Teaboats.. Bateaux a the..

Le bateau a the est tres utile dans la preparation du the chinois. A teaboat is very useful when brewing chinese tea. It enables the teapot to be kept warm.

This form is more open, Made in porcelain with a celadon glaze.
Here is a green Lonquan Celadon teaboat, this glaze in made with poplar ash.
I sell them also as a set with a water bowl. this allows more flexibility as one bowl can be used as a waterbowl, while the other is the teaboat.
Check my website michelfrancois.co.uk , or email me for details.click here/cliquez ici

2 bols a the

Bol a the cuit avec la methode black Seto.
Chawan type 'Karatzu' avec de la cendre de marronnier du Devon. This teabowl is for sale. check my website for details. michelfrancois.co.uk

Chestnut Chawan

Chestnut Ash is so magical to use. Each tree grows for one hundred years, cumulating trace minerals. They help make prisms that reflect the light. This ash is from Essex. The minerals in the clay have come to the surface, flooding into the glaze and sometimes the iron bleeds into a beauty spot. The shape for this teabowl is ancient called ch'ien, and is said to be one of the first shapes, when tea was almost a soup drink, drank with salt and onion. This teabowl is for sale. check my website for details. michelfrancois.co.uk

My Ido teabowl

Years ago I saw an exhibition in a small museum in Toulouse called Wabi cha the art of tea. 6 ancient Chawans were on show. I was moved by the feeling of gentilness and power emanating from them. Making tea bowls as a western potter today is not the same as making tea bowls in rural korea in the 12th century. I remember talking to an other potter friend, he was saying he wanted to be korean. He started to dress korean, eat korean,and speak korean. Thinking that would help him in his artistic expression. Only to realise that good pots come from an other place. You can meditate all day and still make terrible tea bowls. . In deed 'trying' to make 'good' tea bowls does not mean you end up happy with them. Nor does the way of just mindlessly making thousands and thousands in the hope that randomness and chance firing will spare a few that will get the 'Wabi' status. The fact is 'true' art and beauty come from the action of learning. Making tea bowls for me is first an act of learning. putting into practice the synthesis of what I have been gathering in skill and energy at the time I make. I'm analysing now but the making of tea bowls comes out of a strong desire for making them. It is a free act, not a self conscious one and I enjoy it very much.

This bowl is inspired by the 'Kizemon' bowl which is an 'Ido' type korean rice bowl. I used english terracotta mixed with porcelain and added coarse cornish sand. I poured a slip over it made with jindezehen porcelain slip I made from some clay I got given after a demonstration of chinese potters in Aberistwith a few years ago. Over the slip I glazed the bowl with a thin ash Karatzu glaze. The physical making is creative with ideas pulled together, like a child inventing his own house in the woods. This teabowl is for sale. check my website for details. michelfrancois.co.uk

New Porcelain work-new Website

I would like to let you know of my new website michelfrancois.co.uk Je vous informe que mon nouveau site web est en ligne. michelfrancois.co.uk I have been working a lot in Terracotta this year. Somehow It has made me come back to porcelain in a big way. I feel confident and relaxed with porcelain now. It still is a demanding partner but worth it sometimes. All these pieces are for sale now. Email me for prices and sizes.


this is a largish porcelain bowl inspired by Sui dinasty ware. This duck egg white glaze is a suptle adaptation of an ancient chard of this period. This new glaze was made possible through slight consistent glaze modifications happening over many kiln firings. Made with some cornish stone, it reflects the light and changes with it. Inside the pot goes blue outside it is more white. Good for a large used water bowl or as a fruit bowl.

A large Sui dynasty chinese shaped bowl - a timeless classic



There is an essential purity to this ancient shape. A friend warmed to this large shape for a bowl. It reminded him of a Buddhist begging bowl.
The next image is a very large porcelain bowl made for a commission of eight bowls making up an installation for outside.

The making of Black Seto - called Seto Guro








It is a dangerous business to be in Pottery.
Or maybe that is the way I like it.

In case you were wondering this it is not Raku.

Raku is fired to 980c, black Seto on the other hand is fired to 1300 in a reduction atmosphere.
Then the kiln is opened to halt the reduction and the pieces are taken out red hot. The quicker they come out the blacker they go.

When dipped in water they generate speckles.

There is nothing like it...

 either you get the stars or the dark side of the moon ...

Mesmerising.