Lee love on tue 2 mar 04
Steve Mills wrote:
>Like you I have learnt that a Kiln will always tell you what it needs.
>All you have to do is learn the language!
>
>
:-) Yes. It is like a dancing partner.
I took glaze test tiles over to Euan Craig's today. He was
over to visit yesterday and we filled his Kei Truck up with wood (It was
what I thought would fire a bisque and a glaze firing.) Euan run out
of wood and needs to fire right away Our original source of cut-offs,
Tostem Windows, no longer has it available. Tostem told Euan a palette
maker buys all of their scrap now. Euan was in touch with the palette
maker, to see if we could get his cut-offs, but wasn't sure when he'd
come around. So he borrowed some wood from me
I am testing my new ash glaze, made from grape vine and cherry
tree wood ash, from my wood stove in the studio. The base glaze is
the same as my teacher's , and his teacher's and is based on what they
have always used in Mashiko: Half ball clay and half wood ash, mixed
by the wet ladle full with a line-blend of different amounts of
kaolin. My kiln is the same design as Euans. It has a range of
temperatures, atmospheres, flashing and ash depositing. I fire two
entirely different types of work in the same firing: Unglazed Shigaraki
and glaze Mashiko Nami clay. I mixed four different amounts of
kaolin and put them in 4 different places in the kiln: Hot/Ash,
Medium/Ash, Medium/No Ash and Cool/No ash. So that's twenty test
of one new ash glaze.
I also mixed up a mat gray glaze, like on a MacKenzie chawan I
have, except with Mashiko materials. I made a tile for each of the
four areas. Had to bust up a bisqued yunomi reject I was keeping as an
"example" from my teacher's workshop, to have enough tiles. At his
workshop, we always used pieces of a broken up yunomi, placed in a wad
of clay, as a test tile. It is good to have a uniformed thickness for
your test tiles because the thickness of the clay effects the thickness
of the glaze application.
When I took the tests over Euan invited me to the kitchen for
coffee, but actually, it was espresso. Best espresso in Mashiko.
While I was there, the palette maker called and said he'd be over in the
afternoon to deliver a load of wood I went back in the afternoon, to
help with the unloading from the crane truck and found out that the
palette maker has plenty of wood for us and will deliver it for half of
what we were paying before! This means a glaze firing will cost about
$5.50 a firing. As much as an electric bisque in Texas. Pretty
good! And the palette guy seems like a pretty nice guy He uses
recycled materials to build palettes. He and Euan kept saying in
Japanese "Motai nai!" Or, "Too good to waste!"
Euan fires tomorrow. I'll go toward the end of the
firing tomorrow night, bring some beer. Always tastes good when cone
10 is bending.
--Lee in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.us "It seems to me what you
lose in mystery you gain in awe" -- Francis Crick
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