Orbit

I’ve been looking at the Barnard sub from Laguna as well, now that I know they have one, and was astonished at how off their amounts of RIO and MnO are in the substitute compared to the original Barnard slip. I’m a little astonished that Laguna isn’t doing a better job with its substitutes, same with their Newman’s Red sub.

I use Insight for my glaze calculation, I know how to do it. That’s why I said that it is really hard to substitute petalite for lithium carb in raku glazes. It is possible for cone 6 or higher glazes, within reason.

I high bisque, “low” glaze some of my very thin and fragile porcelain paperclay sculptures that need props to get to vitrification without slumping or warping, so I bisque to cone 8 and then glaze at cone 6, you only need to glaze at least two cones lower than you vitrify your clay at. In order to get the glaze to stick, it is actually pretty easy. Warm up the ware in your kiln or oven or with a torch (being careful with the torch not to stay in any one area too long or you could crack it) and I add CMC and sometimes gum arabic to my glazes. If I am absolutely having a hard time getting the first coat of glaze to stick on I will spray hairspray on the ware or add a little Karo syrup (anything that is sticky and will burn out early) into the glaze. Once you’ve got one coat on, the rest of the coats will stick to the first coat and you will have no problems. I personally spray, but this works with dipping or especially brushing as well. I also use bone china, but like the others wouldn’t recommend it to start with.

I use paperclay exclusively, and love it. You can do things with it that no other sculpture material can do. I suggest instead of using balloons, which kill millions if not billions of animals a year as they don’t biodegrade and the animals eat the balloon parts, to use a sheer stocking or pantyhose part filled with sand, which you can use just like a ballon (although I wouldn’t layer slabs, I would recommend only one layer or using slip to cover the stocking balloon, which you can do by dipping or using a syringe to make designs) and let the sand out of the stocking as the clay starts to dry. I use this technique a bunch to make work that I call slip trail building, I can actually make different sized and shaped parts and connect them together dry with the paperclay, so they have a filigree look to them.

Here is the IG post of the Ellen’s blue shino. It was in soda so that is probably why it is more crystallized and perhaps lighter than the blue shino shown above.

Really fantastic article! I was waiting for the part when the author would finally get to the history of the Japanese-Korean Pottery Wars. I recently did a one week internship learning Korean traditional Onggi Jar making with Adam Field and was counseled against using the term Mishima as it is a technique the Japanese took from Korea and apparently there is still some bitterness over this and using the Japanese word for it, so I have switched to always using the term inlay instead. I’m someone who has strong feelings about appropriation, and struggle with the amount of cultural appropriation or borrowing that is present in ceramics, though I am loosening up about it a bit as I see how much has ebbed and flowed with trade in addition to war or appropriation, especially since reading Alan Caiger-Smith’s books on Lustre and Majolica, where so much spread through movement of artisans and trade and not nearly as much due to colonialism as I had expected. But that is getting a bit off topic!

Makes sense, although it was a very light blue so I would have to be very careful with the amount of cobalt. I hope I saved the picture on IG for me to reference. I have the feeling the recipe is a little more different than your method, but I could probably end up with something similar…

The raku recipes are the more difficult ones, because they usually call for just lithium carbonate, and I want to put in petalite instead, which has over 70% silica plus alumina and I am not sure how easy it will be to alter the amounts of frits to adjust for that. It is a good point to be looking at the potassium and sodium amounts as well in aiding the melting of the lithium, the raku glazes in general are extremely high in sodium. I’m somewhat at a loss about subbing petalite for lith carb in raku glazes, except for the ones that have a somewhat decent amount of Nepheline syenite in them because it will be easier to adjust that for subbing petalite. I just came across while doing some googling of extracting lithium carb from petalite and I’m trying to determine if it is something I can do at home with my chemistry background from my former life as a scientist (I was very good at making pretty crystals in organic chemistry lab!).

It was a different image and a lighter blue that covered the entire chawan.

Someone on Instagram shared that the gorgeous blue shino they used in a recent soda firing was Ellen’s blue shino, which I have not been able to find a recipe for on Glazy or googling, and saw in a previous thread some years ago that someone else was looking for it and it was potentially in some proceedings from an exhibition. I wondered if anyone knew what the recipe is on here! I would love to use it, it is very beautiful and I will be starting soda adventures at higher temps next month hopefully, so will be able to use shinos finally! I’ll also be participating in 1 or 2 woodfirings this fall that I would love to use it in. TIA!

I just bought 25 lb of petalite for what is now a really good deal from the Dakota Potter’s Supply and had it couriered to me in Minneapolis, and have 5 lb of spodumene, and am hoping that will get me through a number of years, mostly subbing petalite for spodumene. Unfortunately I use a lot of glazes that need some form of lithium, although fortunately I have the skills to alter the recipes to make the subs work. What I’m most concerned about is all my raku glazes, most of which require lithium carb, and are otherwise mostly made of frit with either neph sye or Gillespie borate at about 10%. I don’t know how easy or possible it will be to adjust the silica and alumina levels with those recipes to allow me to use petalite instead of lithium carb, which I only have about a lb left. And I’m not even sure petalite forms a eutectic with those ingredients at the about cone 06 I do my raku, so that it will melt into the glazes. Any insight would be appreciated. The other non raku glazes I’m not worried about, it is a lot of turquoises, teals, shinos which need the lithium for color, and a few crystalline glazes which probably I can just remove the lithium entirely from the recipe and fire them a little hotter.