Siga-whoosit?
Today my ceramic professor and I were going to make a batch of terra sigillata for dipping my clay tiles for the installation. It's basically an ultra-fine slip for coating clay, and if you burnish it with a cloth it is all shiny and pretty (without the added hassle of glazing all 1600 tiles...) My prof. was sick today, but one of the grad students said he'd help mix one up if I had a recipe, so I went online to look one up.
It's a really interesting process: in short, you water down clay, add a few drops of sodium something blah blah blah and stir it up insanely well, then let it settle for 20 hours so that it settles into three layers. Siphon off the top layer (that apparently looks like water, but it's really what you want because it has all of the finest clay particles) The middle layer can be used for casting slip I guess, and many sites say just discard the bottom sludge, but I'm sure you can do something with it....
You apply it to bone dry unfired clay, and burnish it so that it is soft and shiny. This way I won't have to glaze any of my tiles, because the mix that we'll be using is going to be pure white. (Apparently you can mix different clay bodies so that you can get an earthy red terra sig, or a black one, or variations thereof.... It depends on what kind of clay you use as a base. Very cool).
So I emailed my prof, and he answered back in like 2 minutes and said to just wait until next week. He said that with all the work I did on the tiles, we don't want to take any risks, so he'll help me mix it up on Monday or Tuesday. We were going to load all the architectural projects on Tuesday for a bisque (first) firing, but since I don't have to glaze mine I'm on a different timing schedule so it will all work out.
So that means I have the whole weekend to.... do my drawing assignment, finalize my design for the next clay project (I have my drawing for the tile, it just doesn't fit into a coherent repeating form yet... and we'll cast those in plaster on Thurs, start on my greek paper, art 208 paper, gathering wire and mesh for the installation, recopying messy greek notes, catching up on greek readings, art 208 readings and trying to get ahead on the next music history readings. :P
Also I want to make a few pieces for the woodfiring that I hope to participate in near the end of the semester.... The advanced ceramics students and grads mixed up a few clay bodies especially for woodfiring (I never knew that.... apparently a regular clay body (~cone 08) would melt or at least go all woogley in a woodfiring kiln because it is much hotter. Crazy to think about.
Still have pictures. still on my camera. yyyyep.
It's a really interesting process: in short, you water down clay, add a few drops of sodium something blah blah blah and stir it up insanely well, then let it settle for 20 hours so that it settles into three layers. Siphon off the top layer (that apparently looks like water, but it's really what you want because it has all of the finest clay particles) The middle layer can be used for casting slip I guess, and many sites say just discard the bottom sludge, but I'm sure you can do something with it....
You apply it to bone dry unfired clay, and burnish it so that it is soft and shiny. This way I won't have to glaze any of my tiles, because the mix that we'll be using is going to be pure white. (Apparently you can mix different clay bodies so that you can get an earthy red terra sig, or a black one, or variations thereof.... It depends on what kind of clay you use as a base. Very cool).
So I emailed my prof, and he answered back in like 2 minutes and said to just wait until next week. He said that with all the work I did on the tiles, we don't want to take any risks, so he'll help me mix it up on Monday or Tuesday. We were going to load all the architectural projects on Tuesday for a bisque (first) firing, but since I don't have to glaze mine I'm on a different timing schedule so it will all work out.
So that means I have the whole weekend to.... do my drawing assignment, finalize my design for the next clay project (I have my drawing for the tile, it just doesn't fit into a coherent repeating form yet... and we'll cast those in plaster on Thurs, start on my greek paper, art 208 paper, gathering wire and mesh for the installation, recopying messy greek notes, catching up on greek readings, art 208 readings and trying to get ahead on the next music history readings. :P
Also I want to make a few pieces for the woodfiring that I hope to participate in near the end of the semester.... The advanced ceramics students and grads mixed up a few clay bodies especially for woodfiring (I never knew that.... apparently a regular clay body (~cone 08) would melt or at least go all woogley in a woodfiring kiln because it is much hotter. Crazy to think about.
Still have pictures. still on my camera. yyyyep.