For those of you waiting with bated breath to find out how miraculous is the behavior of Antarctic mud on my pots ... well ... not exactly miraculous. But useful, I think. I found several things:
- The mud is not a natural stoneware. At cone 10 (and probably below cone 10) it melts into a little iron-colored puddle. Very smooth and even. But still a puddle.
- Used as a glaze on biscuitware, it flakes off some time after drying and before firing. Messy. That which does not flake off crawls upon firing into little vertical puddles of iron-colored glaze. Not all that attractive, if scientifically interesting. You can see it on the square pot next to the small vase.
- Used as an overglaze, it has some promise. I diluted it to the viscosity of my usual iron brushwork slip and it seems to mimic that slip almost exactly, when used over the Shino glaze I use. You can see that in the small vase pictured here.
- And it runs nicely when brushed onto biscuitware and then has my ash glaze applied over it. You can see that on the shallow bowl I'm holding. The two side-by-side glazes are inside another bowl to which the slip was applied when the bowl was wet, just after throwing. The mud adhered well to that bowl, even when bisqued, and then glossed up but didn't run on high-temperature firing.
So ... not exactly miraculous, but still useful. And I'll continue to experiment with it. I've got about ten pounds. That's a lot of brushwork.
And for Tracey Broome, to whom I promised more photos from the firing, I just added the square Shino whiskey cups at the top of the post. Rough and rugged pieces, but I like them.
6 comments:
All interesting. So would you say the clay would work at a lower cone temp? Will you try it at a lower temp?
thanks for sharing!
Hi, Cindy. I've fired it to bisque temperatures around 1800 F and it holds up fine. But somewhere between cone 07 and cone 10, it melts. Not a big surprise, probably. I might add it to other clay bodies or to some of my glazes and see what it does there. I'm eager to mix it with my ash glaze and see what that does. Ten pounds isn't much, but it's enough to have some fun.
Those are my kind of pots in that kiln! Beautiful!
Thanks, Tracey. I'll put up some others from the firing ... maybe tomorrow. We're off for a week on vacation after that.
Good stuff -- I love those whiskey cups. The antarctic mud results are very cool, especially as the mud is experimented with in different forms. Neat results.
Hi Hollis I love the brush work on the ash glaze bowl that looks fantastic.
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