mel jacobson on tue 24 aug 04
a couple of points of interest to those
who are sorta hinting at:
`how the hell are you doing that? what is the recipe?`
again.
this is not about a recipe.
it is a system. clay/glaze/throwing/timing.
and of course FIRING TECHNIQUE.
if you ask otto heino the recipe for his `yellow` he will
tell you:
`what yellow? did i do a yellow? oh, you mean that
yellow glaze. oh, simple idea. have the correct ingredients
and it will work fine.`
think about iron.
how many are there? dozens and dozens.
if you grab your bag of iron in your studio and say
`hell, iron is iron.`
you would be very wrong indeed.
iron is a very complex subject.
joe has spent 20 years studying iron.
so has otto. they know iron.
the glaze recipe means nothing. temmoku. standard.
study iron for thirty years and you can make this glaze...easy.
mel
From:
Minnetonka, Minnesota, U.S.A.
web site: my.pclink.com/~melpots
or try: http://www.pclink.com/melpots
new/ http://www.rid-a-tick.com
pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on tue 24 aug 04
Hi Mel, all...
As you know by now, I have little knowledge about Glazes,
and less about their Science, but most of the Glazing I did
do, were my own pragmatic experiments, some very nice.
Of which, resembing one of your recent 'Chai-knee' outcomes,
was one as resembles what a Geologist or Minerologist might
call 'Jasper' which I was very fond of, `but as did not have
any 'black' cob-webs or breakings over hi-spots, as I know
to be a feature of the Glazes you are working with here...
Which if memory serve, in my case, when I did it, was a
reduced-by-evaporation of rust Water, some unwashed fine
Wood Ash, and some powdered crushed Falspar...fired as
everything was, to ^10, and likely happy above that. I would
have prefered some natural seam of Iron Oxide bearing statum
to the rust Water, but...next time maybe...
What fun!
I am so envious...
I will be playing catch-up after I move and have room to be
at it again...
Best wishes,
Phil
el ve
----- Original Message -----
From: "mel jacobson"
> a couple of points of interest to those
> who are sorta hinting at:
> `how the hell are you doing that? what is the recipe?`
>
> again.
> this is not about a recipe.
> it is a system. clay/glaze/throwing/timing.
> and of course FIRING TECHNIQUE.
>
> if you ask otto heino the recipe for his `yellow` he will
> tell you:
>
> `what yellow? did i do a yellow? oh, you mean that
> yellow glaze. oh, simple idea. have the correct
ingredients
> and it will work fine.`
>
> think about iron.
> how many are there? dozens and dozens.
> if you grab your bag of iron in your studio and say
> `hell, iron is iron.`
> you would be very wrong indeed.
> iron is a very complex subject.
> joe has spent 20 years studying iron.
> so has otto. they know iron.
> the glaze recipe means nothing. temmoku. standard.
> study iron for thirty years and you can make this
glaze...easy.
> mel
>
>
> From:
> Minnetonka, Minnesota, U.S.A.
John Britt on tue 24 aug 04
Mel and future Chinese glazers,
Otto Heino has a recipe and a firing cycle but he is not sharing it. You
have a recipe and a firing cycle. Now if you don't want to divulge it --
that is fine. If you want to write an article later and tell it then --
that is fine too. Either way you go I respect that.
But it does not require studying iron for 30 years. Malcolm Davis can tell
you his recipe and firing cycle. It is not rocket science. It may take a
bit of time to work everything out, but as you know it is possible for
most anyone to fire a carbon trap cycle. I have worked with copper reds
and if you know the cycle and recipe you can do it. I have worked with oil
spot and if you know the recipe and firing cycle you can get them too.
I have a glaze very much like that and I love sharing which I do in my new
book which is now out, "The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes" published
by Lark Books. ISBN: 1579904254. Signed copies are available on my
website. www.johnbrittpottery.com
It may not be Mel's exact glaze, but it is close and it is spectacular (as
they say in Seinfeld). You can thank Michael Bailey for sharing.
First try :
BAILEY IRON RED Cone 10/11
47.00 Custer Feldspar
13.00 Silica
10.50 Talc
13.00 EPK Kaolin
14.00 Bone Ash
2.50 Lithium Carbonate
8.00 Red Iron Oxide
You can put it on stoneware or porcelain, with or without iron slip. You
can use synthetic yellow iron, Spanish red iron, and many other forms for
a variety of results.
