Our stay here at Schrattenberg is coming to a close and its time to clean up my work space and wait on the pots to be fired. If all goes well I will show 4 or 5 pieces in the Hotel Pupik presentation this weekend.
The process has evolved since my last post. I started by trying to be very representational of the cross vault and morphed into a reinterpretation of the architectural form. In the end I returned to replicating and finally felt like I understood the intersecting arch. I’ll show the last piece first as it dried in the sun this morning before going into the kiln.
As I worked through a series of these forms, I began adding coils to the carved foundations and eventually making them entirely with coils. This gave more options to make them deeper, wider, and more open.
My host, Heimo Wallner, was able to procure some natronwasserglas (sodium silicate) and I made a terra sigillata from the dried scraps of the clay I’ve been using. The sodium silicate deflocculates the slip and causes the clay particles to repel each other. The coarse particles settle to the bottom leaving the finest particles to be decanted and applied to the surface of the pots. This gives a satiny sheen even without glaze.
The pieces I’ve made here will be fired unglazed, but covered in terra sigillata. Here are images of a few more pieces, freshly coated with terra sig last night.
Marty Fielding 