About two years ago after reading the book “The White Road: a journey into obsession” by Edmund de Waal, I started looking at porcelain again. Not just making works with porcelain clay but seriously looking into the material. I’ve played with it on and off over the years and always enjoyed working with it, the feel, the change,to me the clay just “felt” right but I've never devoted the time to it, just dabbled. But that dabbling took me back to the writings of John Revee and Nigel Wood. Which set me on the path less traveled, The road to the Five Dynasties.
That quest has been two years of working on a clay body that is a recreation of a porcelain form the 5 Dynasty era of China. I call it, duhh 5D or 5 Dynasties - The first pieces came out of the Spring Valley Anagama in February of this year 2018 and the second and third pieces came out of a high fires and soda firings shortly there after. All of them beautifully translucent at a ¼ to 1/8 of an inch.
To me Translucency is the thing. That is what makes porcelain what it is. You can argue all day about maturation temperature and intent and materials, but the one thing that make porcelains different from every other clay out there is translucency.
So if your itching to try some your in luck …. Clay Planet has made a limited run of this clay, the run is already half gone in 1 day. So best hurry if you want to give it a try.
You can order it on line at Clay-Planet.com , or swing by the store in San Jose and pick it up in person......... But I know your just here for the glam shots so.....