The trick is OXIDATION FIRING!! I like to modify that a bit by firing in
an OXIDATION firing cycle with a top end reduction for about an hour. That
will get you the spots! Be sure to put it on thick enough. If it is too
thin it will be more orange without the spotting. If you reduce too much
it will be brown. You can also get nice leopard spotting with Staley Iron
Red and Persimmon I and II. All these recipes are in my new book. (There
are about 400 cone 10 recipes with firing, mixing and application
procedures outlined.) All secrets are revealed and nothing is held back!
Good luck and let me know how you do,
Also, if anyone is interested in working on glazes intensely for 2 months
sign up for my Penland workshop this fall. A few spaces are still
avaliable, but hurry they will fill soon. www.penland.org
John Britt
www.johnbrittpottery.com
Ivor and Olive Lewis on wed 25 aug 04
Dear John Britt,
Thirty years work to get to the stage where you can display the style
of glaze that Mel has revealed to us may seem to be an exaggeration in
the light of your analysis of what it takes to produce a recipe then
fire a Shino, a Copper Red, Oil Spot or whatever.
But if You Do Not Know the Recipe and the Firing Cycle for the
materials that are available for you to do the task it may be no
exaggeration .
Where are the original recipes that you have produced from Basic
Knowledge or First Principles which owe nothing to anyone and are made
without the benefit of a shoulder to stand on. Or do we have to
subscribe to Lark Publishing to find out?
Best regards,
Ivor Lewis.
Redhill,
S. Australia.
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Britt"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 25 August 2004 9:57
Subject: Re: chinese glazes/how?
> Mel and future Chinese glazers,
>
> Otto Heino has a recipe and a firing cycle but he is not sharing it.
You
> have a recipe and a firing cycle. Now if you don't want to divulge
it --
> that is fine. If you want to write an article later and tell it
then --
> that is fine too. Either way you go I respect that.
>
> But it does not require studying iron for 30 years. Malcolm Davis
can tell
> you his recipe and firing cycle. It is not rocket science. It may
take a
> bit of time to work everything out, but as you know it is possible
for
> most anyone to fire a carbon trap cycle. I have worked with copper
reds
> and if you know the cycle and recipe you can do it. I have worked
with oil
> spot and if you know the recipe and firing cycle you can get them
too.
>
> I have a glaze very much like that and I love sharing which I do in
my new
> book which is now out, "The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes"
published
> by Lark Books. ISBN: 1579904254. Signed copies are available on my
> website. www.johnbrittpottery.com
>
> It may not be Mel's exact glaze, but it is close and it is
spectacular (as
> they say in Seinfeld). You can thank Michael Bailey for sharing.
>
> First try :
>
> BAILEY IRON RED Cone 10/11
>
>
> 47.00 Custer Feldspar
> 13.00 Silica
> 10.50 Talc
> 13.00 EPK Kaolin
> 14.00 Bone Ash
> 2.50 Lithium Carbonate
>
> 8.00 Red Iron Oxide
>
> You can put it on stoneware or porcelain, with or without iron slip.
You
> can use synthetic yellow iron, Spanish red iron, and many other
forms for
> a variety of results.
>
> The trick is OXIDATION FIRING!! I like to modify that a bit by
firing in
> an OXIDATION firing cycle with a top end reduction for about an
hour. That
> will get you the spots! Be sure to put it on thick enough. If it is
too
> thin it will be more orange without the spotting. If you reduce too
much
> it will be brown. You can also get nice leopard spotting with Staley
Iron
> Red and Persimmon I and II. All these recipes are in my new book.
(There
> are about 400 cone 10 recipes with firing, mixing and application
> procedures outlined.) All secrets are revealed and nothing is held
back!
>
> Good luck and let me know how you do,
>
> Also, if anyone is interested in working on glazes intensely for 2
months
> sign up for my Penland workshop this fall. A few spaces are still
> avaliable, but hurry they will fill soon. www.penland.org
>
>
> John Britt
> www.johnbrittpottery.com
>
>
______________________________________________________________________
________
> Send postings to clayart@lsv.ceramics.org
>
> You may look at the archives for the list or change your
subscription
> settings from http://www.ceramics.org/clayart/
>
> Moderator of the list is Mel Jacobson who may be reached at
melpots@pclink.com.
Earl Brunner on wed 25 aug 04
The other thing that people need to either realize or remember is that you
can have Mel's glaze recipe (or anyone elses), his firing schedule, etc. And
you just may not get the results. There are often just too many different
variables. The raw materials might have the same name, but come from a
different location and be enough different to make a difference. Compound
that with multiple ingredients in any recipe and you have a recipe for
difference. The Kiln will probably not be the same (and even if it is, just
might not fire the same) will fire differently, cool differently, etc. The
atmospheric difference from his location, to your location, heck, even the
pollutions in the air might be different. Humidity makes a difference.
