Clay and the works - Part 1

My mentor, Thomas, told me about a few characteristics that are intrinsic to the material clay and also things I should consider while working with it:

- Stoneware (claybody fired to 1200 degrees celsius) is opaque. (This would be a major challenge for building lights.)

- Brittle and has high possibilities of breaking or chipping.

- The body is such that it doesn't allow for extremely thin cross sections (cracks during firing) which means that most products are heavy and very large forms shouldn't be handled too much (handling too much increases the risk of breaking or chipping)

- the material allows easy malleability into any type of form or surface texture

I decided to work on different techniques of form building to reduce the weight of the clay body and also allow light to pass through.

1. Delicate Forms: I wanted to utilize the technique of coil building to create some forms which would have holes in the surface for light to pass through. 

• Coil+Slab+Pinching: I tried making a spiral shaped bowl using a combination of Coils and slabs and pinching them together. 

      While doing so I realized that:

          a. the clay body wasn't plastic enough and this was because the raw material used in the clay

              body wasn't ground very well.
          b. very fine (2-3 mm cross section) coils couldn't be rolled out due to the large particles in the
              clay causing it to dry out and start cracking.
          c. the form was too delicate to hold the together and needed support (a bowl I made it in).

          d. post drying the form was so delicate that on removing from the bowl, it just crumbled down.
              this meant that the coils needed some reinforcement.
          e. the crumbling could have been prevented by keeping the form in the bowl itself and brisk
              firing it, but if glaze had to be applied and fired in the bowl again (same one used as support
              before) the two would just stick together, besides the spiral shaped bowl would still be too
              weak to handle even post brisk firing and extremely unsuitable for a piece that needs to be
              handled a lot (if that be the interaction).

• Piping Bag: While looking at some porcelain forms I wanted to recreate the delicateness in the stoneware clay body. I decided to look at making fine coils (after my attempt at rolling them out failed) by using a piping bag (like the ones used in decorating cakes) to get uniform sized cross sections of the coils so that they don't crack while rolling.

          Method Adopted:

          I took a plastic bag and mixed some kneaded clay with water in different percentages to get

          different consistencies.    

          

          While filling the bag I made sure to pack the 'thick slip' into the bag so as to avoid any air

          bubbles forming in the clay body. This was to allow the clay to flow out of the bag effortlessly

          and continuously.

      

             I took a plastic bag and wrapped it around a cylinder, this formed the base on which the coil

             patterns were squeezed out. The base had to be such that it was adaptable enough allowing

             any shrinkage of the clay body and facilitated the removal.

             I also made a clay consistency that was thicker than slip (this is a clay and water consistency

             that flows like paint) but thiner than the kneaded claybody and used a lens solution bottle to

             pour the clay out, while making a pattern.

            Even after taking all the precautions possible not to allow any air bubbles into the piping bags,
            the coils did spurt out a bit or depending on the way the bag was held made coils of different
            cross sections.

            In all I tried three different type of consistencies: thick, paste-like and watery; to check which

            one of these would give the best results and mainly not crack after drying.

            The one with a paste-like consistency (left) was the best and most convenient to use: flowed out

            easily and made more uniform coils.

            I then let everything rest for 2 days to dry(due to bombay rains and nothing drying easily) so as

            to conclude if the experiment was successful enough or not.

            Post drying, most of the coil work came off the plastic sheet easily. Some lasted the removal 

            while some broke immediately. The ones that survived were extremely brittle and had to be 

            handled carefully and delicately.

           The coils made out of the thick consistency had taken the shape of the container I had squeezed
           them out on, but on close inspection I observed that some coils had cracked and the piece wasn't
           strong enough to be utilized in any manner.

            The coils made out of the paste-like consistency came off easily but on touching again it just

            cracked. This was because the coils were way to delicate and lacked consistency in thickness in

            some parts. I also assume there were still some air bubbles created in the clay body while

            packing the piping bag.

            The coils made out of the watery consistency were extremely brittle and cracked while peeling,

            besides the amount of water in the clay was too much for the forms to hold and most of the

            pattern got discombobulated.

I discussed all of this with my mentor and he told me that maybe an extruder would be the best device for such coils, but he also added that it would still be difficult (almost impossible) to get the sort of delicateness I was aiming for because of the kind of clay (stoneware) being used. He said that such strength wasn't an intrinsic quality of the clay body.