"Rafael Molina-Rodriguez (Rafael Molina-Rodriguez)" on mon 21 apr 97
Clayarters :
An excellent source of information on burnishing can be found in the
article "Burnishing an Dung Firing" by Marsha Judd in the September
1994 Ceramics Monthly.
I believe the reason that Ms. Judd achieves the high gloss on her work is
because of the addition of "5% pyropholite" to her "commercial, iron-rich,
grog-free earthenware." It's the same principle as Maria Martinez adding
the "sand" to her claybody. I assume the sand is also present in the slip
Maria applied to bone dry clay and burnished. This information was
gleaned from the wonderful film "The Potters of San Ildefonso."
I made wheel thrown, burnished, saggar-fired stoneware and porcelain
from 1993 to 1996. The article by Judd helped my work immensely. By
using a thin layer of Crisco on the stone and glass guitar slide I used to
burnish allowed me to work the piece until almost bone dry. The dryer
the surface when final burnishing occurs the higher the gloss. The work
was bisque fired to ^ 016 and sagger-fired in commercial terra cotta
planters, with commercial terra cotta saucers as lids, to ^ 010.
I stopped sagger firing a few months ago for a variety of reasons. I
really got tired of the burnishing process. And, to nurse each piece
through the bisque and sagger fire and not have the color or pattern I
wanted was too frustrating.
Another reason I stopped making this type of work was because it kept
getting compared to Scott Tubby's of Connecticut. I respect his work
very much but was not aware of his work until a couple of years after I
had been doing sagger's (my inspiration was a local artist named Maria
Spies who now lives in Seattle). It's interesting how art can be arrived at
independantly and still have similarities.
Rafael
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