In my undergraduate studies I made a lot of pots out of stoneware clay. For those who dont know what stoneware clay is I'll explain. Stoneware clay bodies are made up of many different materials. sometimes they have high amounts of iron in them, others have alot of tooth, or grit. Some are very plastic, but most are pretty easy to work with on the wheel. Porcelain  is almost the opposite. Sometimes not plastic, mostly hard to work with on the wheel, not much grit which makes it hard to keep from slumping. Porcelain holds glazes beautifully, and some bodies have a translucency to them. Stoneware bodes usually have an earthy feel, and look with glazes on them. Once again, different ends of the spectrum. After seeing the results of a few tests, I've decided to move my work to porcelain. lots more tests to come!
Here are a few images of what I've been working on.

 

 These are a few glaze tests I've done. I'm looking for more glazes that will enhance the surface detail of my pots. The clay they are tested on is a semi porcelain glaze, you can see that it is gray, I'll retest the same glazes on a real porcelain body soon, the glazes should look a lot better. 

A small army of Porcelain test tiles, the texture you see is made from a sea urchin I brought back from Mexico a few years ago.

Some clay body tests. we'll see how translucent they are. This body was given to me from a fellow grad and friend of mine Jon Matecki.  jmateckiclay.blogspot.com Check it out! He's crazy!

Soup tureen! Carved handles. Thrown, altered and then assembled.










I'll be back soon with another update!

A New Leaf

It's been a while since my last update. As soon as I get this post up your lives can get back to normal. I know that your worlds freeze without an update from my blog, and I apologize for my tardiness. After my last firing, and consequently my last committee meeting I have come to the conclusion that I need to make some changes, and changes aren't always bad. So here are some pictures to explain some of the changes planned.

So as you can see from these photos that most of the suface detail that I socarefully put into my work can not be seen with this choice of glaze. so I will be doing more glaze testing. also the clay body, in combonation with the glaze is nowhere near as vibrant as what I was hoping for. but be aware, I am still working!

My family's home

My family was gone for three weeks. Now they're home. This is Noah.

Asher