the first firing of this glaze, I didn't tell Babalu, but I secretly applied a double Premium Real Gold glaze to the whole outside and leg details of the drum. This is really hard, it's like painting black engine oil on a brown beer bottle. Try it's its no picnic. Babs fired it right before Oasis, and I was crossing my fingers, cause I piled that gold on thick in places. (It drips down at the bottom, look closely and you can see.)

It came out great. When Babs pulled it out of the firing, the morning after, it sort of glowed like the Idol at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

That's the story.