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Oven Baked Decorative Japanese Tea Bowl

A crafty historical project using oven baked clay is the Japanese Tea Bowl (Cup). It is customary in Japan to offer your friends tea. The tea bowl you offer your guest is very important and must be handmade. Over a period of time, someone who has crafted the Tea Bowl without throwing it on a potter's wheel is known as The Tea Master. He is honored for perfecting his craft. It is said that a Tea Bowl represents the soul of the potter.

Mix together:
4 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 1/4 - 1 1/2 cup water
Vinegar and water

On a clean and flat surface, knead the three ingredients until smooth.

Tools needed:
Plastic fork
2 Dixie cups
Sponge
Newspaper
Ruler
Clear Acrylic Floor Wax
Acrylic Paints (optional)

Roll the clay into a ball that is a little bigger than a Tangerine. It should fit comfortably in the palm of your child's hand. Hold the ball of clay in one hand and gentle push the thumb of your child's opposite hand into the center of the clay. Make sure your child does not press completely through, leaving about inch of the clay at the bottom (6mm) of the tea bowl.

Turning the clay in the palm of their hand, pinching from the bottom and working their way to the top, the walls will grow a little bigger. As your child pinches around widen your clay tea bowl to about a 2 inch opening with walls about inch thick.

Place newspaper on the table. After your child is happy with the shape of their bowl, have them place it upside down on the newspaper to now add a foot. Adding a foot to the bottom of their tea bowl adds to the decoration as well as to the sitting stability of the tea bowl. To make a foot, take a pinch of clay the size of a quarter. On the clean and flat surface have your child roll the clay back and forth with one hand making the coil the thickness of a straw. Measure the bottom of your child's cup for the correct length of the coiled foot; typically 3 inches long.

With a plastic fork have your child gently scratch the bottom of the pot. With their index finger, dab it in a Dixie cup of the way full of vinegar and then dab that area with a sponge dipped lightly in the water in another Dixie Cup. Press the coil onto the vinegar prepared area, sealing it with their fingers. Remove any excess coil. Do not have your child press too hard, they could crush their bowl. Wipe away any water drippings.

Bake in the over at 300 degrees for about 45 minutes. After cooling down after an hour, you can apply a clear acrylic floor wax on the tea cup. Organic looking tea cups are of a tradition Japanese style; however you can apply acrylic paints over the floor wax if desired.

Please remember that oven baked clay is still fragile like Paper Mache and is only meant to be decorative not functional.

Learn more about this author, Rosanne Sloane.
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