Friday, March 30, 2012

One Fire - from green to Cone 5

One of the advantage of paper clay is that it allows you to fire directly from greenware to your desired Cone. So far, I’ve only test fired small pieces of a porcelain paper clay from bone dry greenware to Cone 5. They came out with no problems.

I had a chance to make a larger piece and this was the result. This piece, titled, “Fragment” was a one time fire. The clay is Gault 10 paper clay from Aardvark. No glazes were used. I used a black slip on the base and red iron oxide for the shell fragment. I left the tentacles the raw Gault 10 paper clay.

This piece was fired from bone dry greenware to Cone 5, bypassing the bisque stage. Obviously, if your piece allows you to do this kind of one fire, you save on time and on the gas/electric bill.

16"H x 12"W x 6"D

2 comments:

Macdoodle said...

Magnificent!

How long do you let the piece dry and- what is the firing schedule?
Do you wax the spikes to help them dry slower?

Or is that all trade secrets?

Anthony Foo said...

There are no trade secrets!

This was all made with Gault 10 paper clay and was bone dry before the firing. My friend did the Cone 5 firing. Nothing special. It was her usual firing schedule indicated by the kiln manufacturer.

One firing (if work work allows it) is very doable with paper clay.

Hope this helps. Thanks for your comments.