Well, a pal of mine, Sean, saw the elephant sugar bowl, but he has an allergy to elephants, so he asked for a hippo sugar bowl to go with his hippo toothbrush holder. People collect the weirdest things, but I am READY TO HELP THEM collect stuff, and in turn I collect their money. Not a bad tradeoff, especially once I get them hooked.There is no difference between this guy and the elephant sugar bowl, except the face and head, obviously. I have only made very small hippos before, and this thing is huge actually. I was pleasantly surprised, as I waded into new hippo territory, at how it was coming along, and then how it finished. No matter how real hippos look, I make note of: huge mouth and jaw, 4 peg teeth, tiny little ears, googly eyes. Hippos also have a certain look to their mouths that I found myself really pushing to get this smile--not sure how to describe it, but the overall effect is FUN.
Out of the blue and from a different direction, I got an order from town yesterday unrelated to this, for two...............hippo jars. I think there is a small disease passing around out there, a hippo craving. That customer wants a little hippo on top of each of two big jars, but I bet I could sell one of these things to them too.
I have a nice bluish/slate gray glaze for these, and naturally the teeth remain white.
24 comments:
Oh! That is one very happy sugar bowl.
Allergic to elephants? I dunno. Sounds like a ploy to get you to make a hippo.
Well, the ploy WORKED.
It is a cheerful hippo.
Very nice indeed. Would it be gauche to publicly ask as to the price point of such an item?
15 million loonies, or 23 degrees celsius, whichever comes first.
What an awful businessman I am, I tease my customers.
Typically, depending on size, a decorated sugar bowl is 19-28, depending on size and degree of fanciness. Friends get a 200% added on discount.
Yet another reason to make distance between us a good thing. Safer for my bank account. :-) Very cool piece, Gary.
So if I mentioned that I thought an old LL Bean boot shape would make a good beer jug would you try that too?
Gordo, a big sugar bowl like this one would retail to a friend for 15 bucks. Sorry about all the silly gobbly-gook up there, but there is a difference in who pays what and where: there have been beers and pizzas swapped for pots, and even walking sticks. But there are stores I am involved with in some places where the price is, ahem, rather higher.
Alan, let's say that if a person speaks Spanish, that does not mean they can speak French. I am not sure that the guy who can make a hippo sugar bowl can also make a boot beer mug.
I am up to a number of beer and a walking stick and I still feel full of guilt that I am getting the better end of the deal.. Maybe I'll make two walking sticks for you and yer spousal unit!
Master Dib--stop by sometime with the wife and kids and watch: I work pretty quickly, except for zebras. I could show kids how to make frogs or something too.
The wife is my height about, :^), and she would be delighted. You walk along the wrong country road and you are certain to have pit bulls or dobermans chasing you. Walking sticks: good for self defense too.
Just to be clear, the boot is a venerable form of beer drinking vessel, Dutch brides being presented with large glass ones as a challenge to their prowess. But it would perhaps be a matter of sculpting rather than the wheel, though I think that the boot, other than the toe extension zone, is essentially a vase. Plus I love my old LL Bean boots.
Well, Alan, I too have the boots, the extra tall 'snow belt' style. They have been resoled once, and after the puppy, Jack, chewed the leather uppers 10 years ago, I sent them along to Maine for repair, with the story, and they fixed them FREE. LL Bean has a doormat picturing lab puppies chewing on those boots, and so obviously lab puppies do this all the time.
Mine are the ones about four inces above the ankle and I inherited them from portland whose better half insisted they fitted him poorly. He was shattered. They are like wearing baseball gloves on your feet.
They are such a Maine item. I think they are still made there, and fixed there, as needed.
back to the real topic: a hippo sugar bowl.
did you know that more people are killed by hippos in africa than any other animal?
but probably more people are killed in africa by sugar than by hippos.
Wow. Thank YOU Denis. Nice cheerful thoughts here. Kinda wonder how they do it? Charging? Chewing? Stomping?
They're nasty, nasty beasts, hippos. I've heard stories from a tour operator of him hiding under a jeep while one tried to get at him.
Hippos? Nasty? Well. There's another illusion shattered.
I have to reassure my friends here that all my animals are CHEERFUL. Happy, sweet beasts. Just glazed an alligator this morning: harmless! Fun! Funny!
And just ignore Denis. He is very smart, but he scares off the paying guests.
Well, Gary. Since you live and work in a land of happiness, you ONLY make happy, nice hippos and other carnivores. Sillly us. What were we thinking?
Sure, I sit here in my little storybook world making cheerful little things. People ask me what I know about pigs, for example. Very little. I would probably not think hey are all that cute if I lived with real pigs.
Yet you have a direct appreciation of a Bean boot.
Alan, a person likes dryfeet. Bean boots, with occaisional resoling and whatnot, last a lifetime. I wouldn't want to drink out of one though.
Now you will have to. But where can one find one of those glass beer boots?
Post a Comment