T&A V

I have mentioned previously that after my first trip to Japan, I became interested in bells as a form more than as the functional object. If you look at bells from ancient China and medieval Japan, the forms, decoration and construction of these objects is wonderful with such a wide variety all created for the nearly exactly the same purpose. Using the dotaku bell form as a starting point, I like making these thrown and altered pieces and in this case, a simple piece with an incised grasses pattern under my rich lepidolite Oribe. In making this piece, I tried to keep the lines crisp, forming graduated angles and then added lugs to either side of the pot and a thrown neck/mouth to complete the pot. Due to my shortage of materials, the glaze was sparingly and carefully brushed on to the piece once bisque with areas receiving a secondary coat around the shoulder, neck and mouth. I thought this pot came out rather well and that was the sole reason that I found the pot lepidolite worthy, as the matrial runs out I will have to be more and more selective as to where it should be used and in the mean time, the testing to get a closer version of this glaze moves ever forward.

RAPHANUS SATIVUS II

Over the years I have seen a number of wonderful Ki-Seto pots with various decoration of which the simple incised and accented radish design has always sparked my imagination. Considering I don't have a decent dry style Ki-Seto glaze I decided to make due and blend the design with the Oribe tradition to create moderate using pieces including this large sake cup. While still wet the mouth of the cup was lobed to compliment the natural theme of the piece and then the Momoyama influenced design was incised into the bottom of the cup. I used my rich lepidolite based Oribe glaze for the piece and I think that for the first and only of the production run, the results are not to bad. At nearly five inches across it will certainly make most aficionados pleased with the volume within and the design cloaked in the clarity of their favorite sake.

YOHEN

Illustrated is a large and simple yunomi with a rather interesting glaze over thick slip. The glaze is called yohen, for kiln change and varies depending on how the kiln is fired. Using a feldspar/amblygonite base the glaze is capable of a wide array of surfaces including this highly iridescent one especially over slips with varying additions of oxides and carbonates. For those of you unfamiliar with amblygonite, it is a rather neat material having certain properties similar to both spodumene and lepidolite and is worth testing out from cone 6 to10. All in all this a rather fun glaze to use and the texture and movement added to the piece with the use of a thick slip just adds to the experience.

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I am not sure why, but for me, the incised decoration and Oribe seem to go hand in hand. The way the glaze first breaks to a much lighter color only to fill that incised channel with a dark river of Oribe makes the technique very appealing. Though the idea of the incised line goes way back in pottery history, it is the work of Kohyama Yasuhisa, Koie Ryoji, Charles Counts and Aaron Bohrod that have been of the greatest inspiration and influence in what I do with the cut line. The technique is both primal and expressive, literal and obtuse and allows a potter direct access to the clay, cutting in to the surface and moving material as you go along. The other appeal is that spontaneity goes hand in hand with the directness of the technique, like ink on a fresh piece of paper, there is no going back, the line cut is the line that one lives with and there is a fair share of cast always and wasters along the route. Using a sharpened piece of bamboo as a tool, it takes practice to get gentle curves and small detail, but like all things worth the effort, it is only the first 10,000 hours that serve to get you where you are going.

Illustrated is a thrown stoneware bottle, tokkuri with an decoration loosely based on the orbit in some far off incised interstellar intersection of stars. In a way this decoration is an offshoot of my "landscapeman" design but it owes as much to the blackboards of science fiction scientists in old B movies as anything else. The Oribe glaze works well over the incised decoration and though not quite apparent in the photo, the surface has a slight iridescence to it. I have only one question, how is it possible that no one in the US is mining ceramic grade lepidolite?

HANDFUL

Three things that I really like are making teabowls, creating texture and Oribe glaze, so it only makes sense to try to combine the three every chance that I get. Illustrated is a simple wan-gata form, a handful of bowl with a crisp paddled texture and a rich green, lepidolite Oribe glaze. The lip was created not by cutting to shape but rather through a combination of interrupted throwing and the paddling process. I prefer this method as it creates a less contrived appearance and is usually more simpatico with the finished form. The shape was created by throwing a cylinder and then paddling it, the bowl was then expanded out from the inside using a great wood tool that I picked up in Japan. For this shape the concern is that the curve that comes off the foot meets well with the natural curve of the hand and I think I succeeded well with that primary goal and every pot should have at least one goal after all.

"If A equals success, than the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play and Z keeping your mouth shut."  Albert Einstein

COPPER EFFECTS

In my most recent glaze firing, the aim was to test out my latest Oribe glaze that is not based on the extinct lepidolite. I was able to make up 7000 gr. and able to glaze pots over 16" tall without the machinations necessary with the lepidolite version. The latest version has copper carbonate, a small amount of well milled black copper oxide and an equal amount of red iron to temper the glaze a bit. Unlike the lepidolite version, which has wonderful halo like effects, iridescence and rich pooling, the latest version has a very interesting if unpredictable pooling of a blue-green moss like effect where the pot is flat or where the glaze has built up to an increased thickness. What this effect does to the table is its ability to bring various marks and artifice to life and helps articulate the pot. Illustrated is the flange and lid of an Oribe style jar with impressed decorations around the pot. The high points and various marks are highlighted by the blue-green texture while the high points remain green. I think it adds a visual interest to the pot, though unintended and not totally controllable, it is welcome none the less.

