What's New for Eating Art Autumn 2006

Summer's over?
Needless to say it went swiftly, always does when your busy.  Our family went in three and a half different directions this past season.  Corrine (CJ) put in a lot of hours at work and when she wasn't working she was cruising in her car.  Emily worked 12 hours a day, well....probably half of that was because she didn't want to come home.  Emily worked at horse riding stables and since we don't have a horse at home........Emily gave rides and gave riding lessons, she earned some nice money in wages and tips over the summer.  She's saving up for a car and a summer in Ireland.

Sue and I are the half of the 3 1/2 equation, because we're joined with the business, however our creative work takes us in different direction's, yet compliments one another's art so well.   Over the summer Sue developed a new type of firing pottery, it's called, "naked raku", but we're going to call it, "eggshell raku", and here's why.

Sue applies terra sigillata to a pot.  This is a very smooth coating of clay which resembles a glaze.  Terra Sigillata is created through letting a very wet slip of clay settle the larger particles to the bottom, leaving the very finest, sub micron sized particles in suspension.  These very fine particles are siphoned off and become the terra-sigillata.  This mix is applied to the pot with a brush and then burned either by hand or with a cloth.  The pot virtually becomes waterproof as this is like a glaze to the pottery.

The pot is then dipped into a mixture of clay slip, only this time it's over the very shiny and smooth surface of the terra-sigillata and then fired in the gas raku kiln.  When the surface of the pot begins to bubble Sue removes the pot and puts it into a burn barrel, very similar firing technique like the raku.

When the vessel cools the fired clay slip covering is peeled off, (very easily if it was fired correctly), it's very thin and very much like an "egg shell".  The clay slip crackles and allows the "reduction" in the burn barrel to create wonderful patterns of black lines and dots on the surface of the burnished pot.

Sue took on some special orders.  One involved making bowls for center pieces filled with flowers for a wedding.  Also for the wedding they wanted ornaments glazed on one side with a design on their logo on the back of the ornament.

Sue made two special stamp molds and with a piece of clay in between and some pressure she would create an ornament.

Another project is for a regional Garden Club party.
They wanted 20 large Ikebanas for table arrangements for their party.

They also wanted to have clay rocks with numbers on them, so that as members come into the reception they will pick a rock and that will tell them where to sit.

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