1st of May.

I have been trying out mixing different types of clay's to experiment on how they fit together and what kind of pattern movements come out. So far it has been very rewarding. The layers have somewhat life on their own.

End of last week I got a great opportunity to work with porcelain clay and professional black chunky sculpture clay. The work is inspired by Rafa Perez experiments with different clay's. The black clay is supposed to start bulging and pressing out the cracks as it has very low shrinkage, whilst the porcelain shrinks and warps between and around it. They are both high firing clay's.


Found this webpage looking for porcelain shrinkage proscentage. It is very smooth clay that is stiff out of bag but turns into very plastic once wedged. It is fired up to 1220  to 1280 degrees. It is not suitable for casting.
Proffessional black chunky crank sculpture clay fires from 1180 to1260 degrees.
CTM Potters supplies
http://www.ctmpotterssupplies.co.uk/New_Folder/WebCTMclayandglossary.pdf

Here are some of my pieces.

Before getting my hands on the black an porcelain clay, made some experiments with paper and watered down glue. 

The different clay needs to be wedged and rolled out on different surfaces not to contaminate them too much. I used the making clay slab by tossing it to the flat surface, method. I cut the piece in half and carefully laid them onto each other as seen below. Every time doing that you have to slap the air bubbles out from between 2 lairs slapping the clay by hand from the middle towards to the sides.

I cut out even strips and placed them on a piece of strong fabric so I could have support to manipulate them.

I rolled out a piece of porcelain and turned it around a stick. Then wrapped the layered clay strips around it. Lets see what happens to it once fired on high temperature.

Some smaller try outs.

This little guy went into regular bisc firing and as seen on this photograph, not much happened to it except for some color change. The black clay looks very dark red to begin with.

All my plates and bowls are starting to come out now from bisque firing and they surprise me. Each and every one of them have their lovely earthy colors and as I hoped for orange is the main tone as the full of iron earth.

Here is one of the bowls that I made out of black clay. The color changed some in the bisque firing but I put it in again to see what happens if it gets to the real intended temp.

Packing the kiln.

 Color difference, black chunky sculpture clay before and after regular bisque firing.