Storyteller Mugs

storyteller mug with a bug growing out of a hanging balloon shape

This week I fired the storyteller mugs I glazed last week. The stories wrap around the mugs, in most cases from handle to handle. Some stories can essentially continue past the handle in an endless cycle.

most of the storyteller mugs

The stories being told are fairly simple little "animations" like those that might be seen in an old fashioned zoetrope. These mugs have bugs walking, climbing, and flying, flowers growing (more or less) and people or conveyors moving. There is one more mug that didn't get fired that has a stairway conveyor belt thing.

bug mug

In a photo that shows the mug, the story is incomplete. So I decided to try taking panoramic pictures while spinning the mugs on a banding wheel. And these wonky long mugs are the entertaining result.

this person walking down the stairs grabs onto a balloon and floats away to the handle

more of the bug from the hanging balloon

how a flower is made (and unmade) ...this one can cycle past the handle, maybe

I'm not a professional panoramic mug photographer, so at least a few of the mug pictures turned out especially weird with bent and twisting long mugs. 

ka-pow!

this one is sequential and its all happening at the same time, too. maybe less effective

My husband things I should now make the long mugs themselves.

I like the bug on the handle, mostly

Strangely, one of the mugs was very difficult to photograph using the panoramic mode. It has the least decoration, so I'm guessing the camera wasn't registering the movement as well as on the other mugs. The camera didn't create the whole mug while I turned the wheel.

camera does not like this mug

this was maybe the fourth try

This was the only mug that got a reaction out of my first viewer: my daughter laughed out loud when she got to this mug. The story is simpler than the others.

you get it in two images, at least

but its hard to see the person in this panoramic

I've got more mugs out of the kiln, so maybe I'll make more of these next week. As my friend Jennifer said today, I'm making a lot of functional work this summer. (sniff) But I am having more fun with function than I did last year. A few of these mugs have some strange elements that would benefit from a redo. At a couple points I have something that's supposed to be holding on, but the arms are at a funny angle. In another mug I forgot color on one of the balloons, so it looks oddly empty.

the figures on the left are apparently holding onto the balloon with their neck muscles