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!