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=> Assyrian Vase

Assyrian Vase
Posted by Farid (Moderator) farid@faridparhadart.com - Tuesday, November 25 2003, 2:37:11 (EST)
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I don't know how you spent your morning, but here's how

I spent mine today. Woke up at three...downstairs to flame Assyria on
the keyboard for an hour or two...then turned the lights on over my
worktable to complete the three part plaster mould of the Assyrian
Vase.

Three years ago, at a friend's house...a friend to us all...I saw a
book on Assyrian Vases all in a museum collection in Germany. Each
one was more gorgeous than the last one. The originals are all in
fragments of course but have been reconstructed with great care and
love...like we expend on a crucifix. There were water color prints
suggesting what the originals might have been more like, colors and
all. I wanted very badly to make one and being wedded to failure I
set out to do just that.

The first thing was to get the basic shape down. I remembered a
device my Armenian sculptor friend in New York had made that allowed
him to make any cyclindrical shape he wanted. It was a sort of hand-
cranked lathe in which the platser built up gradually as you poured it
slowly on a spindle you turned that eventually would amass enough
plaster on it, gradually drying and hardening, until the outer edge
began to cut against a sort of cut-out form in profile of whatever
shape you wanted...as the mass kept increasing and you kept turning
it, the shape would take form until it matched perfectly the template
it was rubbing against and being "carved" by. That's the best I can
do with words to describe it. So...making one to conform to the
outline of the first vase I chose, I soon had it duplicated in plaster.

The next thing was to sketch out the intricate design along the
surface...making everything fit. That accomplished I next had go over
the pencil lines and incise the design into the surface. When that
was done I made a platser mould of the thing and when that was done
and prepared, I poured plaster into it and was able to pull out the
next stage...with the design cut into the surface. It's one thing to
paint free-hand flowers and animals on a ceramic vase...it's another
to get the geometric patterns Assyrians used...and to mass hand
produce them would take way too long and blind whomever tried it for
long. The cut lines would serve as guides and would appear on every
ceramic vase pulled from the plaster mould.

But that wasn't torture enough...because the cut lines would appear on
the ceramic vase as "valleys"...cut into the surface...what I needed
was a "fence" raised slightly above the surface...that way there would
be a natural line of demarcation between design and colors...which
would cut down on colors running together...make it a snap to paint
the glaze on and give me that "ridge" that would remain free of colors
and could be dyed black at the end to give me that bold outline that
made the designs on the originals jump out at you.

I only got as far as the incised lines when I handed the project over
to Narsai David. I'd first thought to cast them in Mexico and send
them out into the world with cards attached telling customers how we
of BetNahrain INCLUDING Q---'s...used to make this kind of pottery and
that Islamic artists learned the craft from us. Then I thought it
would be even sexier...and our Heritage can be very sexy...if we used
clay dug from the hillsides where Sargon and Ashurhaddon got
theirs...made by the descendants...ALL OF THEM, of the people of
BetNahrain...today's Iraq.

It was at that point I mentioned this to Narsai and he said he'd get
the AAS working on it. The rest is our usual dismal history. I'd
fired one sample vase and glazed a rough approximation of the design,
colors and all...on half the surface, which Narsai quickly "suggested"
I give to him. I gave it to Narsai to be used as a sample...told him
I'd do whatever I could at my end and waited...and waited...and
waited...meanwhile Narsai paid a whole lot of taxes so the people of
BetNahrain could be reduced to welfare status...at which time he
rushed over with food stamps, "Humanitarian Aid"...you know. And
still the vase waited...and it's there still. Though I wouldnt be
surprised if tomorrow Narsai calls the Whacki Rabbi and tells him
about HIS idea..that he "commissioned" his gopher, Fred Parad, to make
and shouldn't they get started on it right away.

Narsai has confiscated, or thrown away, all the moulds I had left in
storage at the place we lived at...to keep them safe or safely
disposed of...so I never make any of them
again...another "failure"...one that insures the value of the
collection he no longer has...ahem. But the vase's mould was made
here in Mexico. It's been sitting gathering dust, aren't we all, in
the shed out back. Two days I ago I pulled it out and have been
cuttig the design into the mould surface since then.

