Studio practice

 Sagger experiments 

In preparation to creating my final piece for this project  I have decided to do some experiments. I am using the saggar firing technique on my final piece but I didn’t know which clay would work best with it, so I decided to create small pieces exploring textures within nature like that on my rocks and shells in each clay, saggar fire them and then create my piece. 

-  A saggar is a type of container or coating that protects the piece whilst in the kiln, I’m using the aluminium foil saggar method this is the process of coating a ceramic piece in ferric chloride , then coating it in things that will burn away and wrapping it tightly in aluminium foil. I used copper carbonate, copper coils, sodium carbonate, iron spangles, wire wool and wire, using different combinations in each to find the best reaction. When firing this leaves beautiful marks and textures on the pots. When doing this process there is huge precautions you have to take as ferric chloride is highly corrosive, throughout the whole process we wore rubber gloves and ventilation masks.

-bisque fired 

-the mixing of the ferric chloride 

-the things I used 

-wrapped up saggar’s in the kiln

-un washed, fresh out of the saggar

-clean fired pieces 

-crank 

-white earthenware with grog, but the grogs brought forward to the surface with a wet sponge 

-white earthenware with grog

-white earthenware 

-Terracotta 

From these experiments I have come to the conclusion that white earthenware is the best clay for this process that gives of the best effects. I also found out that the combination of wire wool and copper carbonate with iron spangles gave the best effects. Next time I now know to use a nice smooth surface and I’m going to try coat the vase in terra sigillata for so the textures show up even more. I’m really happy with these little experiments and love the way they’ve turned out, they give me the feeling of a lost piece of nature.