Every making cycle we start with cups. I made some cups with a slip cast handle- diner style. My students were in shock that Mr. Handle would stoop to a slip cast handle. I love those one finger diner cups. On my thrown cups with pulled handles I got a little anxious about slip application and came in a few minutes later to see they had collapsed. Our friend Sylvie gave us hundreds of bottles of underglazes so we have hundreds of glaze tests and a small window of promise for an aesthetic with this e-ware. We're making each cup one of a kind.
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At Shimaoka's, the first form we worked on was the yunomi, but in a light colored clay. Then we dipped in ochre slip. The master thrower would always say your form was too heavy. So you'd keep making it thinner, but then they'd collapse when you slipped them. They'd crack up when that happened. It was one of the "rites of passage."