Bonnie Staffel on mon 27 sep 04
This is a follow up to my previous post. I looked in my old notebooks and
find that I did not experiment with the Ohio clay I had used to make a
glaze. However, I did make glazes from Michigan Slip. This slip is a light
ecru color at Cone 9-10 ox. It was available to me while at Cranbrook and
do not know where it was mined. It was not a material that I used very
much.
>When I lived in Maumee, OH, I did not have a high fire kiln, nor did I have
a way to purchase ready made clay at that time - early 50's, but across the
river in Perrysburg, OH, there was a field tile factory. I used to go and
get their extruded still wet tile, make it into a slurry, screen the rocks
out, and then process it into throwing clay. My top temperature for firing
my work was Cone 01. Got a rich red clay but still without distortion.
That was so long ago that I do not recall if made any slip for high fire
after I left Cranbrook, but seem to have some notes about it. I do remember
putting a small piece of clay on a shard and it melted into a blob of very
dark brown shiny material. I will try to find my notebook and report on any
tests I might have made. I also got clay from a flower pot factory in Flat
Rock, MI, which is just over the line from Maumee. That was already clean
so it made it a lot easier to work with. The Perrysburg site is now a
restaurant built into one of the huge kilns.>
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