![[Update 5 dots on side.png]] To return to the task of photographing pieces. I mentioned in an earlier update that one of the challenges is to convey through images what it means to hold an object, and how you might express in visual terms what the body senses, and what we too often struggle to convey in words. Here then light is your friend. This might, most obviously, involve shining a light, in both literal and metaphorical terms, on a particular element or feature. And in these images I'm keen to show the finest details of translucency. Porcelain is opaque, but as it's crafted in thinner and thinner forms, it begins to let light pass through. Here though such conventions are inflected with the smallest of pin holes. Holding the cup against, above or under a bright light gives you a sense of this. Capturing this digitally, however, raises some interesting challenges, an issue I will come back to in an upcoming update. ![[Update 5 dots face on 2 complete.png]] ![[Update 5 dots close up left.png]] --- But in the samples below it's more a case of working the shadows. ![[Update 6 cup straight on spout only.jpg]] Holding this piece you can feel ripples on the side as you roll your finger towards the base, and the satisfying change of direction back inwards towards the top. But to direct attention to the spout, I was hoping to convey the maker's embodied understanding of how hard to press to form such a spout, which, after all, is that all important feature that transforms a round tea pouring bowl, or *gaiwan*, into a bowl that directs the user to pour in a certain way. A simple spout means you will always pick this bowl up in the same way. It's direction directs you, unlike most symmetrically round *gaiwan* with lids. One of my favourite books is Gaston Bachelard's *The Poetics of Space,* and his account of the role intimate spaces play in the way we come to learn about the world and its geographies. Abstract maps of political borders drawn in school are no competition for how we learn and feel about the darkness of basements and lofts, or the unreachable depths of a spiral seashell found on the beach. Throughout life we remain captivated by such spaces, including those that we can never quite fully reach inside. In this case, intimate form and function come together in the way tea flows round the smooth, tiny mound created on the vessel's interior - formed by that extra push of the thumb on either side of the spout. I have a teapot from Kyoto that behaves the same way; watching very carefully reveals how the speed of flow is dictated by the smallest nuances of spout design. The photo below shows what's revealed by dropping the light down. Interestingly, I realised that letting go of symmetry and pushing one side into the deep shadows directs the eye to those all important indents that, in everyday use, the hand detects before the eye. ![[Update 6 spout close on medium light.jpg]] In the shadows then we find the fingerprint, or indeed the thumbprint, of the art of pushing clay, just that right amount. And as I will explain in a coming update, I take up the task of communicating this visually by working with and through the light, rather that relying on Photoshop to mislead or transform. ![[Update 6 spout close up.jpg]] --- Tim Singapore | 02-03 [[Update 4]] | [[Update 6]]