Alisa Clausen on tue 4 mar 08
This is my biggest concern with Currie's grid for functional potters.
Most of the samples end up being of a very unstable composition. I
have urged Ian to find a way to revise his method to make it more
useful for functional potters--that was a couple years ago and I
don't know if he has or not. As currently designed it is a useful
technique for the sculptural potter who wants to see a broad range of
possibilities. But the functional potter??--I certainly don't find it
useful
Hi John H.
Ian's grid is an excellent way to understand how materials influence a
glaze mixture. It is has personally taught me to look at the 35 different
glazes, notice the differences and then refer to the simple way he has set
up understanding the influence of Silica, Alumina and a range of fluxes.
Short said, Grids are flash cards for understanding materials.
They are invaluable for learning what materials do.
Normally we fire a set of 3 grids to see what glazes look like on
different clays, so in one go, we have 105 examples. Not wasted time for
any potter who wants to make glazes and understand what they are looking
at.
You are not finding the grid useful maybe because you are informed enough,
to say the least, to cut right to the chase for the glazes you want.
However, the majority of the potting community are building up their glaze
knowledge and the Curry grid is an excellent exercise to learn from,
whether or not they are aiming for table ware or sculpture surfaces. I
also have learned about which materials "bully" another by simple 50/50%
Gartside experiments. By keeping 50% of one material, say Ball Clay, and
adding 50% of everthing else I have in the studio, I could get a broad
range of which materials sjpw more "muscle" in spefic combinations. Not
scientific, but I could take it further and understand it scientifically,
but first learning what materials look like in the melt and later find out
why.
I would not recommend that anyone only learn one method with one aim,
because there is a lot of discovering lost by following one school of
thought.
MC6G has undoubtedly opened an important venue for understanding stable
glazes according to your parameters. It does not at all lessen that
importance by working side by side others who have a different approach to
understanding glazes, or different goals.
Both Ian's grid and MC6G are independently great sources of information
and learning. If a potter understands most of the information offered
from both, I would say they have a huge foundation to build on. A few
Gartside experiments, and one can learn and learn.
Visual results are what have personally made me interested in
understanding how I got the, and combining many schools of thought on the
process, I think, is the key to a broad, practical and useful
understanding.
Best regards, Alisa in Denmark
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