Lily Krakowski on tue 17 dec 02
Ever since I became aware of the Clayart Archive and how many people use it,
I have wanted to do this. I hope Mel, Joyce, and all of you will allow it.
Glazes are made up of a variety of materials. Within the materials--few of
them are pure, just only one thing-- there are the real "what counts"
ingredients. This is much like food. Bread, crackers, pasta are materials
we eat; but within each is the ingredient that matters--carbohydrates. Same
with the "ingredient that matters" protein: it is in meat, fish, eggs, tofu.
And the "ingredient that matters" fat is found in cheese, cream,lard,butter,
oil.
If you were designing a diet you would want a certain amount of
carbohydrate, of protein, of fat. You would have to balance them. The same
goes for designing a glaze. You have to balance the basic ingredients so
that the diet/glaze turns out right for that particular person/ the glaze
you need.
In glaze the important ingredients are the fluxes or melting agents, the
"stickers" the material that prevents the glaze from running down the pot
when the glaze is fluid from melting, and the glass formers.
While in a diet the carbohydrates come in the most forms, and different
exciting forms, in glaze it is the fluxes that are exciting. Silica is the
glass former, and alumina the sticker. Because one has some leeway in the
amount of silica one uses, quite a bit actually, it is more like
protein--you need a sufficiency, not too much, not too little, but it is not
exciting. Alumina is like fat. One has to be really careful because a
little too little or a little too much is crucial to the outcome.
Here in a way we leave food. The analogy becomes too complicated. But just
as you can use sugar, honey, molasses as a carbohydrate/sweetener, you can
use wollastonite, colemanite, whiting, dolomite, a frit as a source of
calcium. To understand this one looks at a materials chart--found in most
books--and finds that each of these materials provides the "ingredient that
matters" which we want--calcium-- but with something else added as well.
If Mel allows this, I will go on a bit tomorrow.
Lili Krakowski
P.O. Box #1
Constableville, N.Y.
(315) 942-5916/ 397-2389
Be of good courage....
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