The Story of Jemima
Cora Stock (Mum) went to the Royal College of Art in the 1960s where she did a historical study of a goddess Guanyin, the Compassionate Bodhisattva or enlightened being; who was sitting on a rock. The original was an exceptional example of one of many made at Dehua in Fujian province, in southern China in around 1700. These were often made of locally mined porcelain stone, with little or no clay that, when glazed resembles ivory and is almost translucent. The aim of the historical study was to model and reproduce the Guanyin in the same way as the Chinese would have made them i.e. model, make moulds that then allowed multiple copies to be cast then hand finished so each one was individual.
Information and images of the original Guanyin in the V&A can be found here: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O127933/figure/guanyin-figure/
Mum was allowed to sit in a room in the V&A with the Guanyin so she could photograph, sketch and take measurements of the original. Initially she modelled the figurine in clay, in a simplified form, i.e. no carving on the rocks, no scrolls. This model was then prepared for mould creation which involves cutting it up and filling in any undercuts.
The moulds were made from plaster to create the torso and eleven separate pieces including the head, left arm, right knee, feet, rocks and sections of fabric. The hands and scrolls were not moulded in line with tradition; these would be hand sculpted for each figurine produced. Cora cast, assembled and finished 6 copies using tinted china clay rather than porcelain as this is the material she had available at the time.
Cora has one copy but It is not known what happened to the others. Her Guanyin was affectionately known as Jemima.
The Storms of 2022
In February 2022, storm Eunice hit the UK with a vengeance. Tiles from the neighbours roof were ripped off and blown through the dining room windows and shutters, flew across the room and decapitated Jemima! We were all very upset, so Mum and I (Elly) decided we would have a go at making some more casts as Mum had kept all the moulds.
We cleaned and prepared the moulds, there was some damage which we had to fix after casting.
The large mould was heavy but then we poured in nearly six kilograms of liquid porcelain, so after the outside of the cast had reached a little over one cm it took two of us to lift up the mould and empty out the remaining slip. The walls needed to be at least one cm this as the rocks at the base had to be carved, but not so thick that the top part would crack on firing.
After the slip was poured out of the moulds they were left overnight before opening to remove the casts. It was noticeable the difference in size of the original Jemima to the fresh cast torso which illustrates how much shrinkage occurs during the glaze firing.
Assembly involved removing sections of the torso so the internal space was continuous; then scoring, and sticking on each piece with slip. Each join was carefully finished inside and outside. The knee was the first component that needed to be added before the arm and feet. The rocks were added last.
Once all the cast pieces were assembled, the hands and scrolls were hand modelled and joined on. The cast marks were removed and the process of re-instating under cuts was started. The final stage was to carve out the rock forms so that there was a contrast between the flowing robes and the almost jagged rocks. We were only able to fire the figurines on their backs because they were too tall for our kiln, thus when in came to glazing we had to take them ceramic shop to be glaze fired.