[Clayart] !!SP Re: red earthenware recipe?

[Diane Winters]

Snail,

I don't know if this would help at all in your situation, but I was reminded of it when you mentioned that you're burnishing these red clay pieces.  In my first ceramics class many, many years ago at Philadelphia College of Art, our first lessons/project involved making pinch pots with either Redart  alone or a Redart-based body*, which we learned to burnish.  After the work was fired, an additional option was to alter the color slightly with a very light polishing with wax-based shoe polish.  Brown took it away from pinkish, cordovan or burgundy, of course exaggerated it.  Nowadays there's an extreme range of shoe polish colors available.

*  I still have my booklet of shop notes from the ceramics department back then (William Daley was my teacher), but while there are many clay body recipes in it, I don't see a specific body for low-fire work (except raku) , and I do see information/recommendations from Cedar Heights about using Redart., so I don't know exactly what we were working with.  Those were the days of most students doing 9-10 stoneware in reduction (plus raku), so after the initial pinch pot introduction, few, if any, used low-fire red again, hence my very limited memory.

As an complete aside re raku, now that I'm looking though the shop notes - 
Back in the late 60's there we were doing some raku.  I loved the look of the rough body we usually used but it was tearing up my hands throwing it.  I discovered I could use our flameware body quite successfully in the raku kiln.  As written in the shop-notes, it was 50 Fireclay (supplier not specified), 50 Jordan clay, 30% petalite.  It fired gray and threw nicely.  

Diane Winters, retired tile maker

-----Original Message-----
From: Clayart [mailto:clayart-bounces at lists.clayartworld.com] On Behalf Of Snail Scott
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2020 9:06 AM
To: Clayart international pottery discussion forum <clayart at lists.clayartworld.com>
Subject: !!SP Re: [Clayart] red earthenware recipe?


> On Feb 19, 2020, at 5:41 PM, Robert Harris <robertgharris at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> How about this one. Can't remember where you're located so not sure if 
> CO is out of the picture.
> 
> https://rockymountainclay.com/product/red-rock-red-2/



That looks nice! Very much the color I was aiming at.  I can’t really justify shipping from CO to IL, though, especially in winter. (I can handle frozen clay, but many outfits just won’t send it if the weather is cold.)

Also, I’d really prefer to be more self-sufficient and make it as I need it, rather than buying a commercial body.  I still mostly do large gritty stoneware sculpture, but I want to use an red-orange body for the small burnished objects I’ve been doing more of. I often black-fire them, but I'd like to have the option of a nice color peeking out if I do a patchy smoke job, a ‘naked’ coating, a burnoff job with a torch, or just want to fire it 'clean’. My current low red body just looks too ‘Redarty’ in this range. 

No offense to Redart - I love it for other clay bodies, but I don’t currently have any recipes which include it and also fire orange in the low ranges.

 -Snail