We’ve seen furniture made out of all sorts of interesting materials here, but clay certainly isn’t the first one that comes to mind. [Mia Mueller] is expanding our horizons with this clay stool she made for her garden.
Starting with an out-of-budget inspiration piece, [Mueller] put her own spin on a ceramic stool that looks like a whimsical human head. An experienced potter, she shows us several neat techniques for working with larger pieces throughout the video. Her clay extruder certainly beats making coils by hand like we did in art class growing up! Leaving the coils wrapped in a tarp allows her to batch the process coils and leave them for several days without worrying about them drying out.
Dealing with the space constraints of her small kiln, her design is a departure from the small scale prototype, but seeing how she works through the problems is what really draws us to projects like this in the first place. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be making, would it? The final result is a beautiful addition to her garden and should last a long time since it won’t rot or rust.
If you’re thinking of clay as a medium, we have some other projects you might enjoy like this computer mouse, 3D printing with clay, or a clay battery.
I’d be super interested in an article on the history and uses of ceramics in high tech applications, such as the airtight glass-ceramic seal for 1940’s vacuum tubes, and the high budget R&D involved in making porcelain an ideal material for some electronics applications.
I also love the idea of making things from clay like this stool! Maybe could make electronics enclosures etc too.
I don’t need clay to make a stool ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Now, sitting on it – that’s a bit kinky.
That’s a pretty big stool, you’d need to eat a lot of clay.
“I am his mentor, Hypocricies. I put him through school, where he learned to stand up for a principle and sit down on his own stool.”
The face is very charming
The working on the electric kiln part was interesting too.
Common Mode receiver = commode. The ceramic insulator water closet a wonder of the world.
On subject the round shape must make it easy to just roll to the next area. Make it a globe of the earth. Now you’re sitting on top of the world gardening.
[Mia]’s small kiln sometimes is a blessing in disguise. Any smaller and we’re getting into tabletop kiln territory, which may or may not be large enough to make tableware.
In another video she talks about kilnshare.com and how it’s not super easy to hitch a ride on someone else’s kiln either.
Some of the readers may also know Florian Gadsby’s work and his process of experimenting and iterating, which is feasible because he’s got a certain throughput that allows running a large kiln somewhat frequently.