Work in progress

Lately I have been working on a few different things in the studio. I have begun making for the salt and soda firing in April, but I have also begun to experiment with a low fire porcelain body. I mixed up a 5000 g batch of this "porcelain" and threw a few little cups and even constructed a small teapot to see how this body throws and fires. Kurt Weiser talked briefly about this when I saw him at the workshop in Lexington, but only talked about it as a good formula for making beads etc so I was not sure how it would throw, if at all. The recipe is 50% New Zealand Kaolin, 50% frit3195 and an addition of 2% VeeGum by weight. It fires to cone 04, but just to be cautious, as the test kiln seems to fire a bit hot, I only took the first firing to 05. As you can see from the first 2 pictures below, it is quite translucent. I did not glaze them either, they became quite glossy on their own (although a bit pebbly in texture, I am hoping it will smooth out at 04). Nor did I stilt them. Although the "clay" vitrifies completely, the placing sand that I set them on buffed of with sand paper to reveal a satiny smooth foot. The rest of the pictures are just more of the sgraffito work I have been obsessing over.