Destroying the Plasticity of Clay
Why would you want to destroy the plasticity of a clay? To eliminate cracking when drying in either a glaze or a clay body. This was the result of trying to destroy the plasticity without …
Settling Clay that Doesn’t Want to Settle.
This is my lightest colored clay. After processing and sieving, it can stay in suspension for months. I generally add something to help it settle (because waiting months to work a clay just sucks). I …
You Can’t Guess with Wild Materials
I never would have guessed, from the amount of sand in this body, that it would craze. Never in my wildest dreams and yet, here we are. This is my latest dug clay and one …
A Local Material in Place of Bought Silica
This is a material I found on one of my clay hunts. Right out of the ground, it would stick together in a ball, but not roll a coil unless it was very wet. As …
June 2nd Firing
Many of these pieces turned out really nice. I still need to work on making myself wash off glaze and redo when it cracks while drying. I didn’t do this and now I have several …
Test Bowls
A couple of test bowls. Both of these had 6.5% added Neph Sye to flux the body down to cone 6. The one on the left is my newest dig location with some of the …
White Glaze Pieces
These came out of the kiln Thursday morning. These were fired to cone 6 oxidation using my wild clay reclaim (1.7% fired porosity at cone 5.5) and my white glaze that is 17% local materials.
Sugar Creek Clay
This clay has special meaning for my dad’s side of the family. My dad lives on the old home place where he and his brothers and sisters grew up. Sugar Creek, where this clay is …
White Glaze Tests
I have had several requests for a white glaze. These are tests. I took Spearmint from “Mastering Cone 6” and reformulated it to use local materials (53% local). I have had great luck with Spearmint …
This is what happiness looks like.
This will be about 150 lbs of moist clay after it dewaters a bit. I mixed this up today with my wild clay reclaim and 15% of a local low fire clay. I still need …
