CP Dunbar on sat 26 oct 96
Please, may I bend your ear for a minute,
Everyone is quite congenial re: the sharing of info on this listserve. Have you
noticed that it is different from the outside climate?
However I have noticed that the lack of uniformity in presenting glaze
formulas has caused a fair amount of frustration re: some of the same areas repe
There is quite a natural solution for this problem.
Would it not be possible for the powers that be on this listserve to appoint
a small committee to communicate by conference call that would be able to sugges
uniform method of presentation for all glaze formulas. Currently, because of the
uniformity, people submit glazes in total free form. This creates problems if s
leaves something out.
There have been numerous notations after a glaze has been listed about:
-whether a glaze matures at cone 6 or 9
-whether it is produced under oxidized or reduced atmosphere
-whether it is food safe
-texture of glaze
-color of glaze
-glaze componants
-specific notations re: formulation of glaze.
-addressing a simple method of assigning each unique glaze formula presented w/
a unique id no. so that we might all gain from each other's experience
Case in point - How many times have we all seen:
Joshua, was your Wonderglaze Ox or Red ?
Sally, do you think your glaze is foodsafe ?
Sam, I love your glaze recipe, but WHAT CONE ?
Jo, is that white glaze the same one that we talked about last month?
or was it a different white glaze ?
I am sure that some things are left up to individual interpretation,
but there are certain absolutes that noone argues about, such
as some sure fire glazes that are NOT foodsafe.
Not to poke too much fun at ourselves, but we all are sitting on expensive piece
equipment w/ the capability to produce these results quite easily.
Formats could be in any form, but one similar to the above would suffice
Zakins book uses something like this, and it makes it easier to follow, or to re
Zakin's TMH -2 glaze. Name is not snazzy, but if you look in his book, you know
glaze that I'm talking about.
A form similar to the above form would probably be amenable to cut and paste
directly into a database. This could then be sorted, printed, and referred to
for years instead of using "little pieces of paper that get lost"
I believe that by standardization, we may be able to belp each other much more
efficiently for the following reasons :
1 we will stop leaving out pertinent details of recipes
2 email will not comprise of questions that should have been included in the
orig. recipe, but which were overlooked. I have seen recipes, w/ a later
separate note mentioning the glaze quoted two days earlier w/ important
changes. So they left out the EPK, and it doesn't total 100. You have to
record recipe and correction to recipe. Bet we miss a lot.
3 Real reason :
Currently we use real time (almost). If you catch a glaze on the list today
while you are thinking about it, you may use that. But if noone today can
remember their orange-red flaking deep satire glaze you may be out of luck
even though the glaze was mentioned and documented well on the list last Tues.
With standardization, What if glaze #15 was a blue that did not adhere well
and later, one lone wonderful person such as Carla Flati figures out you need
one drop of Dinosaur sweat for it to work perfectly. Well she uses it until
she tires of it and then no one else benefits from all her labor.
If we had a database that we all helped to update from time to time, them
we would know the problem that Carla encountered, and how she solved it.
From then on Glaze #15 will work fine because the database would reflect Carla'
happy finding. Soon we would amass a wealth of info. A simple glaze today
might become a thing of true beauty w/ time and many more people would be able
to contribute.
I know that people leave the list from time to time, making uniformity more diff
but a recurrent chronic message greeting people to the listserve, could also lis
method of glaze recipe submision. This would make us all consistant. The messag
be repeated monthly, or at other reasonable intervals, or as people forgot the c
Also free form could still be accepted, so as not to disturb any creative juices
I do not mean to step on any toes, but believe that we are all smart people, alw
seeking for ways to do things better. Perhaps we should improve the way we docum
and that this method might mean we would enjoy the list much more.
Perhaps this will start a seed for thought,
Perhaps this is all trash. ;)
thank you,
cp
(So, what do you think, Tom ?)
--
"And she shall have music wherever my Lady goes."
cpdunbar@concentric.net
Bill Seeley on sun 27 oct 96
CP Dunbar wrote:
> Would it not be possible for the powers that be on this listserve to appoint
> a small committee to communicate by conference call that would be able to sugg
> uniform method of presentation for all glaze formulas.
Excellent idea. In fact the committee has already met and made
a recommendation! They came up with a standard method for
submitting glazes to the Glazebase project on the CermicsWeb.
The text template for submitting glazes to the CeramicsWeb can
also be used to post them to CLAYART. The original template can be
found at:
http://apple.sdsu.edu/ceramicsweb/gbtextformat.html
Detailed instructions for filling out the template can be found at:
http://apple.sdsu.edu/ceramicsweb/gbinstructions.html
Glazes descriptions submitted via this approach could be
written/read by any browser and have the added value of being
automatically importable into Glazebase. Once in Glazebase they
would be convertible to other database formats. This approach would
standardize the posting of glaze recipes to CLAYART and should
eliminate a lot of extraneous chatter.
If there are CLAYART subscribers interested in obtaining the
template, but without access to the WWW, please post a message here
and I'll post a copy of the template.
Additional information on the Glazebase project can be found at:
http://apple.sdsu.edu/ceramicsweb/about_glazebase.html#SUBMITTING
Bill
--
Theresa and William Seeley 410 486-3171 (voice)
Villa Nova Pottery 410 484-6273 (fax)
4015 Buckingham Rd. Baltimore, MD 21207
"186,000 miles/second is not just a good idea - its the law!"
Sue Davis on sun 27 oct 96
Geeq! This is the last place on earth without all the rules and regulations.
WHY try and "unionize" this area of our life too. "Big Brother" is now
getting into my pottery world?
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