Lee Love on sat 21 jan 06
Ruth,
At my teacher's workshop, the noborigama is bisque fired to color but in
all the glaze firings, gas, noborigama, salt, or enamel, the draw tiles
always have the final say. Normally, after the last cone goes down, it
takes at lease an hour of tile pulling before the firing is ended.
Sometimes even longer, especially with the noborigama.
His tiles are not like the rings I pulled back home, but they are small
tiles cut from bisqued yunomi that didn't pass muster. They are so small
that they could be pulled from an electric kiln peep hole. They are
about an inch square, and have a hole drilled in the center. The curve
of the yunomi make the tips touch the ground with the middle raised. The
pulling tool is an iron rod, with a point that has been bent to a 45*
angle. you stick the rod in with the point down, stick it in the hole in
the tile and then rotate the rod until it is pointing up and the tile is
resting on the rod upside down. You flick it off onto a small kiln shelf
that is presented to the teacher.
When you use these small tiles cut from yunomi, you are always using a
uniformed thickness. Of course, you can't check reduction with this
pulled tiles, but you see the actual maturity of the glaze. This is more
accurate than cones.
Don't know if anybody remembers Edouard making a cone 9 glaze from the
formula for the cone 4 seger cone. I have thought have making a cone out
of a cone 9 glaze and seeing what temp it bends at.
--
Lee Love
in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.org
http://seisokuro.blogspot.com/ My Photo Logs
http://ikiru.blogspot.com/ Zen and Craft
"The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything.
The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows
it and who don't."
--Burley Coulter (Wendell Berry)
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