Khaimraj Seepersad on sun 19 dec 99
Good Day to All ,
I would add on to Ray's thoughts and say , that since I like to do most
of the process for myself [ find , dig , clean the clay , oxide to glass ]
I tend to respect the material more and the use I put it to .
I spend good time drawing out a single pot design , balancing the
pot and decoration , colour use etc . simply because , I want that
pound or so of clay to be the best object I have ever made .
Since I work at under 08 [ small cone ] , commercial glazes are out of
my reach and my clay bodies have unique expansions , so those
glazes would probably not work either .
Like Mel and others , I spent some years developing my clay bodies ,
an off white and 1 other . I also had to redevelop the few glazes I found
for lowfire . Mostly increasing the Silica , and yes there are lowfire
glazes that use 65 to 77 % Sio2 . How durable - time will tell .
>From my point , it is necessity , I am proud of what I can do , but the
idea of superior or better never came in there .
Mind you , if I were shipwrecked on an Island in the Pacific , I could
promise you that in a week or two , I would be eating my fish , wild
meat , greens etc , off of vitreous earthenware clay and not
coconuts and calabashes - chuckle .
Aside - Ray I still only get mild yellows [ mellow ] with Ti02 and I use
the paint pigment , commercial supplier , supposed to be pure -
sulphate or chloride process [ ? ] , so there is no Iron in there ----
but then I only fire to 983 deg.c and most of my frits are designed to
keep the Ti02 clear in the glaze .
Khaimraj Seepersad
Ray Aldridge said -
So, in my opinion there's nothing wrong in using a glaze another potter
developed. As I've said before, the only reason for making pottery is the
pleasure the potter takes in the making and his customer takes in the
buying. A lot of us have fun developing glazes, but that doesn't
necessarily make us superior to those who haven't re-invented the horse.
(Though I think it's easier to make strongly individual pots if you do as
much of the process as you can, just like it's easier to make beautiful
pots firing fuel kilns in reduction to C10 and above. That doesn't mean
you can't make beautiful pots in electric kilns at lower temps. It's just
harder.)
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