About Ceramics; 1; Clay: Fountainhead of the Potter's Art

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.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. has been a part of our culture almost as long as recorded history. Yet today, we are in the midst of a period of great artistic developments and technological developments within the field of ceramics. Earl McCutchen, would we tend to divide these two areas into distinct classifications, the technological achievements in the mass produced, the factory made ceramics, and the artistic achievements and the work of an individual craftsman. There is a division, I think, in the end product of ceramics, even though there's a family relationship, the way things are made, gives them that relationship. But I believe there's a sort of division in my mind, perhaps it's because I'm an individual potter and work on the potter's wheel.

But I see it as a product of industry, as opposed to a product of an individual person working on a wheel. I say opposed, I mean, in contrast, I don't think that there is a fight because it's like two members of the same family, a different nature and have different aptitudes. Well, I feel out in ceramics that today, particularly, we have a huge industry producing objects for our daily use in many, many numbers. We also have the individual potter working. And of course, you as an individual craftsman work directly with your hands in the clay and you work on the device called the potter's wheel. This is the potter's wheel here, and I'm planning to work on that. Let me take this pot off the wheel and start from the beginning to show you this process. Because I believe in that way, I can show you what the individual potter is after in his building. This is the potter's wheel. It just means for getting a turning wheel at the top.

I propel this one with my foot, but there are other types with electric motors on them. But I prefer the foot propelled one because I, being the motor device, have a more intimate contact with the speed and in the making of the pot itself. The material course is clay, and the tools are my hands, and the controlling factor in the shape is the use of the pot and my skills and my personal desires and abilities to make it. The operation of throwing a pot has two or three main mechanical directions. One is the making of this ball of clay round with the wheel, centering the ball, as we call it, and then opening it up, as I am now,

sort of a donut shape on the wheel that gives us a wall here to begin to pull up in the air. Occasionally, I put a few drops of water on the clay to make it slippery so my hands don't stick to it and sort of twist the shape on the wheel. Now, this is still more or less mechanical. I am driving it, getting a volume up in the air that is a large shape that has volume on the inside to be used. That is the purpose of the pot. And I am also working out the thickness of the clay wall so that it isn't going to be a pot that is too heavy to use. In other words, they attention to the craftsmanship and the structure of the pot shape.

You can make it smaller and diameter, squeeze it in, and to make it larger in diameter or reach in from the outside. Now, I have been driving toward the idea here of making a picture. I didn't know what it was going to look like exactly when I started. I made several sort of decisions along the way independent of the process that is, I must think of the usefulness of this shape and the appearance of it as I am making it. So, I am making these little decisions and judgments along the way as I look at it. And when we wind up then with the volume here, it looks like a flower holder, we still need to put a spout in it by pulling the side in and pulling it out a little bit, which gives us a pouring spout here. There is a controlling device to control the fluid from it.

Now, to put a handle on this pot, we would need to allow it to dry for a few minutes. So, in order to hurry that process up, we will cut this one off and put back on here. A wheel that I made a little while ago that would allow us to describe this little technique of adding the handle. See, this one has been dry for about a half hour or so. It has gotten stiff enough so that it will hold the weight of this handle, which I have just pulled out of a piece of clay by pinching off the clay to end of it. And adjusting it right opposite the spout, fastening that clay. And then, again, to pull it down into the handle form and fastening it again. Provide a handle that is comfortable and also becomes part of the design of the pot. It is always interesting to me that the shape is created in here is part of the pot, even though it is space.

It is part of the design of the pot because it is going to remain with it as long as it is hold. So, this rather quickly shows you the building of the form of the pot and step-by-step toward the end of this mark procedure to it. We will talk about form of pottery and another program more specifically. But I want to suggest this rather quickly. Because it means one means of making pottery forms and a little bit what to expect from the process. So, in the one you have just demonstrated, you have shown us a picture and similarly these four finished objects here are all pictures. They have that in common. And then, in addition, I would assume they have in common the fact that they were made by a similar process on the wheel. And I suggest them here as a group primarily to show that there are many answers to this picture problem. There is no set of rules any place that you follow to make a picture and you will come out with a perfect answer.

It does not work that way. We are continually trying to solve the function of a picture, make it proper volume, easy to lift and pour well without dripping. And still, at the same time, they are sort of a picture of our civilization, the time in which we lay ahead. So that in your situation approaching this one problem you have created a picture and variations up on it. Now, I am sure that you have other problems within the field of creation of ceramics and other techniques involved. Yes, the building of the pot on the wheel is only the beginning of the process. And there are other things that need to be done. Now, surely, I am being a college professor. I enjoy lecturing. So, I would like to leave you for a few moments and lecture directly to the audience. Thank you. The skills necessary in building pottery forms are the things are the control that the potter has.