I remember Tom Coleman published a couple of books/booklets with some of the
glazes that he uses/used. There were a number of people, some on THIS list
(at the time) who complained that they weren't getting the same results.
Some suggested that he had changed or left something out of the formulas. I
know for a fact that that wasn't the case. I worked in his studio and had
access to the recipes and formulas PRIOR to the books and they were/are the
same. And when I bought chemicals from the same store he did and fired in
the same climate/location in a similar downdraft kiln I got similar results.
Guru's on this list have said it before and will no doubt say it again,
getting a recipe from someone, might be a good starting point, but you
really have to test and test and test again to make it your own, or to maybe
get the results you want.
Earl Brunner
Las Vegas, NV
-----Original Message-----
From: Clayart [mailto:CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG] On Behalf Of John Britt
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 5:28 PM
To: CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG
Subject: Re: chinese glazes/how?
Mel and future Chinese glazers,
Otto Heino has a recipe and a firing cycle but he is not sharing it. You
have a recipe and a firing cycle. Now if you don't want to divulge it --
that is fine. If you want to write an article later and tell it then --
that is fine too. Either way you go I respect that.
But it does not require studying iron for 30 years. Malcolm Davis can tell
you his recipe and firing cycle. It is not rocket science. It may take a
bit of time to work everything out, but as you know it is possible for
most anyone to fire a carbon trap cycle. I have worked with copper reds
and if you know the cycle and recipe you can do it. I have worked with oil
spot and if you know the recipe and firing cycle you can get them too.
I have a glaze very much like that and I love sharing which I do in my new
book which is now out, "The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes" published
by Lark Books. ISBN: 1579904254. Signed copies are available on my
website. www.johnbrittpottery.com
John Britt on wed 25 aug 04
Future Chinese Glazers,
I forgot to mention in the post yesterday that you can also get something
like Mel's by using combinations of glazes.
(notice that this is a high silica/ high alumina base)
J. LEACH OIL SPOT 1 cone 10/ 11 (UNDER)
70.00 Cornish Stone
10.00 Whiting
20.00 Kentucky Ball Clay
7.50 Red Iron Oxide
J. LEACH OIL SPOT 2 cone 10/11(OVER)
80.00 Cornish Stone
10.00 Whiting
10.00 Kentucky Ball Clay
Put Leach Oil Spot 1 on first and them Leach Oil Spot 2 over it. The way
this works is the iron in the glaze below bubbles through the upper glaze.
You will have to vary the thickness of application to find the right
amounts. Firing is oxidation to light reduction. You might try the cycle
listed in my book O2, which in an oxidation cycle which has an hour
reduction at the peak temperature.
This is from Ceramic Review, Issue Number 198 Nov/Dec 2002, page 45, =93The
Potters of Muchelney=94.
As you can see this is a temmoku glaze with a transparent over it. You can
also put a kaki over a temmoku, put a kaki under a temmoku, etc. You could
also use an iron saturate over or under. It is just a glaze on glaze
method.
Best of luck,
John Britt
www.johnbrittpottery.com
Lee Love on wed 25 aug 04
Ivor and Olive Lewis wrote:
>without the benefit of a shoulder to stand on. Or do we have to
>subscribe to Lark Publishing to find out?
>
>
We all stand on shoulders of giants. Just some of us don't
readily admit it. :-)
John included one bone ash iron recipe. If you go here, you can see an
informative article on oil spot (along with other recipes):
http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org/mustreads/oilspot.asp
You really should check out the links provided.
Lee
--
in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.org
http://www.livejournal.com/users/togeika/ WEB LOG
http://public.fotki.com/togeika/ Photos!
Jon Pacini on fri 27 aug 04
Greetings All---------
You may not HAVE to study Iron for thirty years to get to the point that
your glazes look like the ones Mel is getting from his kiln, but the pots
certainly show what you CAN get when you DO study Iron for thirty years.
There s a methodology at work here in what Mel and Joe are doing. Certainly
you can read John Britt s book or Tom Coleman s and get formulas and firing
cycles to make pots. You can even post to Clayart for a glaze, but the pots
that come from the initial tests derived from that information shouldn t be
the end result, the be all and end all in and of themselves.
Information passed along from potter to potter is just a starting point. It
s not an end result, a substitute for mastering a craft. That is to say, you
can compile all the formulas and firing techniques you want to, but you have
to have the methodology, the craftsmanship, to transform the information
into successful objects. You still need to learn how to use that
information and spending the time is at the heart of that.
