My second tutorial with Richard happened at the point of Unit 1 assessment. Before it I knew where I was going and what to do. After it I was confused and stressed. There was an overwhelming amount of suggestions on what route my project could be developed and I had no idea what to do with it all. So far the conceptual part of my practice stayed generalized culturally. I do this deliberately in order not to get stuck. By looking at what other students sometimes do, when they start to use their cultural and historic context within the project, I realize, that as a consumer I can’t always relate myself to their project. Being rather vague in this sense and, at the same time, bearing a mixture of cultures within my personal history I happen to create mixed aesthetics  which causes trouble in my project. I was suggested to look more at the Russian tradition and British tradition of tea drinking. I am looking at the way to do it in an interesting way. It can’t be just looking at what have been and what got lost and how we have tea now.

Some ideas I found interesting and in touch with what I was thinking about. Richard suggested to look at the ‘ritual’ of tea drinking. What actions do we take? In what order? How we would hold tea-ware? How would pieces relate to each other? What our actions could mean?

My slip cast experiments and accidents were of an interest. Could those, when not accidents, be of use to create my pieces? Maybe, the flow of liquid clay can be used to create the flow of tea aesthetic? Can those pieces be hand-manipulated to reflect the way we use the tea set?