Pretty Terracotta

Terracotta when fired

One of the best aspects of living in an Italian family IS the family. There are so many family members in our family that you don't just have one great friend, you have MANY and over the years I have grown very close to my nieces Madeline and Christina. Both are teenagers now. Full of laughter and fun. My niece Madeline loves horses. She rides every day and ever since she found me pounding down "wild" clay for production she has been fascinated. I guess you could say she has been on a personal mission to find me some clay on the beach where she rides.

Clay patties waiting to be processed

Well, last week she DID find clay on the beach and I could tell, when she retold the story of finding it and gathering it, that she had the "wild" look in her eye. She was just as excited as I was and couldn't wait for me to use it. This week, in between many other projects, I have been working the clay. Pounding it down first, then pulverizing it into a fine powder and running it through a sieve to remove rocks. Then, adding water into it again to make it clay.

I fired the first test pieces last night and at cone 04 it wasn't hot enough. This morning I pumped up the small test kiln to 2000 degrees and found our new "wild beach clay" finished. It's a truly beautiful shade of terracotta. Tough as nails and I think it may actually withstand the thermal shock of raku.

Hmm....to raku in the rain or not to raku in the rain. Main question today. If the rain stops for just 20 minutes......

Ugly Weekend

"Wild" clay glazed and finished

The weekend was about the ugly.

The big business BBQ we had in the backyard went great. The day after was...UGLY. Clean up after such affairs is never fun, but doing it after partying too much is even less fun. I tried my best to hang in there, but just gave into the ugliness and rested for pretty much most of the day. Bed bound is never fun for me. It's actually torture.

Sunday was much more pleasant even though I wasn't fully recovered. Lounging on a raft in the pool with other members of my family who were also in recovery mode was nice. My mind was wandering on clay and raku, but without the full capabilities I decided to just fire up a test strip of the "wild" clay more fully in the new Paragon kiln while I lounged. In a half an hour I'd see if 2000 degrees would fully fire this found clay and it did. It fired it beautifully to a mocha and purplish clay. The ugliness of this adventure though came when I decided to slap on some glaze. I was just too impatient to see how it would look glazed and didn't even let the glaze dry fully. Just slapped it on and sorta popped it in the kiln.

Beautiful red like the red ash banks

Well, it is probably the ugliest vessel and yet, the most beautiful vessel I have ever made. Everything that is the woods....my woods from home....has been captured in this one little treasure. The outside covered with Georgies "Turquoise Lagoon" is reminiscent of the lichen covered rocks I climbed as a child. Never ending were my adventures in the woods. The inside also glazed with one of Georgie's glazes had captured the mud and ash rocks of my playground. The precarious cracks which look like trees were also a reminder of how fragile it all was with the entire area having been mined to the bone. As a child I just knew what areas were unsafe. The cracks in the ground and lean of the trees told a story of distress and I just knew to avoid those areas.

But the vessel is ugly. Truly ugly in ever sense of the word and I'm dying to replicate it so my father can have one too.

It has a sorta "raku" feel, no?

A Piece Of Home

My "wild" clay after bisque firing

Early this morning, with my morning coffee at hand, I pulled the very first piece of "wild" clay out of a bisque firing. WOW! I was surprised to find a terra cotta-like strip sitting there on the test shelf. To my surprise, my little piece of home wasn't quite fully bisque fired at cone 04. That's about 1945˚. So now I have to decide how hot I need to go. I'll admit, I'm a little lost now. Cone 04 is pretty hot for earthenware and this test strip is close to being bisque, but not there fully. It doesn't have that proper "tink sound and just a wee bit of the clay dust is coming off on my hands. So...next step is refiring.