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Paintings and pots!
Alternate title: “Feet and pots!” I’m infatuated with @barnesfoundation and Barnes’ “ensembles”. The experience is overwhelming and incredibly intimate, at times mysterious and perplexing, and often imbued with a joy not unlike discovering a hidden gem in a vintage knickknack shop. As a ceramicist my favorite juxtaposition is these folk pots, mostly by unknown artists, fairly unremarkable […]
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Kōgei: Art Craft Japan
I was lucky to have landed in Philadelphia just as “Kōgei: Art Craft Japan” opened at @philamuseum. Here are some of the beautiful surfaces from those works. I included a wonderful detail of Jun Kaneko’s “Untitled Dango” that I believe is still on display at the museum. I love looking at work and asking myself, “How […]
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Lasse Östman Golden Glaze
Lasse Östman generously shared his deep knowledge of glazes on his website and social media. The Glazy community has been working to re-create Lasse’s glazes, and two recent results from @trees_wijnands and @xavierescala are just too wonderful not to post. It’s amazing to see people around the world sharing their knowledge like this!
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Moon pebbles?
Just realized I hadn’t finished editing tests from a couple years ago. Here’s a line blend of gloop: Left side has +5% Mason 6097 stain, while the right has +5% 1000 mesh silicon carbide (SiC). At around 4% it becomes a dimpled, smooth, stone-like surface that’s great to the touch.
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Pâte-sur-pâte
Late-Ming Dynasty Two centuries before the development of pâte-sur-pâte (“paste on paste”) at Sèvres, late-Ming Dynasty Chinese potters were experimenting with a bold decoration technique using brushed slip. This type of Zhangzhou (or “Swatow”) ware employed white slip brushed in lively patterns on cobalt blue, iron brown, or even white backgrounds. The slip was vitreous […]
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Happy Year of the Tiger
To celebrate, I’d like to share with you some of my favorite ceramic tigers.
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Marbling Gloop
Some of you asked about how I made those marbled gloop tiles a couple years ago.
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Phil Berneburg
Some have passed on but left treasures behind. I never met Phil Berneburg. But recently I stumbled across a wonderful video explaining pyrometric cones, which led me to The Potters’ Round Table. Almost 100 excellent videos of Phil explaining all aspects of ceramics, including gems like “Pottery Figurin’ (Math for Potters)”. I’ll link some of Phil’s lectures in […]
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Let your customers know your ceramics are lead-free.
This holiday season, let your customers know your ceramics are lead-free. Recently the NYC Health Department issued a warning about lead in “traditional ceramic ware” after a number of people reported lead poisoning. As we know, there are no “safe” levels of lead exposure, so it’s good to see a health department doing its job. Unfortunately, it’s […]
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Two Years of Tests
Time to leave the residency, and there’s no room in the Uhaul. Sad to say goodbye. But these tests live on in Glazy, backed up and safe. Much like my book and music collections, my glaze collection is now virtual. Ceramics is in some ways inherently wasteful. But Art is one of the things that makes us human, […]
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The Color of Celadon
With all its variations, what does the term “Celadon” even mean? There are various theories as to why Westerners started using the term “Celadon”. Regardless, “Celadon” refers to a category of Chinese ceramics known as 青瓷 (qing ci). 瓷 is porcelain while the 青 (qing) in 青瓷 signifies a color (or range of colors). But exactly which […]
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The Colors of Celadon
Just a few examples of celadons, there are more like Plum Celadon (梅子青) not to mention Jun and Guan. Color and surface can vary within each type, and even between time periods. A contemporary Duck Egg Celadon that adds a small amount of cobalt in addition to iron for extra color is quite different from the Yuan […]
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Fake Traditional Chinese Materials Blends
Using chemical analyses and US materials, I recreated traditional Chinese materials like porcelain stone, glaze stone, and glaze ash. Limiting myself to these “fake” materials, I blended them to create porcelain bodies and glazes. Here are two line blends of fake Sanbao Porcelain Stone and fake Yaoli Glaze Stone blended with fake Glaze Ash. While both of […]
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“Simulant” Exhibition
I’m honored to be showing work in the Long-Term Resident Artist Exhibition at @redlodgeclaycenter I’ve struggled in the studio this past year. I’ve followed dead-ends and opened kiln-loads of failures in a misguided attempt to make more marketable work. Burnt out, a few weeks ago I finally stopped and asked myself, “Why am I doing this?” Why has my […]
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Iron Tianmu Glaze
This glaze was inspired by analyses of Song Dynasty dark iron glazes in Nigel Wood’s “Chinese Glazes”. I find this glaze superior to typical Tenmoku glazes like Leach Tenmoku due in part to the inclusion of magnesium. The minor additions of titania and manganese add to the depth. Rather than a slightly translucent dark brown […]
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Visualizing Glaze Types
These heatmaps show concentrations of public glaze recipes in Glazy for various glaze types. Some types, like Shino, stand out, but maps for types like Celadon and even Tenmoku resemble that of Clear glazes. Indeed, many Celadon and Tenmoku recipes are simply clear glaze bases plus Iron. The map for the Matte type is predictably shifted towards the […]
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US Pigment Stains in Porcelain Clay Body
US Pigment Stains in Porcelain Clay Body https://glazy.org/posts/163796 Each of these tests was mixed with 100g porcelain clay body in amounts of +2%, +4%, +8%. The +8% was also mixed with black stain (Mason 6600, mixed about 25% black and 75% color).
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Recreating Ancient Glazes
Recreating Ancient Glazes using Glazy’s “Target & Solve” feature with analyses from Nigel Wood’s “Chinese Glazes”. In an earlier post I showed how you can quickly make a recipe from an analysis of an ancient glaze. Here are four examples of recipes I tested using this technique. 1. #121102 Koryo celadon glaze 3. This came out BEAUTIFUL on stoneware […]
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Basalt Glazes
I’ve just published 20 basic oxidation cone 6 basalt glazes which you can use as a guide for more interesting variations. (Link to recipes in bio.) For some inspiration, see Matt Fiske’s (@bluepotter) beautiful work with basalt on his website, https://ceramicaction.org
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Visualizing Blend Types
Tests using traditional line, triaxial, and biaxial blends can teach us a lot about ceramic chemistry. But sometimes they feel limiting. What other possibilities are there? Arranging a series of line blends into a “complete graph” might be illuminating. And instead of a flat biaxial, what about a three-dimensional pyramid/tetrahedron? What if blends went 3d? I’d love to hear the #glazenerd army’s […]