One of the day's highlights was a demonstration of making paperclay. You need cotton linters, torn up and soaked in quite a bit of water, and a glaze blender. It has paddles for mixing, rather than blades. You don't want to chop up the cotton fibres - for strong clay you want the cotton fibres separate and covered with clay, all lying in the same direction.
The fibres are scooped out of the bucket ("sieve, don't squeeze") and poured onto a plaster slab, covered with fabric - the plaster takes out the moisture.
The pulp is mixed with porcelain powder - or rather, the powder is mixed in water first, then the pulp is added. Various proportions can give different results - but we don't have firsthand experience of this (yet?). Then the mixture is poured into plaster moulds to remove the moisture - it takes a couple of hours to get the clay to a workable consistency.
Meanwhile we searched the shelves for the items from last week that had been fired.
I was pleased with the textures inside this one -
I painted various glazes onto some of the pieces in my tray, ready for stoneware firing: tenmoku (brown), charcoal, and tin glaze (white), as well as some black slip, coating insides and outsides, and filling in the embossed bits -
Wonder what will happen with these pinch pot "barnacles", made in the first week -
Here they all are, ready for firing. (Note the sgraffito!)
As I write, it is "reading week" - a chance to catch up, and to start serious work on "the essay". I've got a bit behind with downloading photos and writing about classes - back to normal next week!
The fibres are scooped out of the bucket ("sieve, don't squeeze") and poured onto a plaster slab, covered with fabric - the plaster takes out the moisture.
The pulp is mixed with porcelain powder - or rather, the powder is mixed in water first, then the pulp is added. Various proportions can give different results - but we don't have firsthand experience of this (yet?). Then the mixture is poured into plaster moulds to remove the moisture - it takes a couple of hours to get the clay to a workable consistency.
Meanwhile we searched the shelves for the items from last week that had been fired.
I was pleased with the textures inside this one -
I painted various glazes onto some of the pieces in my tray, ready for stoneware firing: tenmoku (brown), charcoal, and tin glaze (white), as well as some black slip, coating insides and outsides, and filling in the embossed bits -
Wonder what will happen with these pinch pot "barnacles", made in the first week -
Here they all are, ready for firing. (Note the sgraffito!)
As I write, it is "reading week" - a chance to catch up, and to start serious work on "the essay". I've got a bit behind with downloading photos and writing about classes - back to normal next week!
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