Friday, December 26, 2008

Lunch Party, and Finger Wipe Party Too

Party time!  Today Mr. Oh's ceramics class came over and cooked us an amazing lunch.  Everyone brought something different, so just when you thought you couldn't eat any more, someone would bring out another course.  It was great home cooking. They are also a great group of women, or "ajumas," which is what you called married women in Korea. 
First we had puchingae, which is a pancake with lots of veggies and often seafood.  I don't think you can tell from the picture that this ajuma brought enough puchingae batter to feed an army.  Can you guess what we'll be eating for the next several days?  Luckily, it's the best puchingae we've had here yet (although a lot depends on how you cook it).
After a little breather we all sat down to eat rice, kimchi, chapchae (stir-fried sweet potato noodles with veggies and beef), and chang guk chan (fermented soy bean soup, this time with kimchi also).  Wow.  It was all really good too.  Then we all retired to Mr. Oh's ondol and ate apples, and then some chicken when someone else showed up with even more food.
For another feast for the senses, here are some photos of some of the great finger-wiping patterns we've been seeing on onggi jars...




Michael somehow escaped from all the eating for long enough to try out some new ideas on a batch of slab dishes.  After the slip dries some, he'll put them over the mold.  What fun! 

3 comments:

doug Fitch said...

What a wonderful blog full of amazing pots. I love to finger wipe, the feeling and the look of wet slip, the timing of the process, all gets me really excitied. I've been feeling a bit fed up with my work recently, but it's so inspiring seeing this stuff here and it's got my brain racing again, thank you.

Anonymous said...

great slabs.

Michael and Naomi said...

Thanks for the comments! Doug, we also do a lot of slip trailing on the slabs before they go on the molds (heavily influenced by medieval english pottery). We found your blog a while back from Ron Philbeck's blog, and have also been enjoying it!