More pictures of this jar can be seen on my Trocadero market place;

http://www.trocadero.com/stores/albedo3studio/items/1198793/item1198793store.html

 

A CUP OF GLAZE

One of the real drawbacks of using the every depleting lepidolite Oribe glaze is that size does matter. The bulk of the work is relegated to teabowls, flat plates and medium size vases, bottles and mizusashi, all basically smaller pieces. The illustrated bottle is the exception to the rule, at nearly 14" tall, it posed its own unique challenges to glaze without making up a large amount of glaze, which was just not going to happen. The plus side of the glaze I use, is that poured or brushed, the surface tends to blend into itself in a rather homogeneous coating making it possible to glaze a large vase using little more than a cup of glaze. This vase, just under 14" in height has glaze built up a bit around the incised decoration and at the base of the depressed neck to create a darker contrast and adds a dimension to the surface that a solid and totally even glaze coat would not. The various areas of darker and richer glaze helps articulate the form and details and makes for a much more interesting surface. In all honesty, I was rather startled what could be accomplished with just a single cup of glaze.

IN THE OLD DAYS

As I sit down to write this, I am reminded of those “old days” stories. “When I was young, I had to get up a half hour before I went to bed, walk 20 miles through 6 feet of snow in a blinding snow storm before getting to work and working for 20 hours, and I felt lucky …………” That being said, this is not exactly like that.

I remember when I first started making pots, there were stories about all the extinct materials and how ceramics was a different beast now. I listened, politely, and in the back of my mind there was always this thought, but you have ceramic grade spodumene and Albany Slip, what else could you ask for. Then in 1992 or 1993, the well ran dry first on the Albany Slip and then the ceramic grade Foote Minerals spodumene.

In certain respects, I was lucky and saw the proverbial writing on the wall. I squirreled away as much of both as I could get my hands on, a supply that has lasted to this day. Now I must admit, the storehouse is barren and the days of great Shino and various Albany Slip glazes are almost at an end. I have substitutes for most, though they are not quite as lively and rich, but as the supplies dwindle, it is time to move on. Acknowledge and move on.

I now understand all those tales of lament regarding previous extinct materials. At a certain level you become somewhat accustomed to using specific glazes as part of your visual glossary and then you need to find new surfaces to articulate your pots. My lepidolite Oribe is another example of those bygone glazes, but as you look at truly great Albany Slip, spodumene and lepidolite glazes, you see there really is something that we will all sorely miss………….

Illustrated is one of my stoneware teabowls with Albany Slip glaze over a bisque slip.

MATERIAL WOES

When I first started ceramics in the late 80’s I was constantly regaled with stories of the incredible properties of various “extinct” materials. Kingman spar, colemenite, barnard, lepidolite and others. I just couldn’t relate until the demise of Albany Slip. I had early on found a variety of uses for Albany slip in my glaze palette and suddenly being without it was inconceivable. It is always really serious when it touches so close to home.

Over the years since I started, I have seen Albany slip and spodumene disappear, g-200 then there was the gerstley borate scare that sent many potters for a loop. Now the new entrant into the gone the way of the dinosaurs material is F-4 soda feldspar. Like most materials, I had become pretty dependant on it’s use in various glazes, but most specifically in my clear glaze.
My clear glaze is a very exacting and temperamental glaze and is the only glaze I currently need to measure to the exact gram. Over time, I have tried tweaking it for various reasons and ended up either clouding up the glaze, creating vast fields of micro-bubbles or just plain old crawling.

I am currently in the process of testing Minspar 200 and NC-4 as a replacement for the F-4. I am doing a series of line blends to see what happens with more and less of the new feldspars as options. Just starting this, so I will keep you informed.

ADDICTED TO GREEN

As a teen I had an unnatural fetish for all things bright yellow, right down to my size 13 Puma sneakers. So in my early 20’s, it came as quite a surprise as I became enthralled with the myriad of greens of medieval and modern Shigaraki and Iga. As I looked about, other enticing greens appeared; Oribe, Persian blue-greens, Fujina-yaki, medieval lead glazed pots and seiji/seihakuji glazes. I had to capitulate, I love green. I might as well face it, I’m addicted to green (thank you Robert Palmer).

In my late 20’s, I started making pottery and my mind ran to those greens I see when I close my eyes. Though I was neither faithful nor monogamous to those greens, but they played a large part in my developing glaze palette. Celadons, Oribe, Rob’s Green, Hamada Oribe, Seacrest glazes and many more. As I moved away from wood firing and into the “conventional” realm, I began to work on a variety of green glazes. Copper blues-greens, Oribe glazes, medieval green and than came the discovery of the extinct lepidolite. The green from lepidolite is like no other in this country. It’s surface, flow and iridescence is marvelous and the depth of it’s translucent nature is visually engaging and neither easily duplicated or forgotten.

A large part of my high-fire work now is dominated by greens together with clear and temmoku. It was a natural progression and the variety of uses is infinite. The translucent quality allows for slip and underglaze work along with my “rozome” style wax resist (ronuki) both under and over the glaze. I am constantly looking for new greens and uses for the ones I have. I am sure there is much more to do.