What I see going on here with Mel and Joe, is that Joe has put the
historical information together, the ground work, and Mel is using that
information to attempt to reproduce and record what makes these types of
glazes work. Iron is an infinitely variable material. Results can vary with
the composition of the iron itself, the composition of the other glaze
ingredients, the application, the clay the glaze is applied to, the firing
temperature, the atmosphere, the cooling. All of these factors play a part
in what comes out of a kiln.
The thing is, you can get one spectacular pot out of a kiln load of
similarly glazed pots. There s no trick to that. But can you get kiln load
after kiln load of spectacular pots?
Even though there have been hundreds of pots already fired, Mel and Joe are
just getting started. There are hundreds, if not thousands more to go. This
project is not to see if they can reproduce one glaze and say, look at me,
look what I can do , it s to understand how these whole types of glazes were
produced and try to work out a reproducible methodology.
This is how craft works, or should work. First you decide what you want to
do, then how you are going to go about doing it. Then you spend the time and
energy actually trying to accomplish your goal.
When the Iron project is complete, or should I say, when they go as far down
this road as they can stand, then I d bet we ll see a publication. That we
are lucky enough to see some of the preliminary results of the tests is a
bonus.
Best regards
Jon Pacini
Clay Manager
Laguna Clay Co
John Britt on sat 28 aug 04
Jon,
Nice post but I just want to make sure that this discussion is not about
Joe Koons. I don=92t know him and I am in no way questioning anything about
him. I am sure he is a fine very intelligent person who is making some
really beautiful oil spot glazes. I am glad that we agree you don=92t need
to study iron for 30 years but if you do you can produce wonderful glazes.
And, as I said in my last post, if they want to keep the recipes to
themselves or publish them later that is all up to them.
What I am reacting it is Mel=92s assertion that the glaze recipe means
nothing.
As Mel wrote:
=93this is not about a recipe.
it is a system. clay/glaze/throwing/timing.
and of course FIRING TECHNIQUE=85
=85the glaze recipe means nothing.=94
This is simple untrue. It is about the recipe. It is all about the recipe
and that includes the firing cycle, application, mixing and materials. The
recipe means everything.
It is probably a semantic distinction. What does =93recipe=94 mean. If I wer=
e
to look up a recipe for =93brownies=94 it would not just give 1 cup of flour=
,
one quarter cup of oil, 5 tablespoons of chocolate syrup...it would also
tell me the order of mixing, when to add the eggs, at what temperature to
preheat the oven,, how long to cook it, etc. The same is true of ceramic
glaze recipes. They include, or should include; the clay body, the
ingredients, the type and brand of feldspar, the mesh of the ingredients,
the thickness of application, the firing cycle, etc. This is what it takes
to reproduce a recipe.
Even if recipe means only the ingredients it is still a big step for those
who are trying to achieve the glaze type. I spent years trying to find a
blue celadon with limited success until someone generously shared a recipe
with me. (Ingredients only!) It actually meant everything to me! And that
is why I love to share recipes to this day. It is very helpful. I am sure
that Mel is happy that Joe shared his recipes.
It is also a given that the materials we use change constantly and
availability of different materials vary in countries and regions. That is
no reason not to list a recipe otherwise every ceramicist would be
starting from scratch. But we know that is not true.
And it is also a given that the recipe is just a starting point. Everyone
will have variations, adjustments and improvements as they work with it.
But that is not a reason to share recipes. Potters have been sharing
recipes for thousands of years.
I am saying that the recipe matters, that people, even beginners are
capable of firing oil spots, copper reds, shinos, etc. as long as they are
told the correct recipe.
In my book, I have tried to lay out the =93recipe=94 for many glaze types in=
the hopes that everyone can have the same joy and pride that Mel is
experiencing with his new glaze firing.
It is because of the generosity of those who have gone before us and those
who study iron for thirty years that we all are capable of achieving these
results.
Best of luck,
John Britt
www.johnbrittpottery.com
Ivor and Olive Lewis on sun 29 aug 04
Dear Jon Britt,
Seems logical to me to define a "Recipe" as a List of Ingredients and
Instructions for Processing.
Best regards,
Ivor Lewis.
Redhill,
S. Australia.
Jon Pacini on mon 30 aug 04
Hi John----
I guess I can see where you are coming from. I myself would tend to equate a
glaze recipe with a formula of minerals rather than with the whole process.
I noticed Ivor also posted a reference to cooking and recipe/process and if
that s what Mel meant, then that would be a curious statement indeed.
Because it seems to me it is the process that IS the emphasis of their
project.
By the way, are you going to the Woodfire Conference at Coe College???
Best regards
Jon Pacini
Clay Manager
Laguna Clay Co.
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