Our last saggar firing 5/2010

It is my 11th year teaching in the State of Washington.

School starts just like every thing else, and it ends as usual.

When I was a student, I look forward to the breaks. 

I transferred from one school to another, 3 grade schools, one middle school, and 4 colleges. 

I never thought about how teachers would feel when we graduated.

Only after had I become a teacher, my heart ached when these lovely students were leaving.

However, this time is very different; I am one who is finishing up. 

This is my last semester teaching in states.

This is our last sagger firing.
Jokingly speaking, I sometimes call this "garbage firing", because we collect organic matters from the kitchen such as fruit peels, and coffee ground, etc. to be included in the firing.
The result was satisfying.
Or perhaps it's my last semester, no one complained.

Tar paper project

Since fall quarter, 2009, I had added the tar paper as one of our projects.
Susanne learned this fun, easy, and quick technique from other workshops. Therefore, she was designated as the instructor for this project.



1. the selection of the tar paper needs to be the thickest kind, often used for roofing not for sidings.
2. sketch a three dimensional form, and make a paper template for the form.
3. trace the paper template over the tar paper, no worries if the lines are rough. cut out the tar paper shapes.
4. roll out clay slabs, spay with water on both the tar paper and clay.
5. place the tar paper shapes on the clay, and roll them onto it with a roller till the tar paper inlaid in the clay.
6. cut the clay in 45 degree angle, inward.
7. bring the forms together and pinch the seams hard till the edges of the tar paper meet (the seams can be scored or without, depending on your preference).
8. peel the tar paper off when the clay is stiff enough to free stand. shape, refine, or alter as you like.

The rest of the pictures are the works from students who tried this new technique.
Questions are welcome.

Robert Sperry

Before coming to the state of Washington, I thought I was going to see Robert Sperry's hometown. Not until I went to see his retrospective exhibition at the Bellevue Arts Museum, had I realized he was born and studied in Illinois, the state where I have spent more than 6 years. Before seeing this exhibition, all I knew about his work was the signature crawl slips on platters and outdoor installations. His last sculptural installation was in the University district at the SAFECO insurance company
where I have passed by many times. However, after having seen the show, I realized Sperry was a very productive artist, not only in clay as a potter and sculptor, he was also a filmmaker, a muralist, and a printmaker.






His only documentation, "Village Potters of Onda" was played in conjunction with the exhibition. It was inspired by Bernard Leach's "A Potter's Book". When mentioning Beranard, the English potter, the immediate connection leads me to think of Hamada, who also had a strong impact on the style of US pottery. In the 25-minute film of "Village Potters of Onda", it documented the tight social structure of the village, intensive labor involved in the pottery making, and how they survive with their craft though the Mingei movement. It was a well-made anthropological document of Japanese pottery culture. One of the comments he made on the issue of control which I am fond of was:

"And the part about Japanese society that I like is this one attitude that they have about the fire and not being in control.... They let the fire take its course and what the fire does to the thing is terribly important whereas, for Europeans, it was the other way around.... Whereas the Japanese wanted the fire there and wanted the idiosyncrasies of the fire. The fire was an entity, a real living thing."¹ 

Almost 25 years later after the film was made, Sperry was contacted by a British anthropologist, Brian Moeran who wanted to track the development and changes since Sperry's documentation. To their surprise, there were almost no change in form. The pots looked the same in 1963 as they did in 1985. The most amazing thing was the master potter was still sitting at his wheel in the exact same corner. For the continuation of the tradition, Moeran explained, due to the leaders of the Mingei movement, such as Hamada, Kanjiro Kawai, Kenkichi Tomimoto, and Leach, they have educated the potters with the responsibility for carrying on the traditions. However, both Sperry and Moeran had different opinions.

"Preservation of an old technique may be acceptable, provided it takes account of changes in form. But, when people suggest as the folk craft critics have in the past that potters stick to certain forms, they are not preserving pottery. They are, as Sperry so aptly put it, "pickling" it, and this, surely, is not what we wish to mean by "tradition"."² 

This reminded me of my conversation with Mr. Takamori written in a previous post that while as a apprentice under a Mingei master Kumao Oota, all he did was 200 little tea cups per day. It is undeniable, keeping tradition is one thing, but, creativity is also an essential part of the craft art. If the tradition were kept for the sake of keeping it while suppressing the spirit of the craftsmen, what were they doing then? I think it would be less than preserving pickles. Even the pickles my grandma made, I could taste her spirit!



Another documentation I saw was about the process Sperry used to make platters. He used 50 pounds of clay on a plaster hump mold with a technique using a jigger. His tools and techniques looked simple and primitive. The result of his work was precise and well calculated.



While applying his signature white slips with various brushes and brooms, he mentioned the way the slip was applied would affect the outcome of cracks on the slip. Briefly he said in the film that the recipe of the slip was the combination of flint, feldspar, and magnesium carbonate. This light and fluffy magnesium carbonate is a highly refractory material, and is often used in high fire glazes and the results are an opaque and buttery texture. While added in excessive amounts in slip or glaze, it will result in a crawling texture.






In the exhibition, with most of the platters, he had white crackle slip on black-glazed stoneware. The slips were applied after the glaze was fired, so he could manipulate the slip freely. The way he applied the slip was similar to the folk potters in the the village of Onda, brushed on, poured on, or scratched through the slip with fingers or tools.



In the book about Robert Sperry, "Bright Abyss", the author, Matthew Kangas drew a close link between Sperry and his adviser for his master's degree, Paul Bonifas. Bonifas was a Swiss ceramicist. In his eye, ceramics was a medium for a designer. Before the War, Bonifas was the core member of the movement of purism and one of his sources of inspiration for modern ceramics was classical Chinese ceramics which he considered the highest expression of ceramic art. Particularly, the all-white Dine ware and other all-black ware were important models for Bonifas and indirectly, for Sperry. To Bonifas, the purity of the form and shape were far more essential than texture, ornament, or pattern. If the connection and influences from Bonifas to Sperry were true, their complex and tangled relationship had supressed Sperry for almost 25 years.





Class notes:

During the Fall quarter, 2009, we had discussed briefly Sperry's crawl slip recipes during our class. Here, I will post a couple of recipes which might be very similar to the one I saw in the exhibition.



Neph Sye 65%

Magnesium Carb 25

Ball Clay 10



As to the cone for Robert Sperry's crawl glaze, there is a note by Piepenburg on p.301. It was "obtained by applying a thick white SLIP over a black glaze that was fired to cone 7. As it dried, the clay slip shrank dramatically on the surface of the smooth glaze. The slip was permanently affixed to the glaze by refiring the piece to cone 5." On another entry, some one had fired this recipe at cone 10 with excellent results.



Another textured recipe with high magnesium carbonate



BALL CRAWL (^6-7) Interesting lichen-like texture



Magnesium Carbonate 50

Nepheline Syenite 50

notes

¹ Robert Sperry Bright Abyss by Matthew Kangas, page 74.

² Robert Sperry Bright Abyss by Matthew Kangas, page 75.