He is not making shapes to amaze people. At least he shouldn't be. There is a sort of a danger, I think, that, well, I can pull up a nice shape on the wheel and say, gee, you are almost catching, aren't you, a clever young man? There is a danger there because this becomes an exhibition and becomes something aside from the real purpose of making a pot. Sort of like a football player that plays to the grandstand. He is the fellows in danger of stumbling over his own feet. So, these skills are necessary, but they surely aren't the end. And there is a great deal of technical knowledge necessary for the building of pots or the completing of the process. Firing, glazing, ornamenting, all of these which we will pick up on later programs and emphasize more directly. But in the firing operation, it is very important that we understand that this is part of the building of the pot. That the pots must go through this operation to become permanent.

Here you see, in a typical studio operation, the variety of shapes and sizes that are ready to go in the kill. They may be stacked one inside of another. On this first operation, they will not stick. There is quite an art to loading the kill, assembling of the sizes and adjusting the shelf height. So, there is no volume lost because this is an expensive operation. The pots are loaded, it is closely together as possible without risk to the shape itself. This suggestion of the way this three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle works is the basis for the loading of the kill. The economy trying to get all the pots in there are possible. To help us measure the temperature in the kill, these three pyrometric cones are added. These are a particular composition which, during the heat, will melt and bend over at a prescribed temperature. To keep the wire protected from the gas flames of this type of kill,

tubes are used all around the interior of the kill. And in loading and unloading, these front tubes must be removed. After the kill is started, it requires, in this particular instance, about 16 hours of firing, to attain the 1800 degrees Fahrenheit temperature necessary to mature this particular clay. It also must cool for about a day in order to come down to room temperature. So, it is about a two-day cycle. After the removal of the tubes again, the wire can be loaded as soon as it is comfortable to handle it with the hands. Here you see the pyrometric cones. Two of them, having fallen over, the third one being a check to know that the kill has not been over fired. So the pots, during this operation, become strong, become very durable, become permanent in the sense that this is as hard as the clay can get. Now, this firing operation, this bisque firing, this first firing, is the beginning of the processing of the pot.

It must be glazed. The surface of the pot is covered with a powder which has been mixed in water to make it fluid. And you see on this pot an area in which the glaze has been applied. The decoration that you see here will eventually show through this white powder when it has melted and become partially transparent. Much as you see in this pot here, which has the same combination of decoration and glazing. Here the pot then, as the coating of glass or glaze over the surface, which gives the desired color and the texture and the ornamentation, helps complete the pot, help make it a statement of the person that made it. We suggested that also pots are made commercially made in industry. This white pot here was made in a factory. There were many, many made just like it, made in a mold and they all look alike.

The individual pot, however, making his pot at a separate time, at an individual time, comes out with a different answer because he has a little different situation involved in each time. And this is true during history too. This Greek water bottle made in about the 19th century BC suggests a form used by the Egyptians in carrying water from the well to their homes. And it's true also in periods like the G and Islands of about the same time, or this pot form, which we would call a picture, and doesn't it look very contemporary? This pot form was used for this very same purpose. In the Iran, some of the picture forms would appear something like this. Reminiscent of later periods are early American Indian pottery forms. The G and Islands again, this double spouted jug, one spout to pour from, one to enter for the liquid to be poured in, and two handles on it.

Again, this same sort of vessel for containing and carrying of water. Later in the Greek period, we see this sort of a squatty pot form with figures painted on the side. Still, the answer is the same functional requirement, but it looks different, doesn't it? And later, at about 900 or 1000 AD in China, these very plastic forms, which to me reflect very nicely the quality of the clay. Suggest also water, uh, jugs. So during history, then, pot forms change. All during this time, this same function served by pots, which are not the same. They all look different. They have personalities and qualities that were a product of the civilization, the time and the people that made them. Ours don't look like that. Pottery is not the only thing made of clay.

There's a whole range of products that we use every day, made of clay, and using essentially the same processes. I show you these pots here, though, to suggest a little greater variety. Both forms here, a bowl with a lid, which we call a covered jar, water bottles again, a double-spotted jug with a handle, reminiscent of some historical things and have some validity even in our time. And this is only a suggestion. There are so many other types of forms made by the potter that only wanting you to realize that this is a broad plane here in which the individual can work. Just as there is in any other profession. Some of these other things made of clay we see every day, and sometimes we don't see them. Dinnerware we do, made of a white clay, we call it China. It's been with us for some time, particularly since the time of Josiah Wedgwood, who put ceramics on a mass production basis and turned out dinnerware in a range where we could afford to use it. But white clays are used also in electrical porcelain, spark plugs, insulators, where the electrical properties of the material are very essential.

It's used in floor tile, wall tile, used in chemical porcelain, such as this evaporating dish. Even the jars that we used to make the glazes for putting on pottery are made of porcelain, lined with porcelain, and the little pebbles made of porcelain that you see inside are the grinding device. As this jar rotates slowly, the pebbles all over each other and grind our glaze material very finely. And in the modern pestil used by the pharmacist, the chemist, in all sorts of chemical followings. So this again just suggests some of the uses of white clay or what we call white wares. One of the more what you might call hidden uses of clay would be in the refractories area. Refractories are materials which, after they are made, will withstand a constant heat or constant heating up and cooling off without deteriorating. We find them as fire brick on the inside of our fireplaces or the flue liner itself that is the lining of the chimney that protects the house from the fire conditions.

