Monday, March 18, 2013

MAKING CLAY

It gets very easy relying on clay, fresh out of the box, be it terra cotta, stoneware or porcelain. In the case of my terra cotta, I have it made for me by the clay professionals at Standard Ceramics in Pittsburgh. Over the years I have made my fair share of clay including up to 600 pounds a day while I was the tech assistant at Cleveland State. Since then, though most of my clay is prepared clays, I have continued to make up small batches of varying clays for a variety of uses and specific needs. The process I use is quite simple; I measure out the ingredients in a 5 gallon bucket, mix it thoroughly into a slurry consistency, pour it out on plaster to firm up and finish up the process by vigorous wedging. All in all, not a terribly difficult undertaking as long as I keep it under 25 pounds or so.

Last summer I made up a clay body that I wanted to fire slightly darker than the normal stoneware I work with for use with a new Oribe glaze I was testing. The darker body with more iron, tempers the green  and makes for a richer looking surface. I fired several bowls from this clay and glaze combo and promptly sold all of them. About a month or so after selling one of the bowls, I was asked if I could make a mate to one of them and much to my chagrin, I realized, I had misplaced the test notes. I only recently found the notes to that particular conundrum and made up 20lbs of the clay and more of the Oribe as well. In a week or so, I should see if the pieces come out as they did before. I say this because I have taken explicit notes before and when trying to reproduce the results, the pots were just not the same. Most likely some variable that I over looked, but sometimes, inexplicably, the results are just not possible to reproduce, kismet maybe?