MORE, MORE, MORE

Every now and again I find myself motivated to make up a new clay body for some specific aim I have in mind. I occasionally will use a formula but honestly prefer to just wing it based on having used quite a few different clays over the years and having some sense of what the constituent parts play in strength, plasticity and durability. In this case, test body #1, my goal was a porcelain(80)/ stoneware(20) mix so I went ahead and figured out possible materials and made up 10lbs of dry weight clay which yielded somewhere north of 13lbs of usable clay, having mixed it to a slurry consistency and then drying it out on bats and finished by wedging the dickens out of it. My first step was to make a series of test pods which I fired to make sure the clay didn't melt, slump or bloat and worked well with a variety of glazes and then I set about throwing some test cups like the one you see here.

The clay throws quite well though it would benefit from sitting around for a while but I went ahead and threw three teabowls, a vase, a koro and lid and two other test cups out of the mix. All in all I am happy with the clay body and think it deserves a larger run but making up more means more materials, more time, more energy, more effort , more space and perhaps I can stick to mixing it up 10lbs at a time which is quite frankly just a hell of a lot less "more" than I signed up for.