Dear Patrons,
I am currently not making ocarinas, and am only selling stock on hand.
Please e-mail me before you make a purchase to see if it is available to
sell. If it is in stock, you can send me a check, and I'll ship it to you.
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| I make a type of flute called an ocarina. Ocarinas
are closed-vessel, or globular flutes that are indigenous to
many cultures and have been made and played for a very long time.
Their last "burst" of popularity took place in the
decades around the Second World War, when our government issued
plastic ocarinas called "sweet potatoes" to the American
soldiers to help boost morale. |
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| Today, travelers bring back ocarinas
from Mexico, Czechoslovakia, Costa Rica, Africa, and Scotland,
among other places. Ocarinas are a very simple instrument to
play, and can be mastered by an enthusiastic person age six and
up. |
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| The ocarinas I make are made from porcelain
or stoneware. They are slip-cast from molds that I made myself,
then formed from the hollow shape into a pendant or an animal,
tuned, let to dry, bisque-fired, glazed, and then high-fired
in my own kiln. The whole process for a batch of 15-20 porcelain
ocarinas from slip to the finished product takes a little over
a week. I tune them when the clay is still soft, but not too
soft, by adjusting the size of the holes for the fingers. That
should explain why the holes are different sizes. Each ocarina
is tuned to itself; a small ocarina will have a higher pitch
than a larger one. |
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