mel jacobson on tue 28 mar 00
>From: Jon Singer
>
>jon is having server problems, so i post for him.
mel
>Cheers & thanks one way or t'other --
>jon
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------
>
>From: Jon Singer
>Subj: Crazing --
>--------
>
>
>
>1) It is beginning to become clear that we in the US
>(and probably Canada) live in an overly sanitary
>environment. There is increasing evidence that more and
>more of us are showing up with serious allergies later
>in life, apparently because we haven't had the
>opportunity to develop our immune systems properly as
>children. (Yes, I know, it isn't 100% firm yet, but the
>evidence in favor mounts up steadily.)
>
>It might even be good if we could point to crazed
>pottery as a potential source of exposure to appropriate
>immune-system-building influences... but I'm not aware
>of anyone who has bothered to make a real test yet. I do
>know that wooden cutting boards have been demonstrated
>to be bacteriostatic, which is probably good -- if there
>are bacteria on your cutting board you will be exposed
>to them; but they won't multiply in the cracks &
>crevices the way they do on plastic boards, so you are
>less likely to be overwhelmed by them. ...Or so my own
>current thinking goes. Take it with some salt.
>
>1A) No matter how much we think we know about any
>complex issue (for example "health"), there are always
>twists and surprises on the way, many of which we can't
>even begin to imagine, as witness the cutting board
>issue. For a while we were told to get plastic cutting
>boards because they were more sanitary than wooden
>ones. Now it appears that plastic ones may be dangerous,
>but at the same time we are finding out that we're being
>too sanitary anyway. What's right? Do you go for a
>plastic cutting board and risk getting salmonella if you
>don't wipe it down with disinfectant, or get a wooden
>one and wonder whether it's preventing your kids from
>picking up a few germs they need to fight now in order
>to be healthy as grownups? (As an aside, I'd suggest
>using something other than a chlorine bleach to wipe
>down cutting boards -- organic chlorine is truly nasty
>stuff, as far as we can tell.)
>
>The point here is that I suspect that the jury probably
>isn't even ready to begin deliberations on the
>health-safety issues that pertain to crazed ware. I
>frankly don't believe we know nearly enough about it to
>make claims with confidence that we could back them up.
>
>2) It is already clear that some people like the look of
>a crazed piece, as witnessed by lots of glorious raku
>and by the general Asian aesthetic, which seems to make
>much more use of crazing than North Americans do, raku
>aside. (No, I'm not a shill for the Raku family -- I
>mostly make c11 porcelain.)
>
>3) My one major reservation about crazed pieces is that
>if the body remains porous after firing, they start
>going "tuk" instead of "thung" after a few passes
>through the dishwasher. (Crazed pieces go "thung"
>instead of "ting"; as far as I'm aware, there's no way
>around that.) Did I say something about my maybe having
>a bit too much emphasis on functional ware, btw? If not,
>I probably should have.
>
>I have watched a fair amount of commercial throwing
>porcelain go through firing at cone 11 and still come
>out porous even though the bodies in question are
>specified for cone 10, so this is a real issue. (No, I
>don't know what causes this; I do know that if I mix 40
>kaolin & 20 feldspar & 20 silica it vitrifies thoroughly
>and continues to go "ting" after dozens of passes
>through the dishwasher, so I suspect the usual
>additives... but I have no solid evidence to back up the
>conjecture.)
>
>--------
>
>I guess for me it boils down to this:
>
>Crazing that is there because I asked for it to be there
>is great unless my judgement about what the piece needed
>was bad, in which case the problem is not that the piece
>is crazed, but rather that _I_ am crazed. (Now that I've
>made it to NCECA and met them, btw, Mel and various
>other people can probably corroborate that.)
>
>Crazing that enhances the esthetic qualities of a piece,
>even if it does so only for other people, is fine so
>long as those other people actually get to see the
>piece. (That is, if it works only for one guy in a
>high-rise in the Bronx who never travels farther than
>Manhattan, and my pottery is in Seattle, that ain't
>quite good enough.)
>
>Crazing that fails to enhance a piece is usually a pain
>in the neck, and because of this I work very hard to
>create glaze formulations that do not craze, for
>occasions when I prefer to avoid crazing (which is, I
>confess, most of the time). It's often fairly easy to
>tweak a glaze to make it craze, should that become
>appropriate. My memory tells me, for example, that we
>have a lot more crazing than shivering around here.
>
>Crazed pieces are, to be sure, more easily broken than
>pieces that are inherently intact; but in the final
>analysis all pottery is breakable and should be handled
>with delicacy and even reverence. (Ahem.)
>
>Cheers --
>jon
>
>
minnetonka, minnesota, u.s.a
http://www.pclink.com/melpots (website)
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