Finding My Groove






I’m in my 4th week here and I still don’t have an addiction to the white powder. It is beautiful clay but it just isn’t nasty enough for me or the work I enjoy making. There was a pile of hard lumps of the Tian Bao stoneware clay from the water jar makers pottery. We three USU grads Trevor, Lindsay and I slaked some down, dried it on the driveway and wedged it up. I’m inspired again! With the porcelain I did get an interesting start by pouring deflocculated slip on a plaster bat, lifting it off when it was almost dry and laying it on top of the almost dry pieces. The porcelain likes being attached bone dry which is most strange. You can see what the slip pours look like on the one basket.
The Tian Bao stoneware clay matures at Cone 6 and is loaded with iron seams and our thinking is this could be very nice for a mid temperature reduction cool wood firing. I’m picking rocks out of it the size of my thumbnail but it has that nasty character I lust for. A couple of the baskets I put a slip made from Yixing clay which appears kinda purple. Next week we go to Yixing to work at a teapot studio for a week. The wood kiln here at the studio has a bag wall almost to the arch so we can’t expect much jam from the fire box. Burnt toast without jam!

Comments

Sorry tony, delete that comment. Blogger stuck in something to Betsy's daughters blog.

The original post was that maybe it would be instructional to work in what they've got and develope work that fits their system, rather than forcing old methods and systems on their stuff. Just a thought.

Tom
You make it so hard for weenies like me not to be insanely jealous...Thank you for this blog and such detailed images. I look forward to reading each day.
JB
Togeika said…
Tony,

I am using some Yellowbanks, dug straight out of the ground that Craig Edwards gave me to test. It has chunks of coal in it. I dig the big chunks out and patch the holes. Will fire these tests, including our version of co-shigaraki with neph sye stones in Craig's Anagama.

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