John Britt on thu 25 aug 11
Nice Lili,
Should have known you would keep it real!
And the good part is that while I was searching the Ceramic Monthly archi=
=3D
ves I=3D20
saw how many good articles you wrote. You seemed to have liked Hobart=3D20=
=3D
Cowles.
Johnbrittpottery.com
Lili Krakowski on thu 25 aug 11
Come on now! Cone 6 in reduction/wood fire goes back to the 70s at =3D
least. Not droves not masses but people were doing it...
And I never ever have seen this alleged claimed difference between =3D
glazes fired in reduction and those not. So many perfectly nice =3D
existing glazes did well in reduction
Yes, the look tends to be different. Yes some colors appear only in =3D
reduction, though now some are gorgeously replicated in digitally con =3D
trolled kilns through holds and cooling.
My point is that glazes is glazes--and their chemical make up is what =3D
makes a glaze. And all this tiptoeing around and whispering in corners =3D
and what not is just obscurantism.
When the fuel crisis of 1973 hit, all of us who had fired electrically =3D
around c 5 suddenly were "recognized" as real potters instead of being =3D
snubbed. And those of us who at the time had woodburning kilns, as I =3D
did, fired them to c. 6 or so.
So while of course we should thank those who do glaze "research" and =3D
come up with something nice, but let us face the facts: c6 glazes O or =3D
R have been around a long time--it is just that the Firing Fashionistas =3D
ignored them. Potters did not.
Lili Krakowski
Be of good courage
Rimas VisGirda on fri 26 aug 11
Just a little history from one person's fading West Coast memory... I still=
have a mimeographed sheet of formulas labeled OXIDATION c/6 GLAZES from Ca=
l State Univ, Sacramento (Sac State College back then) circa mid-60s, two o=
f the OX c/6 glaze recipes on the mimeo sheet have a note that adding a cer=
tain amount of white lead would turn them into c/2 glazes... Not sure why w=
e were given those as all we had were gas kilns (2 great Denver Fireclay na=
tural draft updrafts, a large stand-up forced air Alpine and a small natura=
l draft updraft Alpine); the class glazes were all cone 10 and we fired red=
uction. We also learned to fire the gas kilns for oxidation, but that was f=
or low-fire work; in the 60's there was an explosion of using "hobby" mater=
ials (commercial c/05 glazes, lusters, overglazes, decals) influenced by th=
e work of Bob Arneson who was the new ceramic prof at UC Davis, just across=
the river from Sacramento.Seems like everyone making pots fired
c/10 reduction but sculpture could be a mixed bag of high-fire or low-fire=
or any combination of the two. That continued into the 70's until the ener=
gy crisis, I remember a lot of talk and experimentation of adjusting the c/=
10 glazes to fire at c/6 reduction. I never bought into that as I didn't ma=
ke tons of work and I was very happy with the combination of clays and glaz=
es that I was using. I also thought, from examples that I saw, that the nat=
ure of the c/6 work was not quite as nice as the c/10; for me the c/10 work=
had a richness, depth and spark that the c/6 had lost. To make an analogy,=
it's possible now to make a c/10 glaze with encapsulated cadmium or with (=
reduced) copper, yes they are both "red" but for me there's no comparison b=
etween the two -copper reds trump cadmium every time, the cadmium is just a=
color, whereas the copper has texture, richness and depth that is unmatche=
d. Which makes me think maybe that is why the electric c/6 folks do
all that layering of glazes to get those runny, goopy, multicolored result=
s -to give the "illusion" of richness that is absent from straight up c/6 g=
lazes... Or maybe it's just different strokes for different folks...
Regards, -Rimas
Taylor Hendrix on fri 26 aug 11
DOWN WITH GLAZES! UP WITH VAPOR, SMOKE AND CARBON!!!
Taylor, in Rockport TX
wirerabbit1 on Skype (-0600 UTC)
http://wirerabbit.blogspot.com
http://wirerabbitpots.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wirerabbit/
...
> =3DC2=3DA0all that layering of glazes to get those runny, goopy, multicol=
ored=3D
results -to give the "illusion" of richness that is absent from straight u=
=3D
p c/6 glazes... Or maybe it's just different strokes for different folks...
> Regards, -Rimas
>
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