Lili Krakowski on mon 16 may 11
Among our cyclical debates is the one about glazes. =3D
Authorship,publication and so on.
Bitter words are exchanged, sharpened fingers pointed...Why? For what?
Only a limited number of glazes can be made for a specific firing temp =
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and method; an even smaller number for same in certain colors and =3D
finishes. =3D20
Our materials/ingredients are few. Limits are predestined. And when =3D
certain materials--lead, cadmium, uranium--disappear from the studio, =3D
the number of possible glazes is further reduced.
Just about everything about glazes has been published. Years ago I =3D
wrote, in a letter to CM, that strontium yielded "barium blues"! =3D
Shortly thereafter someone--was it you, Steve Slatin?--wrote me that =3D
this "news" had appeared in Russian clay literature quite a while =3D
before.
A few days ago someone wrote that Tom Buck--of blessed memory--had told =3D
him/her that Wollastonite replacing whiting would eliminate the =3D
pinholes whiting tends to create. I profoundly believe we owe our =3D
teachers passing their teachings on in their name...But I read the same =
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Wollastonite/whiting advice in an Emmanuel Cooper book ages ago.
Again: If you love a book, if it changed your life, that is great. But =
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be advised that there are other books out there, plenty of them...And I =3D
dare say that for all this or that book being wonderful, it is not =3D
unique, nor the one repository of that particular information!
Likewise, glazes can be recalculated to use quite different materials =3D
and still have the same formula. So while RonJohn have/had every right =3D
to ask their recipes not be "published" by others, I have seen them in =3D
recalculated form. And so it goes and has gone with many a glaze. Or =3D
why we often read: "I use Mitzi Birnbaum's Nifty Poo Base Glaze..." =3D
and someone else writes in: "That is Dagobert Perliquew's "Magic =3D
White"!"
I "own" a few glazes with which I am pleased, and kinda proud to have =3D
found, I do not claim that I invented them, or that they are unique. I =3D
just came across them, as it were.
Today there are several people working very seriously on the "special =3D
effects" slow cooling and timed holds have on glazes. And this is new, =3D
as the digital controls on electric kilns are new...
But that will be new for a short while, and then other potters will =3D
publish other books with similar findings....
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