That was what I was doing this morning...finishing up as the sun
rose. It's an eerie feeling...to be doing the same damn thing as
those artisans did 3000 years ago. Coil rope construction was
probably the first kind of clay vessel to be made back then, before
history. Long before the potter's wheel was invented by the same
people who gave up on Ashur...but not on spinning in circles. When
limestone was converted into plaster and moulds could be made of
things...pressing clay into them and waiting for the moisture to be
sucked up thereby hardenning the clay slightly for removal...must have
been the first "technique"...involving some sort of manufactured
device...a platser mould, to make clay shapes. Pressing clay into a
mould works fine if there's no design..because invariably as you're
pressing the clay in, some sections pull away with your hand or fist
and if there's a design, you get double and triple images when you
press the clay back down, but off center from where you'd first
pressed it in. A smooth surface doesn't give you the same
problem..the clay can pull away as much it wants to...you'll just get
a smooth surface in the end anyway.

But if you want designs to come out right..you had to invent the next
step..slip-casting using clay slip..a fancy word for a clay milkshake
you pour ito a mould. The clay will begin to dry at the surface of
the mould as the plaster sucks up water from the wet clay and you'll
get a perfect reproduction of whatever your mould was of. After
enough of a clay wall builds up, you merely pour the rest out to get a
perfcet and hollow clay thingie...as thick as you want.

I'm going to take the mould to Dolores Hidalgo...the town near here
world-famous for ceramic of all sorts. I know a guy runs a factory
there and I'll get a couple of slp casts made. But I'm still not
done. When the slip-casts have been fired, I have to go back over
the "fence" lines and clean everything up...it's a little hard working
in the negaive, that is on the mould...to get everything fitting and
looking right. I can sandpaper and file the fired clay vase and get
it as near perfect as this chronic failure can. Then several moulds
will be made from that one master vase and we'll be set to go ito
production.

WHAT???

I realize, as the good Reverend said, I could have spent the morning
in Christian devotionals(but I have an aversion to going down on any
Jew)...asking Yahwe for guidance and patience and the strength to
endure the sight of Betnahrain being devastated...but I thought I'd
try something a little more Assyrian. Neither did I want to scream at
the Muslims to give me anything...or issue diclarations begging for
anything from the people who blinded Majdolin. Maybe some day we can
make these vases and more...there are lots of them...in BetNahrain.
But till then...Mexico will do just fine. I'm doing the same thing
with a bust of Frida Kahlo...flowers and all...that will also come in
a version that can be used as a vase with real flowers taking the
place of the ceramic ones. There are children in Mexico who could use
some help too. I interrupted Frida to finish the vase, she'd
understand.

I figure there's a billion dollar plus market out there for
ceramic "things". I've seen them in every country I've been
to...they're in every store...fine china and shlock. So why not us?
The answer to that is obvious if you're in the martyr-making
business...just to keep the Christian Franchise going, dontcha know.
I figure these can retail at around $150...in all the fine museum gift
shops there are...department stores...gift boutiques...and all over
the world too...not just in Turlock...where none would sell
anyway..."Izzzint dis made by dat traitor shit Parhad...you tink I
gonna help him...HA"! We'd get around $75 bucks...figure $$15 for
making one, including a nice decorative card explaining
everything...without a SINGLE mention of Yahwe and what's owed to
us...plus a nice box..these things count too. If we clear $60 on each
one...not impossible...okay so maybe I'm being too hopeful...it comes
with my territory...you keep yours...then if we sell ten of them a day
AROUND THE WORLD...gotta think big like the other ones do, or imagine
we're shooting for ten martyrs a day...that's $650 clear a day...over
$236,000 a year. It can be done...others are doing it...while we find
new ways to degrade ourselves.

With that kind of money...minus a salaray of $226,000 for
me...for "expenses"...we could finally do someting...but more than
that...EARN our pride and not go begging it. I'd like to use the most
of it for serious scholarships for Assyrians and Q---'s to study
Betnahrain and especially to dig those cuneiform tablets out of
museums...they were dug out of the ground 100 years ago, moved and
then re-buried... and READ THE DAMN THINGS!!! Maybe one of them
describes a ceramics factory. I want Assyrilogy students to dress and
eat well...to vacation...to enjoy life and not be made to feel they
should suffer poverty and humiliation for DARING to study us while we
lavish cell phones and grease on a passle of less than useless
priests...you want a priest??? there are ten million on every street
corner hustling with the best of them. We hardly need another one.

But that's just my preference...I'm open to suggestons...no
humanitarian aid allowed though. It's far more Humanitarian to get us
off our knees than it is to provide knee-pads...I don't care how well
you can cook them.

The photos here don't show much...but that will give the rest of them
the chance to yell, "FAILURE"! that much sooner. It will be at least
a month more before I have the final final version and we have the
moulds to actually produce some samples...so we can begin the next
phase...choosing the right combination of glaze colors and then
finding the right technique...don't want the things to look like they
were made in China. Course I have to figure out how to eat and pay
rent during that time...but so what else is new...freedom costs.



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Farid

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