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.
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