A mystery stone

It was raining alot today, and as I walked through the garden, a wet, shiny stone caught my eye. It looked very unusual to me, because I've never seen a stone before which looks as if it's been cut perfectly in half. The cut side is absolutely flat and smooth, like ground glass..there are no markings from sawing or sanding. There are a few tiny chips around the edge but no damage at all on the surface, not even a scratch. That in itself seems a bit weird, when it must have been knocking around the garden for years.

The outside has an organic, wrinkled texture, almost like a seed, whilst the inside is like a translucent marble, or flint. The muted colours remind me a little of an anagama-fired pot. It's too cloudy to see inside it, but there are vague crystalline structures going on in there.

I'm sure geologists would provide a perfectly rational explanation (perhaps it was a geologist who discarded it), but I prefer to think that aliens cut it in half with a laser, and took the other half home as a sample. ;)

Update: someone on facebook has told me it's probably flint..is this how flint stones break then, with these perfectly flat, clean surfaces? Maybe it's not so mysterious after all..

Another day, another clay

This is my last post about mixing clay for a while, I promise! This morning I've been wedging up the new clay with around 60% Earthstone Original and 40% Original Raku. The photo shows how much more plastic it is:

The clay on the right has more iron oxide as I tried adding some red stoneware clay to it to make it more plastic, but to no avail. I'm not sure how I can improve this body without adding more and more smooth clay. I can throw with it okay, but it's easy to trap air bubbles when kneading.

I made a couple of bottle vases with it yesterday, but I am more pleased with the shape of the one at the front, which was thrown a few days ago.

At last, a little sunshine!

Finally, a beautiful day today..a few clouds here and there, but lots of gorgeous spring sunshine. I wish I had some pictures of new work to show here, but the clay situation is still distracting me and preventing me getting on with glaze firing. I really thought I'd solved the recent problems by mixing smooth stoneware clay in with my coarser, groggy stuff. Well, it's perfectly fine when wet and soft, but as soon as it starts to firm up it becomes unworkable again, even with a large proportion of smooth vs. rough clay. It quickly becomes completely non-plastic and just falls apart when wedging. Frustrating to say the least, and I've never had such difficulties with clay before (except after it's been frozen).. I think maybe I'm paying the price for buying a slightly cheaper clay, which has too much sand in it, and not enough plastic ball clay etc. Anyone else out there had similar problems I wonder?

So today I fetched some more expensive clay, Earthstone Original (ES5), which I know is a reliable body as I've mixed it before with the Potclays original raku very successfully. It makes a lovely, groggy mix, very easy to throw with..I have Yo Thom to thank for this recipe, found in the book "Techniques Using Slips" by John Mathieson.

I'm also happy to have found a possible source for the French stoneware clay which I've really enjoyed throwing with in the past. It comes from St Amand en Puisaye and is a very dark, grey colour when wet. When bisque fired, the organic impurities burn out and it turns a very nice pinky buff colour. It has some iron in it, but not too much, and takes salt very well..also gives nice orange and red colours with shino glazes.

Just to add a little colour :)

A few softer forms

The clay is much easier to throw with now, so I've been playing around a bit the last couple of days, throwing some new, softer forms. It usually takes me a while to decide whether I like the pieces I've made.

the bottom of this one will need trimming a little

it wasn't meant to be tear-drop shaped, but I quite like it for now

The piece in the last photo took me longer than usual to finish..I had great trouble getting the top section into the right shape, and deciding whether it should have a neck or not. I'm still not sure if I like it, but I was fiddling around with it for several minutes, which is usually not a good sign.

Longing for some sunny days here..the weather has been really awful for the last week and a half.

Throwing larger pieces

I've been struggling with my clay the last few days, trying to develop a decent body for throwing larger pieces. I really don't like throwing (or should I say "really can't throw") with very smooth clay, so I'd bought a hundred kilos each of lightly grogged stoneware clay and raku clay (very groggy), and tried mixing them together in various proportions. It's not a bad combination but lacking much plasticity, and as soon as it dries out a little the clay begins splitting and falling apart when wedging. Soooo, I had to go back down to Valentine's today and buy a load of smooth stoneware clay to counteract the over-grogginess. The traffic in Hanley on Monday afternoon is something to behold, especially with the added joy of roadworks in the centre..I was pretty glad to escape the snarl up and head home.

The price of clay seems to have shot up over the last few years, along with everything else. I considered trying some White St Thomas clay, but they are now asking a hefty £16.45 for a 12.5kg bag! It's alot cheaper if you buy 100kgs, but it still works out at around £10.00 a bag.

Anyway, I wedged up a new batch as soon as I got back and tried throwing a jar with a rolled rim. Only my second attempt at this form, so I was fairly pleased with the result. Ideally, with some more practise, I'd like to throw them a little taller, with a thicker, more "wabi-sabi" rim.

The Japanese are masters at making vases of this shape, and I am in awe of the work of potters such as Otani Shiro , who works in the Shigaraki tradition.

A test form

I've been playing around with new shapes on the wheel, and tried to throw a sort of pine-cone form off the hump.

I guess one might call it "egg-shaped " too, but then that word "egg" covers multitude of possible forms. Originally, this was going to be a little mustard pot, but then I cut out the lid wonkily so I stuck it back together. I'm just keeping it as a reminder of the form, and since then I've made a few lidded pieces like this, one of which I smashed yesterday.

This morning I turned it upside down, and was struck by how much it looked like a human head.

Not an earth-shattering discovery, but maybe I could make a similar one as a sculpture. Just need to figure out a way to make it stand upright on the pointy end..maybe a plinth with a hollow in the middle could work..or a steel support with a ring for it to sit in..

April showers and a small revelation

The weather is matching my mood today..sunny then cloudy, then sunny again in quick succession. The bisque firing I did yesterday was very successful with no cracks or explosions. But then, as I was putting the fired pieces on the shelf, I pulled my hand back, and the back of my glove (pots were still very hot) caught the knob on top of a  lidded jar and off it went, falling to it's death on the concrete floor below. *Sad face*.

Next, I pulled out this little coffee cup, and was amazed to find that the white slip had stayed completely intact. I'd already fired this once before with a layer of black slip applied at leatherhard, and I thought I'd try doing some hakeme brushwork over the top. The slip was applied fairly thickly onto the bisqued clay, and normally I'd expect at least some of it to peel off. There is a bit of cracking in the crevices of the handle, but that will actually look great under a clear glaze. Not sure if I could then apply glaze over the top of the slip without re-bisquing, that will need another experiment. It would be useful if I could, as one of the problems with hakeme at the leatherhard stage is contamination of the white slip with iron oxide etc. from the dark layer below. Ofcourse, the mingling of the slip layers may also add something to the decorative effect, so it will be interesting to see what the differences are after glaze firing.

The white slip is 50/50 hvar ball clay and china clay. It might work really well..if the glaze is applied over the still-damp slip layer, it may result in a thinner application of clear glaze, which is something I want to achieve. We shall see!

Apart from stabbing myself in the finger with a needle tool, the day is now back on track. Time for some throwing followed by lots of decorating and glazing.