Fast Making #8 - Lucky Cat Ceramic Mold

Despite making a few mistakes and taking longer than it should, this one was my favorite to make.

A couple years ago, just when it was deemed OK to go outside post-COVID, I bought a solar-powered lucky cat from a stall in the French Market. It was probably only $5, but it became my favorite piece of decor in my bedroom. The clicking sound of its arm was the first thing I would hear on a weekend, instead of an alarm on a weekday.

Around a year later I became good friends with a coworker, and I found out her mom was the one who sold them at the market.

There’s interesting history behind lucky cats/maneki neko themselves, but I think the context in which they’re found is even more interesting. Usually, they’re in Asian restaurants and businesses peeking on top shelves. The one I have was conceptualized hundreds of years ago in Japan, then recently cheaply produced in China, shipped to America, and sold by a Cambodian woman to me, who brought it all the way to London. I think lucky cats are very American in that way, in that they represent many different (Asian) cultures coming together.

I love this video of the mass production of ceramic lucky cats, and watching it was the starting point of this project.

I took the cat and filled the hole on the base of the waving arm with air dry clay the day before going to the ceramics studio.

I’ve worked with plenty plaster molds before, but I’d never made one before. After some help, I managed to get to this point. It was pretty simple to set up since the cat already is made up of two pieces.

The plaster I poured for the first part of the mold wasn’t mixed properly (too much water, didn’t let it sit long enough) so I redid it after pouring the second part. It was easier to use the second part rather than starting from scratch, and technically the first pour was still usable but it would start to deteriorate after several castings.

The mold still needs a week to dry, so in the meantime I pushed air dry clay into the mold to see how it would come out.

I’m excited to use it for a project, though at this point I’m not sure how I’d do it. I’d like to make many, many of them and glaze them differently—that’s all I know.