nikom chimnok on sat 20 jun 98
Many Clayarters will recognize the name of Louis Katz, who contributes
frequently and helped organize NCECA this year. At the moment he's back in
Thailand, visiting the pottery where he spent 10 months some nine years ago,
doing his Fullbright Scholarship. Aside from the fact that he carried in
lots of books and magazines and replacement probes for our burnt-out
pyrometers, it's great to see him again because he knows a lot.
Louis isn't even staying with me--there's another company up the
street who's his oldest friends in Dan Kwean-but he drops by a couple times
a day to look for E-mail messages or get a diet Coke (one of the
improvements he notes since nine years ago.) Other improvemnts he notes are:
the throwers have gotten better, and the carvers have gotten better (I
hadn't noticed, having been here all the time.) And technically, there has
been a lot of progress, too. The clay has gotten better, due to bringing in
some outside clay and grinding grog here, and the kilns have changed too,
with pyrometers, oil and gas burners to supplement the wood. Now there is
glaze, whereas before there wasn't.
This may all sound strange in America, where the artists are all
trying to build wood-burning kilns and get away from oil, gas, and
pyrometers. But we're not trying to be artists here: that's how you starve,
in Thailand. The only reason we can sell anything is because it's cheap; if
buyers want expensive, artistic things, there's already plenty of that in
America. So here, we are just bisque firing, and that turns out to be a lot
easier to do with gas or oil than with wood.
Nikom
koratpot@loxinfo.co.th
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