The shelving that you saw in the kill a few moments ago is a refractor and the supports that we used for establishing the height of the shell. Even this particular kind of clay is a refractory type that is it can be used in the oven after it has been made without breaking as well some of the red burning clays would be. An insulating brick, a very lightweight brick made of a white clay this time so that it will withstand great temperatures and still protect us from that heat. When this brick is used in a kill it can be incandescent on one end and I can hold it with my hand on the other to show you the insulating properties of that material. It is probably unnecessary to suggest all the kinds of brick and tile and sewer pipes such as these which we use again every day. These are things we use in industry things we use in our homes to build our homes to carry away water. The whole structural clay industry that is geared again for our production and our functional uses.

So you see pottery is not the only thing made of clay and the things that I've shown you here are the suggestion of the ranges in structural clay products, the refractories and the white wares as well as of course the individual pottery. Now ceramics includes even more materials and I'd like to show you some at this other table. We mentioned a few moments ago the glaze on the surface of the pottery glazes but another name for a glass, a special kind of glass that's true, but glass itself in industry and under the hand of the craftsman takes forms for our use. The chemist could not get along without the myriad shapes, graduates measuring devices which withstand acid which stand heat and allow him to see what's inside and to measure. We use types of glass for cooking that will stand the flame.

We use light bulbs of course such as this large one and some you see over my shoulder. All of these made of glass but of different formulas, one of the leading glass manufacturers has tens of thousands of formulas in his factory for making special types of glasses, those that have properties for special uses. We are making use of one right now that this tube is part of the television camera and between you and me there lies some 1000 different types of tubes to produce the picture that you see. Of course the craftsman himself works in glass, we are bringing to mind surely the glass blower using the hollow pipe for blowing molten glass on the end of it into such beautiful shapes as this one. There are less familiar ways of handling glass such as bending sheet glass over clay molds into shapes such as this.

The craftsman then is a sort of a parallel operator with industrial person or perhaps we should put it the other way around because industrial processes were adapted from the hand craftsman. The craftsman being able to work individually on each piece carried through the completion to make a statement or an answer or product to represent a feeling or an attitude or a quality that he sees individually perhaps more clearly than someone else. This allows him to experiment, allows him to try things that the manufacturer who always has economical problem ahead of him could not follow. Well, after that look at the various facets of ceramics, I begin to wonder now if we can make any clean cut divisions since the mass produced items are certainly beautiful to look at and similarly the objects that the craftsman makes are as useful as they are beautiful. Perhaps we will be laboring a point to try to separate them because after all they have so many similarities in them.

In this discussion or my lecture did you find or determine any common denominators that ran through these different products? Well, the materials used are all earth materials aren't they? All the materials that go into these products come from the earth. There are other kinds of ceramics too by the way there are enamel products, enamel metal, which is most familiar to us in the, well, the kitchen sink. The pipe surfacing on the metal in the kitchen sink is a glass, this time called a porcelain enamel, which fits to the metal and gives an impervious surface easy to clean and always looks nice either when we keep it clean. Well, is there another common denominator between all these objects that clays the enamels and the glasses? The concrete walks and blocks and so forth. The cement itself is a product of the earth that is heated in its processing. But when it becomes concrete, when it's mixed with the gravel and the water and sets up on our front walk, that no longer is a ceramic product.

Only the cement that goes into it. Well, the heat is common also in making objects of clay or glass or the enamels, isn't it? That's a good observation here. All these materials require a high degree of heat in their processing, in their treatment or in their firing. This heat is necessary to melt the glass, to melt the glaze. It is necessary to, well, actually the clays are partially melted, that's what gives them the durability and the string. Now, this heat must be a minimum of incandescent heat for these to become durable, which is about 11 or 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. But that is really in ceramic parlance or rather low temperature. Normally the enamels on the metal fire to around 14 or 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. Most red-burning clays to about 1800 and well the one that I used here on the wheel takes about 2200 degrees Fahrenheit.

So the application of heat and the fact that they're all made of earth materials are common denominators between all these items within the field, whether they're clay, glass, enamel, or even concrete, which I don't think we would normally include the field of ceramic. We must make one quantification additionally here. Earth materials metals are earth materials and they are given a heat treatment. So we must put in the non-metallic requirement here to separate these two metals from the earth, the clays and all the products that go into clay. So that's what I feel would be a rather simple definition of ceramics and covers such a wide field. And both the individual craftsmen and the factory work in each of these categories within the field. My interest of course is the individual craftsmen, how he operates. And we've suggested through here the building of forms.

Some way of building the pot, the potters wheels not the only way there are others. And we'll show those on a later program. The completion of the pot is goes through the technical operations. But even then, it is rather incomplete pot unless it is decorated or ornamented and glazed. All that gives the individual operator just another wide field to add to this sort of individual having good time. It's a good time in the sense that he's exploring and trying, not a good time in this, you know, happy sort of thing. Because it is hard work, many of the pots that we make are failures and we throw them away. We've had an introduction to the world of ceramics, the various facets of it and the phases of it. We'll look into each of the phases in future programs in the series about ceramics. Thank you.

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